Posted on 09/26/2007 5:55:20 PM PDT by SevenMinusOne
09/25/2007 - By Michael Scheuer (from Terrorism Focus, September 25) - More than six years after the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden remains free, healthy and safe enough to produce audio- and videotapes that dominate the international media at the times of his choosing (Terrorism Focus, September 11). Popular and some official attitudes in the United States and its NATO allies tend to denigrate the efforts made by their military and intelligence services to capture the al-Qaeda chief. The common question always is, "Why can't the U.S. superpower and its allies find one 6'5" Saudi with an extraordinarily well-known face?" The answers are several, each is compelling, and together they suggest that the U.S.-led coalition's military and intelligence forces are too over-tasked and spread far too thin to have more than a slim chance of capturing or killing bin Laden and his senior lieutenants. The first factor is the issue of topography. Few U.S. citizens or Europeans have any idea of what the terrain of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border looks like (Terrorism Monitor, October 19, 2006). This shortcoming must be attributed to the failure of Western leaders to educate their electorates using the abundant and commercially available satellite photography that depicts the nightmarish mountains, forests and road-less terrain in which Western forces conduct their search. The border area is genuinely a frontier in the sense of the American Old West, but with mountains that dwarf even the Rockies. Such use of satellite photography would likewise show voters that the Western concept of a "border" as a well-defined and manageable demarcation between two nation-states is not remotely applicable regarding the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The second factor is the role of the indigenous population. Bin Laden and his lieutenants appear to currently reside in a region dominated on both sides of the border by the Pashtun tribes. Ethnically and linguistically, the Pashtun are fairly homogenous, but the multiple tribes are divided and subdivided into myriad, often rival clans. What all Pashtuns share, however, is a quite conservative brand of Islam and a tribal tradition that insists that no individual, once accepted as a guest by the tribe, ever be surrendered to those seeking him and that he be defended to the death. Buttressing this tribal stricture in bin Laden's case is the fact that the Pashtuns are conservative Muslims, and regard him—as does much of the Muslim world—as an Islamic hero. The strength of this combination is evident when it is noted that no Pashtun has stepped forward to collect a cent of the tens of the millions of dollars the United States is willing to pay for information leading to bin Laden's capture or death.
It also is worth noting that the Pashtun custom of guest protection and their tendency to evaluate bin Laden as an Islamic hero is more or less shared by all Sunni Afghans, that it is a near-countrywide Afghan characteristic. Thus, the U.S.-led coalition's military and intelligence personnel are likely to encounter these attributes along most of the 1700-kilometer Pakistan-Afghanistan border in areas north and south of the Pashtun-dominated central border area. In addition, the Afghans' traditional hostility to foreign occupation traverses all ethnic groups and this nearly universal attitude is likely to be encountered with increasing stridency as the coalition's presence progresses through its seventh year. Recent media reporting, for example, shows that some mujahideen groups in the pro-Karzai Northern Alliance's heartland are beginning to reform on the basis of a desire to rid Afghanistan of what they view as its current set of foreign occupiers.
The third factor is the coalition's choice of major search areas. In many ways, the hunt for bin Laden depends on clandestinely acquired information, and those who comment on the effort—including the present author—must admit that they are commenting and analyzing on the basis of informed speculation, common sense and historical precedent. For the past several years, the hunt for bin Laden has been concentrated in Pakistan's Waziristan region and the area adjacent to it on the Afghan side of the border (Dawn, February 20). Coalition and Afghan forces, Pakistan's intelligence service and border guards, and the Pakistani regular army have been involved in the hunt. One must assume that credible information has led them to that location. Nevertheless, there are several good reasons that make Waziristan an unlikely top choice as a hiding spot for bin Laden and his lieutenants.
A. Although clearly a remote area, Waziristan is an area through which much commerce and smuggling take place. In addition, there is a great deal of simply tribe-, clan-, or family-related movement through the area because of the trans-border ethnic homogeneity (Terrorism Monitor, October 19, 2006). Of the entire length of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, only the Kandahar-Chaman-Quetta and Kabul-Jalalabad-Peshawar corridors have more of such activity, making Waziristan an area in which everyday human and business traffic provides substantial cover for those hunting a fugitive, and thereby making it a relatively unattractive refuge.
