Monday, October 18, 2010

At Home in Pakistan

US comics have a running joke about Osama Bin Laden living in a cave. The jokes might make some Americans feel better about our military's failure to kill or capture the icon of international terrorism. The sad truth according to a NATO source is he lives in relative comfort in northwest Pakistan under the protection of ISI officials and local tribal leaders. CNN says their source has access to the alliance's most sensitive information. When Bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, escaped encirclement at Tora Bora, they moved to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan where they ranged in relative safety from Chitral in the north to the Kurram Valley 300 kms to the south. Bin Laden at large after nine years of fighting is one more measure of the insurmountable duplicity the US confronts in the unwinable Afghanistan war. You just got to laugh.