Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized
Bin Laden Said in Afghanistan; Pakistanis complain that Obama 'Kept them in the Dark'

Bin Laden Said in Afghanistan; Pakistanis complain that Obama ‘Kept them in the Dark’

Juan Cole 12/04/2009

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

A Taliban guerrilla in Pakistani custody insists that he met Bin Laden in the mountainous province of Ghazni inside Afghanistan.

The allegation is plausible. The US has very good aerial surveillance of the Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but has never seen a trace of Bin Laden there. He fought over on the Afghanistan side, and developed sophisticated safe houses during that struggle in the 1980s.

Pakistani sources not only continued to deny that Bin Laden is in their country, but they also expressed reservations about the new Obama Afghanistan policy.

They complain that they were “kept in the dark over the finer parts of the review policy” and say that their assessment of the proposed course of action would depend on those details.

Among Islamabad’s top concerns, according to Sajjad Malik of the Daily Times:

1. It is not clear where exactly the new US troops will be deployed (though it now seems clear that it will be Helmand and Qandahar provinces in the south).

2. Pakistan is “seriously perturbed” by Washington’s allegation that Pakistan is the “epicenter” of terrorism, and by the hint that the US might engage in hot pursuit of Taliban onto Pakistan soil. As a neighbor, Pakistan is concerned at the prospect that NATO will train up a big 150,000-strong Afghanistan Army.

3. The US seems uninterested in achieving reconciliation between Tajiks and Pashtuns, which would have to be part of the solution.

4. The US seems to be overly reliant on the military to impose social peace, which in any case they have not succeeded in doing for the last 8 years.

5. Pakistan is petrified that big US military operations will push a new wave of Pashtuns from Afghanistan into Pakistan, where they would become an element of instability.

6. Obama seems to be deliberately conflating the Taliban with al-Qaeda when in fact the two are distinct.

A Pakistani official told the Daily times, “Our stand is consistent that more troops are not the remedy for the war-torn country, as it will lead to more hatred and create more militants . . . We have been saying that only purposeful dialogue can bring peace and stability in Afghanistan.”

7. They complained that Obama seemed to lump Pakistan with Afghanistan.

Now that it has leaked that the US will also expand its drone strikes into Baluchistan, Pakistan is upset about that step, as well.

Nir Rosen, who knows the situation on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan intimately, dismisses Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s plans for counter-insurgency in Afghanistan as based on the advice of ‘celebrity pundits’ unfamiliar with ground realities and unduly influenced by their idea of what happened in Iraq.

The thing is, it only matters symbolically. Everything I read in open sources suggests that al-Qaeda has almost no command and control structure left.
Tom Engelhardt decries what he sees as President Obama’s surrender to the US military-industrial establishment on the issue of the Afghanistan surge.

Aljazeera English interviews Adm. Mike Mullen on Obama’s Afghanistan surge, and the interview is British-style combative journalism, though Mullen remains unfazed.

End/ (Not Continued)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Israel's Netanyahu banks on TACO Trump as he Launches War on Iran to disrupt Negotiations
  • Iran's Hypersonic Missiles Hit Israeli Refinery, Military Sites, as Israel does the same to Tehran
  • A Pariah State? Western Nations Sanction Israeli Cabinet Members
  • Why did Israel defy Trump – and risk a major War – by striking Iran now? And what happens next?
  • Will Iran reply to Israeli Attacks with "War of Attrition?" Will its Nuclear Red Line Hold?

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved