KABUL, Afghanistan - From the Taliban’s hidden mud compounds to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels and the Pentagon, combatants in a decade-long war are asking versions of the same question: How does Osama bin Laden’s death change the struggle over who will control Afghanistan?

The Taliban say their insurgency was never solely dependent on Bin Laden, and they could survive his demise, but the American raid that killed him has raised the possibility that even the movement’s top leaders may not be safe in Pakistan.

Many leaders in Europe, though, see Bin Laden’s death as another reason to pull out of a war they have promised to quit anyway in the next three years. And in Washington, administration officials say they believe that Bin Laden’s death offers them an opportunity to engage the Taliban leadership in a political negotiation.

“If you are Mullah Omar,” one of President Obama’s top advisers said of the Afghan Taliban’s spiritual leader, who operates from Pakistan, “you’ve got to wonder whether the next set of helicopters is coming for you.”

The mystery now is whether the removal of Bin Laden as the central figure in the battle between fundamentalists and the West is truly a tipping point, as the White House bets.

That may depend on events that have yet to unfold: whether Al Qaeda strikes back for the killing of its leader, whether the American military force in Afghanistan remains at its current strength and whether Afghanistan’s own military proves more capable than it has been so far in taking the lead in contested areas of the country.

The week of Bin Laden’s death, Mr. Obama and his aides emphasized that their goal was to defeat Al Qaeda - the Taliban, officials argue , simply need to be “degraded” as a force, so that Afghans can fight them and the United States can leave.

But there is an alternative possibility heard in Kabul: the Taliban may take heart from the death of Bin Laden if they sense that his demise - and Al Qaeda’s infighting - is likely to accelerate an American withdrawal.

Though the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been entwined, their aims are believed to have differed. The Taliban’s goal has been to control Afghanistan; Al Qaeda has wanted to establish a global terrorist network.

The question for the United States, then, is how many resources should be devoted to dealing with what is essentially a local insurgency, now that Bin Laden is gone?

Pakistan’s support, the survival of Mullah Omar and the reluctance so far of Taliban fighters to join the Afghan government make it unlikely that the movement’s energy will be sapped overnight.

Similarly, the Taliban’s leaders have not been free to sit down with President Hamid Karzai and work out a deal without running afoul of their Pakistani hosts.

Moreover, Al Qaeda’s importance to an insurgency that is far from uniform across Afghanistan has waned, intelligence analysts said.

One Afghan security official who has tracked members of Al Qaeda since 2001 but asked not to be named said that Bin Laden was not just a charismatic figurehead who inspired so many fighters, but also the main draw for financing from rich supporters in Arab countries. The Taliban was already experiencing a money shortage as a result of the Arab Spring, the official said.

As significant to the Taliban are their havens and training camps in Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal areas. Whether they survive is largely up to Pakistan.

Toor Jan, a former Taliban member in Kandahar who joined the Afghan government’s reconciliation program in March, said foreigners accompanied his men as mentors.

“There were some foreigners in each group of Taliban, we can say two or three foreign fighters who taught how to use ammunition and how to plant I.E.D.’s and make explosions,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

The number of Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan has been often estimated at fewer than 100, according to senior intelligence officials here. How they may be affected by Bin Laden’s death is not yet clear, officials said.


By ALISSA J. RUBIN
and DAVID E. SANGER