Bin Laden is not in a cave

[danmand]

Analysis: NATO points finger at PakistanBy Nic Robertson, CNN Senior International CorrespondentOctober 18, 2010 -- Updated 1759 GMT (0159 HKT)

A senior NATO official says Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan. CNN's Nic Robertson explains the significance.

(CNN) -- Why is NATO doing this now?

A lot of what has been said is common sense and common knowledge among officials working in the Afghan theater. What is different is it's a growing pressure on Pakistan and its role.

We had the information before about Osama bin Laden being close to Ayman al-Zawahiri, and it's been clear for a while he has not been living in a cave. It is not clear yet why a NATO official is saying this now.

The sense, behind the scenes, is Pakistan is believed to be coming towards the negotiating table and behind the Taliban as it begins to talk to the Afghan government.

Pakistan has its own set of desires for the outcome in Afghanistan -- and they are trying to achieve these demands behinds the scenes, we are led to believe, in association with the U.S. and Afghanistan.

It seems hardly surprising that there would be more pressure on Pakistan to provide what the U.S. and NATO wants, which is Osama bin Laden to be handed over.

Has the West or NATO done anything like this before?



Video: NATO Official: Bin Laden in NW Pakistan

MAP: Afghanistan-Pakistan border RELATED TOPICS
Osama bin Laden
Pakistan
Al Qaeda
This is the first time in many, many years that the finger has been pointed so blatantly at Pakistan. If you look at Bob Woodward's book "Obama's War," one of the things Barack Obama has wanted to do is point the finger at Pakistan and say "the problem is there" whether it is terror training camps or home to bin Laden.

It seems to be part of an effort to put the focus on Pakistan.

Why is it now thought bin Laden is in a town?

Both the Taliban and al Qaeda, in conversations that have been intercepted, are saying that the drone strikes on isolated houses are proving quite effective.

It is clear that this is a worry for the grassroot jihadists and more so for the leadership who are less expendable.

It is safer to be living in a more urban environment because the risk of collateral damage -- innocent lives -- is higher.

We have seen the Taliban moving to Karachi, and Pakistan media has reported members of al Qaeda living there also.

Given the rate of drone attacks it is no surprise they would feel safer among people.

Why would bin Laden get protection?

Nobody wants to turn in what many people see as a hero of Islam. These people would also not be swayed by reward money.

There would also be reams of security around bin Laden so few people would actually know where he is living.

Some in the Pakistan intelligence services are believed by some other intelligence services as having a very radical Islamist view sympathetic to bin Laden.

What does Pakistan want?

The Taliban leaders are bargaining chips for Pakistan's goal which is regional security. That includes India having less influence in Afghanistan.

A more influential India would leave Pakistan feeling surrounded by Indian interests.

Pakistan ultimately wants a stronger, traditional Pashtun government for Afghanistan so that India cannot get a stronger foothold there.

 

[landscaper]

If they have positive information I am amazed there have not been a number of explosions, unless somebody at the high end of the chain of command is stopping it

 

[Aardvark154]

None of this is new or startling. What is new is that it is now being talked about in public.

 

[danmand]

None of this is new or startling. What is new is that it is now being talked about in public.

That is also not new or startling. What is new is that it is coming from Nato. Maybe the danish chief does have some common sense afterall.

 

[Aardvark154]

What is new is that it is coming from Nato. Maybe the danish chief does have some common sense afterall.

One question is why are they doing so now? There are needless to say arguments to be made that it is letting Pakistan know that it is not just the U.S. which is upset with their behaviour. Then again there are also arguments to be made that it further destabilizes an already increasingly unstable situation.

 

[landscaper]

Why NAto and why now, questions for the ages. It could be that NATO is tired of trying to fight a battle with one arm tied behind their back. If the US has known abut his whereabouts and has not acted for what ever reason the European NATO members could be getting nervous about their own Muslim populations, haveing Bin Ladin out of the picture would remove a rally point and if they got lucky take out a fair number of the leaders.

Again all speculation

 

[danmand]

Why NAto and why now, questions for the ages. It could be that NATO is tired of trying to fight a battle with one arm tied behind their back. If the US has known abut his whereabouts and has not acted for what ever reason the European NATO members could be getting nervous about their own Muslim populations, haveing Bin Ladin out of the picture would remove a rally point and if they got lucky take out a fair number of the leaders.

