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May 15, 2005
I bet they know
In an article in Pakistan's Daily Times, several military officials admit that the political risks of arresting bin Laden in Pakistan are huge. The press and other observers too easily forget that radical Islamic parties claim up to 40 percent of the vote in local Pakistani elections and that bin Laden is indeed a popular figure there.
There is also a hint that the feared Inter-Services Institute, Pakistan's CIA, knows where bin Laden is. Unlike the Israelis, it does seem quite likely that Pakistani intelligence knows where he is or could find out if they really wanted to know. It was the ISI that helped create the Taliban, al Qaeda's strongest ally, and it was the ISI that asked U.S. forces to stop shelling Kunduz, Afghanistan, where some 2000 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters here holed up in the Fall of 2001, so that it could bring in two fixed-wing aircraft to fly out its intelligence officers. Must have been quite a few embedded with the enemy... Add to that that nearly every high-level al Qaeda target captured was seized in Pakistan as well as more than 700 al Qaeda footsoldiers, more than any other single nation on Earth (including Iraq and Afghanistan).
Posted by Richard Miniter at May 15, 2005 08:14 AM