B. Waziristan was a major staging and training area for the Afghan mujahideen and their non-Afghan allies during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s. As a result, the Pakistani, American and Russian governments hold a good deal of information about the location of camps, depots and hideouts built by the Afghan mujahideen. This kind of information also is held by some of the war correspondents who covered the Afghan-USSR war, and who are now covering the present insurgency. It seems fair to conclude that the anti-Soviet mujahideen built their facilities in what they determined were the most secure locations in Waziristan, and that bin Laden and his lieutenants are fully aware that their current enemies have knowledge of these bases, and so they would not seek safe haven in places known to those hunting them.
C. The U.S. government, its NATO allies, President Hamid Karzai's administration and scores of Western media reporters and terrorism "experts" have, over the past six years, made no secret of their belief that bin Laden and his leadership team is in Waziristan. The U.S.-led coalition's military, diplomatic and political officials repeatedly have said publicly that they are putting much of their resources into the Waziristan-focused hunt of bin Laden and his organization. As a result, bin Laden would have to be unintelligent to stay in Waziristan in the face of his enemies' providing him with credible and detailed intelligence about their focus and intentions.
While based on the region's history and informed speculation, the northeastern Afghan areas of Konar province and Nuristan and the adjacent Bajaur Agency in Pakistan lend themselves far better to bin Laden's security needs:
A. This mountainous region is one of the most remote and rugged in Afghanistan; it is the virtually inaccessible area in which Rudyard Kipling set the events of his timeless story, The Man Who Would Be King. Roads are few, the population is scattered and it hosts nothing like the commercial and smuggling activity found in Waziristan (Terrorism Monitor, October 19, 2006). Additionally, in terms of the quality of maps available to bin Laden hunters, this region is much less well-documented than the admittedly poorly mapped Waziristan area. The topography, therefore, favors anyone trying to hide because, once positioned on the high ground, fugitives will have an early visual warning of any approaching foe. The terrain likewise favors the hit-and-run and ambush tactics of insurgent fighters. During the anti-Soviet jihad, for example, the Communist garrison stationed in Konar's capital of Asadabad was more or less marooned. Operations staged from the city were never a surprise, and were often met by ambushes. Likewise, convoys bringing reinforcements and supplies from the south were often ambushed.
B. The areas of Konar and Nuristan also were strong mujahideen redoubts during the Afghan-Soviet war. Indeed, the first resistance to the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul originated in Nuristan in 1978, and the region itself hosted forces belonging to several prominent mujahideen commanders. The most important of these, from bin Laden's current perspective, is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami organization (Terrorism Monitor, September 21, 2006). An early sponsor and longtime friend of bin Laden—he helped facilitate the al-Qaeda chief's return to Afghanistan in May 1996—Hekmatyar maintains strong forces in parts of Konar province and most of adjacent Laghman province to the east. Media reporting likewise indicates that another al-Qaeda ally, the Kashmiri Lashkar-i-Taiba maintains a presence and perhaps training facilities in Konar province. In terms of jihadi colleagues, the region appears well-stocked with bin Laden's allies.
C. The Konar-Nuristan-Bajaur Agency area also has been a region on which Salafi missionaries from Saudi Arabia and other Arabian peninsula states have focused their proselytizing efforts for several decades. Saudi fighters were allowed by the population to train in the region during the war against the USSR, and today it stands as one of the most—and perhaps the most—Salafi area in South Asia. As a Salafi himself, bin Laden would be sure to find the area both welcoming and religiously comfortable. This shared Salafism, moreover, would add another measure of security for bin Laden as his co-religionists are unlikely to cooperate with those seeking his apprehension.
D. This region also is one that bin Laden had his eye on as home since his 1996 return to Afghanistan. When in the spring of 1997 he was preparing to leave his residence in Nangarhar province after several assassination attempts on his life, bin Laden's inclination was to proceed north into the Konar-Nuristan area. He decided against this plan, however, when the Taliban invited him to live in its capital at Kandahar. He then believed it would be politically unwise for al-Qaeda to turn down an invitation from Afghanistan's de facto government. No such consideration is now relevant.
The fourth and final factor is the lack of resources devoted to the hunt. Given Afghanistan's sheer size and extraordinarily mountainous terrain, the current level of forces available to the U.S.-led coalition appears inadequate to perform all the tasks it has been assigned. In addition to eliminating bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda, for example, the coalition's forces are being asked to keep President Karzai's government in power, rebuild the country's economy and transportation infrastructure, help organize a democratic political system, defeat the growing Taliban-led insurgency and eliminate the world's largest heroin industry. Of the 50,000 total coalition troops at their command, it seems unlikely that U.S. and NATO commanders can field more than half of that total as combat forces; indeed, some NATO contingents are forbidden by their governments from performing combat duties. That force seems inadequate for the tasks assigned to it, and may well be outnumbered by the manpower involved in the growing Islamist insurgency.