Again all speculation

The european Nato countries have no particular ties to Pakistan, like the US has.

 

[yahoo40]

The european Nato countries have no particular ties to Pakistan, like the US has.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Pakistan

Friends of Pakistan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) is a group aimed to extend support the Democratic Government of Pakistan in its efforts to consolidate democracy in Pakistan and support social and economic development in the country. The group was launched in New York on 26 September 2008 on the side lines of the United Nations General Assembly session. The initial meeting was Co-chaired by United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.
The founding members states of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan included Britain, France, Germany, the United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Turkey, Australia and Italy plus the United Nations and the European Union. Other countries also joined and at the meeting held in Abu Dhabi in April 2009 a total of 24 member states and international organizations attended.

 

[Aardvark154]

The european Nato countries have no particular ties to Pakistan, like the US has.

Unfortunately that is largely because for their own ‘throwing over the traces from the Raj’ reasons India sidled up to the Soviet Union. Hence the U.S. was forced into the position of buttressing Pakistan.

The U.S. I'm sure would have been far happier backing India.

 

[danmand]

Unfortunately that is largely because for their own ‘throwing over the traces from the Raj’ reasons India sidled up to the Soviet Union. Hence the U.S. was forced into the position of buttressing Pakistan.

The U.S. I'm sure would have been far happier backing India.

Forced is maybe a strong word. The US could have stayed out of it.

 

[Aardvark154]

Forced is maybe a strong word. The US could have stayed out of it.

I thought you grew up in Denmark, not on Mars.

 

[danmand]

I thought you grew up in Denmark, not on Mars.

Different planet than yours, I suppose.

 

[zarbe]

i dont think that there is taliban members in karachi, because of the stronghold MQM has over the city. karachi is more rife with sectarian and ethnic clashes not related to terrorisim.

ISI (intelligence service for pakistan) has two groups, one pro taliban and the other anti taliban.

it is true that pakistan wants an anti india presence in afghanistan, but now more and more pathans in afghanistan are siding with india and the fall out that is developing between pakistan and iran has iran moving more closer to india, which has moved pakistan on the backfoot

also people do not want to turn in binladen because if they do they and their family will be killed.

my two cents

and since i will be heading to pakistan this december, i will let you guys know the situation, politically and sp wise! lol

in lahore theres a red light district called diamond market XD

 

[Aardvark154]

Different planet than yours, I suppose.

That not infrequently seems the case

 

[danmand]

That not infrequently seems the case

It is a question worthy of an existentialist's time (Kierkegaard), if you can determine whether you are inside or outside the zoo, when you see bars in front of you.

 

[Huron]

As long as they know the rough area, why not get a British Trident to pay the area a visit?

 

[seth gecko]

Why U.S. can't find Osama bin Laden

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
October 19, 2010 -- Updated 1134 GMT (1934 HKT)

Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is a fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that promotes innovative thought from across the ideological spectrum, and at New York University's Center on Law and Security. He's the author of "The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader."
(CNN) -- American taxpayers have forked over around half a trillion dollars to U.S. intelligence services since the 9/11 attacks, yet nearly a decade after al Qaeda assaults on New York and Washington, the American intelligence community still cannot answer the most basic of questions:
Where is Osama bin Laden? Where is his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri? And where is Taliban leader Mullah Omar?
As reported by CNN on Monday, NATO officials believe al Qaeda's leaders are hiding somewhere in northwestern Pakistan, while Mullah Omar is thought to orbit between Quetta in western Pakistan and the southern port city of Karachi. As Pakistan is roughly twice as large as California and Karachi is a city of 18 million, these are not particularly precise locations for the world's most wanted men.
If the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were private companies and were chronically unable to accomplish one of their key missions, their shareholders would have long ago revolted, fired their management and their stock would be trading at values near zero. Instead, the budgets for the U.S. intelligence agencies continue to spiral upward, while almost a million Americans possess top-secret clearances.
What does a top-secret clearance gain you?
Not much, judging by the content of the tens of thousands of secret documents about the Afghan War made public by WikiLeaks in July. The one surprising thing about this massive classified data dump was how little of it was in any way surprising. It contained the kind of material that the casual reader of news articles have long known: Elements of Pakistan's military intelligence service may be supporting the Taliban!
The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway. Bin Laden declared war on the United States on CNN in 1997 and then again on ABC News a year later, and he soon made good on those threats with al Qaeda's attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
In the summer of 2001, bin Laden and his top commanders gave an interview to the Middle East Broadcasting Corp., in which they dropped broad hints that they were planning a large-scale, anti-American assault, which turned out to be the 9/11 attacks. When President George W. Bush was briefed by the CIA a month before 9/11 that bin Laden intended to attack the United States, it was merely to state the blindingly obvious.
Similarly today, al Qaeda and allied groups such as the Taliban constantly release videotapes and print products in which they lay out their doctrines and strategies and document their attacks and tactics, all of which are widely available on the Internet.
The conflict with al Qaeda and its allies is effectively the first open-source war, which is the opposite of how the highly secretive Kremlin conducted the Cold War. Yet U.S. intelligence agencies remain largely configured as if they are doing battle with a superpower, rather than a network of jihadist networks.
As a result, the CIA today more resembles an accounting firm than the swashbuckling, action-oriented spy agency of popular imagination.
This is not an accident. Hiring by the CIA and other agencies in the intelligence community is predicated on passing a background check that has become more onerous since 9/11 and is a legacy of the Cold War notion that a superpower adversary with billions of dollars at its disposal is trying to recruit spies and informants.
But al Qaeda has no capacity to buy spies inside America's intelligence community, and, more broadly, al Qaeda and its allies have shown no ability to recruit inside the U.S. government.
Yet applicants to the American intelligence agencies today are likely to encounter real problems with their background checks if they have relatives in the Arab world or have spent time in countries such as Pakistan, precisely the sort of life experiences necessary for effective spies.
By contrast, the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA, recruited bilingual agents deeply familiar with European culture who took great risks to undertake highly effective operations in Nazi-occupied Europe. In today's CIA, those brave men and women wouldn't have made it past the background check.
Much of the work that has been done to reform the intelligence community since 9/11 has been directed at fussing with the wiring diagram of its bureaucracy: Should the director of National Intelligence control CIA station chiefs, or is that the purview of the CIA director? This kind of jockeying, of course, does nothing to solve the real question American taxpayers want answered: Where is bin Laden? That question is likely only to be resolved by good old-fashioned espionage.
Emblematic of what ails the intelligence community today was its reaction to the failed attempt by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to blow up a Northwest passenger jet landing in Detroit, Michigan, with a bomb made of plastic explosives on Christmas Day 2009. To do the job, AQAP recruited in Yemen a Nigerian graduate of the elite University College London. His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
There was a great deal of subsequent hand-wringing by Obama administration officials about how improved information sharing protocols might have worked better to assemble the shards of information known to the government about Abdulmutallab, which might have prevented him from boarding the Northwest flight.
Their solution: Hire more analysts. But this was to misdiagnose the problem. The intelligence community is awash in analysts. While the precise number is classified, it is reasonable to assume that there are tens of thousands. What is needed is not more analysts but better on-the-ground intelligence.
If the CIA had had a spy on the fringes of AQAP, the appearance of an educated Nigerian from London in the remote desert areas of Yemen where al Qaeda members hide out would have been something that the spy would have flagged to his handlers as remarkable. There does not appear to have been such an agent.
What can be done? The House and Senate Intelligence committees that oversee the intelligence community should hold the CIA to real account using a simple metric: How many jihadist groups including al Qaeda have been penetrated by its agents?
This is less onerous a demand then one might imagine. After just a few months of hanging out in Pakistan, Bryant Neal Vinas, an unemployed Hispanic-American convert to militant Islam from Long Island, managed to waltz into an al Qaeda training camp where he was trained how to attack American bases in Afghanistan. And that was seven years after 9/11.
Budgets should be cut if the CIA can't provide proof that it is penetrating al Qaeda and its affiliates; at the end of the day, this is the most likely way that we will ever find bin Laden, who is not going to be voluntarily given up by the few who know his location today.
President Obama should appoint someone in the U.S. government whose job it is to find bin Laden and who can coordinate that effort across the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community.
Finally, the background check for spies should be reformed so that men and women with the regional expertise and linguistic abilities to penetrate and recruit inside jihadist terrorist groups are hired to go outside the wire and get the job done.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Peter Bergen.