Nothing But Questions

[danalwyn]

Answering the question "Where is bin Laden" has given rise to three more questions:

• Does the fact that OBL was hiding in a military town 75 miles from Islamabad imply that Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) was hiding him, or were they just plain incompetent?



• Did the Pakistanis give him up, or did the US do this all themselves because they were too worried that Pakistan would spill the beans and tip off a valuable ISI asset?



• If the Pakistanis did participate, will they ever admit it, or will they simply keep their mouths shut out of fear of jeopardizing their relations with their carefully cultivated network of militant contacts and inviting even more bombings?

It's well known that the ISI is playing a double game with the United States as they try and juggle both the threat of terrorism and the opportunity it provides (especially vis-a-vis India and their own restive regions). The questions people are asking are trying to figure out whether this was another indecipherable chess move in the long game the ISI is playing, or whether they just got caught with their pants down. I expect answering each of those questions will only raise more which will go unanswered.

Comments

[silverjackal]

I'm quite certain that certain factions within Pakistan were both hiding and supporting him, while others were helping the United States. For the U.S. to conduct that strike required Pakistan's support. On the other hand I'm sufficiently cynical in this situation to say that likely the self-same group did both (support Bin Laden, *and* hand him over). (And yes, I also agree with the charge of incompetence. None of these things are mutually exclusive.)

[danalwyn]

My gut feeling is that if you drew a Venn Diagram of high level people in the ISI supporting bin Laden and those supporting the US, you would have only one circle. The ISI doesn't walk down the middle of the road, they've put a lawn chair on the center divider. I'm guessing that at this point their scheme is so convoluted that they don't even know what it is, and they're just hoping they can keep tap-dancing on quicksand.