What About Bin Laden?

From IBD:
Posted 5/4/2006

War On Terror: The last words uttered by Moussaoui were: "God save Osama bin Laden — you will never get him." He had a point: The person most responsible for 9-11 remains at large — in Pakistan.

What are we doing to capture him? More precisely, what is the "ally" to whom we've farmed out the job doing? Obviously, not enough, and it's become a running embarrassment. There are signs the White House is growing impatient, particularly as reports emerge that the Taliban and al-Qaida are using Pakistan as a base to retake control of parts of southern Afghanistan.

U.S. Central Command Gen. John Abizaid paid a visit to Islamabad Wednesday to press President Pervez Musharraf for more results in the war on terror. (Musharraf has banned U.S. troops stationed over the border in Afghanistan from joining the hunt for bin Laden, or even counterattacking al-Qaida and Taleb marauders.)
Meantime, the State Department sent its top counterterrorism official to meet with Musharraf's interior ministers.

Those trips come on the heels of one by George W. Bush himself. The president indicated he was developing doubts about Musharraf's commitment and needed to travel to Islamabad and check his temperature and remind him of the need to capture bin Laden.

"Part of my mission," Bush said in March, "was to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past in bringing these terrorists to justice." Bush came away satisfied. But this week's high-level follow-ups show lingering doubts.

Publicly, the White House insists bin Laden and his deputies are "on the run." But it's clear from their most recent videotapes that they are not hunkered down in caves, but well-protected by friends and comfortably living in safe houses — possibly in Pakistani cities.

Their clothes are clean and pressed, and they have access to electrical outlets or generators to run lights for the well-shot videos they courier to al-Jazeera's local bureaus with seeming ease.

"We don't know where they are," Musharraf shrugs, still suggesting they could be on the Afghan side. But Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai insists both al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are hiding inside Pakistan. He says Musharraf knows their whereabouts and may be stringing Washington along for more aid, including a fleet of F-16s the White House has promised.

Karzai also claims the Pakistani military is arming the terrorists and helping them plan and launch insurgency operations from Quetta and Peshawar — including assassinations of Afghan officials. He shared his intelligence with Musharraf in a dossier, but the Pakistani president dismissed it as "nonsense."

Recently leaked secret U.S. military documents in Afghanistan seem to support Karzai's claims. In one, a U.S. commander says: "Pakistani border forces (should) cease assisting cross-border insurgent activities." Another from 2005 says U.S. forces must "interdict the supply of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) from Pakistan."
Is Musharraf double-dealing? Or could his army be conducting rogue operations against his orders? This much is known: Musharraf before the war husbanded the Taliban and winked at bin Laden's terror camps because they helped train Kashmiri fighters.

And for a full 27 months after the Taliban's fall, Musharraf gave Taleb and al-Qaida fighters free rein in the Pashtun tribal belt to reestablish training camps for militants who'd escaped Afghanistan. Only after intense U.S. pressure did he send troops into that region.

Bin Laden may no longer have hands-on control of his network and pose a serious threat. But each day he dodges the most powerful military in the world he inspires more followers who think he has divine protection from Allah.

And don't discount the power of his taped messages. They not only act as a recruiting tool, but also carry instructions for jihadists to act on. London was attacked exactly a year after bin Laden offered a truce to Britain and other European countries willing to pull out of Iraq. After the suicide bombings, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, appeared on another tape explaining that they came as a result of the British government ignoring bin Laden's offer. He recently offered us the same deal.

We have to get to bin Laden, cut off this communications channel and decapitate the al-Qaida leadership once and for all. But we can't do that with one arm tied behind our backs, which is what Musharraf's ban on our troops has effectively done. Diplomatic pressure and carrots aren't working. And drones and cruise missiles aren't enough.

We need a new plan of action in Pakistan.