The thesis presented by the author, namely that Osama bin Laden is not caught due to internal Pakistani politics, is by no means the only explanation for the fact that bin Laden has not been arrested.  U.S. leaders, including President George W. Bush, have expressed their disinterest in catching Osama bin Laden.  U.S. leaders decided to attack Afghanistan not in order to arrest Osama bin Laden or other alleged planners and instigators of the crime of 9/11, but for strategical as well as domestic policies.  Numerous facts support this thesis.  The following article may represent a bona fide opinion or, conversely, deliberate disinformation.

 The Webmaster

Excerpts

Little incentive to nab bin Laden

by Ahmed Rashid (Pakistan)
in International Herald Tribune, 12 July 2005

[…] Washington has mainly itself to blame. By transferring resources, satellite surveillance and manpower to Iraq, the United States not only took the pressure off bin Laden, but also gave the Taliban, Al Qaeda, drug barons and warlords time and space to reconstitute themselves in Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks are causing the bloodiest summer since 2001.

But there are good reasons why some of America’s frustration over this situation has recently been directed at Pakistan, which is feeling increasing U.S. pressure to get serious in catching bin Laden.

Gone are the days when U.S. officials said vaguely that bin Laden was somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA director, Porter Goss, have said that they know where bin Laden is and that he is not in Afghanistan – implying he is in Pakistan. Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Kabul who is now the U.S. envoy in Baghdad, has been more blunt and said that bin Laden is in Pakistan.

President Pervez Musharraf’s army has captured 500 Al Qaeda militants and handed them over to the United States, and has lost more than 500 soldiers fighting Al Qaeda in the rugger tribal areas. But the reality is that Musharraf has little incentive to catch bin Laden – and it may even in the military’s interest to keep him alive, without necessarily knowing where he is.

Pakistan’s military fears that its alliance with the United States is a short-term one, based on cooperating in the war on terrorism, while Washington’s long-term ally in the region is India, Pakistan’s rival, with which the United States signed a 10-year strategic defense pact on June 29. According to this logic, America cannot dump Pakistan as long as the war on terrorism continues and bin Laden remains to be captured.

The Pakistani Army is also angry at President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan for giving India a strategic foothold in his country and at the Americans for doing nothing to stop it. Pakistan’s government claims that India is using Afghan soil to support an insurgency by nationalists in Baluchistan province.

[…]

So turning a blind eye to bin Laden’s whereabouts and to Taliban recruitment inside Pakistan gives the army leverage over both Washington and Kabul. That leverage was evident during last year’s presidential elections in Afghanistan: Only after a private meeting between Musharraf and President George W. Bush did Taliban attacks mysteriously cease for the duration of the elections.

At the same time, Musharraf’s own political survival partially depends on not catching bin Laden. Pakistan is witnessing far greater anti-Americanism and sympathy for bin Laden than ever existed in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.  The army’s top brass has no interest in provoking the terrorist mayhem and increased extremism that would certainly follow if bin Laden is caught or killed on Pakistan soil."

[Ahmed Rashid is the author of ‘Taliban’ and, most recently ‘Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islamd in Central Asia’]