In 1918 a startling coincidence took place. Every single Muslim in the world was colonised. The defeat of Ottoman Turkey eliminated the last independent space in the Muslim world.
The restructuring of Arab west Asia also began after 1918. Over time, with halting steps, new nations were granted qualified freedom. Neo-colonisation is easily defined. It is the granting of independence on condition that you do not exercise it. Britain had protected its Indian empire through a similar exchange of security commitments with princely states. A superpower assured security to a ruling clan in exchange for the clan becoming a local guardian of superpower interests.
The Arab street was not divided into left or right, but rather into radical and moderate avenues. "Moderate" became a dodgy word in nationalist circles as governments sold oil to their mentors at artificially bottled prices. The radicals were broadly "left" but there was a small but significant stream that took its inspiration from a heady mix of Islamic theology and Arab history. When the fetid royal clans collapsed, the "left" found champions in army officers. Nasser in Egypt and Ba'athists in Iraq and Syria promised a good deal and delivered little. There was neither democracy nor economic growth; and social reform was vitiated by political compromise as dynasties survived on a diet of stagnation.
Arabs created room for an Osama through inertia. America expanded it through war. Bin Laden deliberately provoked conflict by destroying Bush Jr's isolationist complacence with a successful strike that could have been scripted for fantasy-history. Today Bin Laden, and forces sympathetic to him but outside his control, are gaining nationalist space in the region between Egypt and Pakistan. That is, or should be, the most worrisome consequence of Bush's long eight years in office.
An accident of sectarian interests has kept Ladenists at odds with radical elements in Iran, but their reading of the west is not sharply divergent. In exile from the Shah's Iran, Imam Khomeini developed the concept of twin threats: if America, godfather of Israel and principal oil glutton, was the Great Satan then the Soviet Union, as successor to tsarist imperialism, was the Lesser Satan. Having made his reputation in war against the Lesser Satan it was only a question of time before a confrontation built up against the more dangerous adversary.
Bush Sr created the first moment with his Iraq war. Bin Laden fell out with the Saudis when they rejected his offer to fight Saddam in Kuwait and received sanctuary in Afghanistan.
Ironically, Bush has spent seven death-drenched years searching for Bin Laden, and failed. But when Bin Laden wanted to find Bush, he seemed eerily capable of doing so.
Bin Laden is no more than an agent provocateur, but his historic importance is as a manifestation of despair. He may arouse toxic alarm in the west, but his more enduring legacy should be as a wake-up call for the Muslim world. If Muslim nations do not modernise, and eliminate social ills like gender bias, he will have inspired a regression that will deepen the present haze of confusion into storm clouds of chaos.
• MJ Akbar is editor-in-chief of the Asian Age and editor of Covert magazine