Michael Scheuer served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999.
He makes much sense here for the most part....On the realities we face....Though I believe the "time equation" for AQ HVTs is starting to turn in our favor now.....It was always in their's in the short-run...
Michael Scheuer has turned into a huge Ron Paul supporter.
But he knows the Stan/Pak border regions. That he does.
BS in a big way : “More than six years after the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden remains free, healthy and safe enough to produce audio- and videotapes that dominate the international media at the times of his choosing”.
He’s dead Jim, to quote Dr. McCoy.
Those videotapes are such forgeries and fakes. At best they are 4 years old. But most likely older.
check out LGF for good info.....
Why not just put a $1 billion bounty on his head? It would have been cheaper and done long ago.
> ... Osama bin Laden remains free, healthy and safe
> enough to produce audio- and videotapes ...
Poof. There goes the cred.
Binny is dead.
Anyone who flaps his yap about the recent tape
being proof of anything, has to respond to the
reported fatal flaws - video freeze during all
the mentions of recent events.
You don’t understand the region -
Bin Ladin is dead. What’s left of him is stuck on a cave wall in Tora Bora. I don’t believe the “videos”. I DO believe that they NEED for the nutjobs to think he is still alive.
He is not. An ego that big HAS to show itself in a way that NO can mistake that it is him. And they have failed that.
I think Osama’s dead as a doornail. That toy GI Joe the Iraqi insurgents had claimed to “capture” last year looked more convincing than the recently morphed Bin Laden.
Scheuer supplies us no reason to believe this. The recent videotape was an obvious fake. So tell me absent pretending that videotape is real, what is the reason to believe that OBL is even alive?
The answers are several, each is compelling, and together they suggest that the U.S.-led coalition's military and intelligence forces are too over-tasked and spread far too thin to have more than a slim chance of capturing or killing bin Laden and his senior lieutenants.
Another possible answer is that maybe Osama bin Laden is already dead. It's hard to capture let alone kill someone who is already dead.
Of course, OBL may not be dead. But I know of no good reason to believe that he is not dead. Scheuer apparently doesn't either.
The first factor is the issue of topography. Few U.S. citizens or Europeans have any idea of what the terrain of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border looks like
Here Scheuer assumes that not only is OBL alive but that Scheuer knows where OBL is living ("the Afghanistan-Pakistan border"). I don't know why OBL-is-alive people are so quick to assume they nevertheless know almost exactly where he is. Why couldn't he be in, oh, Yemen? Is there some law of physics that prevents OBL from going anywhere other than Afghanistan or Pakistan?
I have a reason for making this point. People who insist that OBL is alive, and criticize our government for not having gotten him, seem to envision that all that is necessary is to search the Afghan.-Paki. border region more carefully.
I would just like to point out that this would not work if OBL is actually somewhere else. And people who assume OBL is alive can't, logically speaking, also assume he is a stationary object.
Bin Laden and his lieutenants appear to currently reside in a region dominated on both sides of the border by the Pashtun tribes.
Source?
and those who comment on the effort—including the present author—must admit that they are commenting and analyzing on the basis of informed speculation, common sense and historical precedent.
Indeed.
So again, what's the reason to think OBL draws breath?
Nevertheless, there are several good reasons that make Waziristan an unlikely top choice as a hiding spot for bin Laden and his lieutenants. [..] As a result, bin Laden would have to be unintelligent to stay in Waziristan in the face of his enemies' providing him with credible and detailed intelligence about their focus and intentions.
Actually this section is informative and I suppose that Scheuer has convinced me that, if OBL were alive, he wouldn't be in Waziristan.
My followup-question to the people who assume he's alive, then, would be this: in a more general sense the entire Western commentariat and establishment has made no secret of their belief that OBL lives more or less permanently "somewhere near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border". Doesn't it follow, then, that OBL would have to be equally stupid to stay there? Seriously, why can't he go to Iran, or Yemen, or...oh, I don't know, Nepal? What force prevents him from exiting the magical boundary of Pakistan/Afganistan?
While based on the region's history and informed speculation, the northeastern Afghan areas of Konar province and Nuristan and the adjacent Bajaur Agency in Pakistan lend themselves far better to bin Laden's security needs: [..]
Again, a pretty convincing case is made here that OBL would hide in one of these areas (if he were alive).
The fourth and final factor is the lack of resources devoted to the hunt. Given Afghanistan's sheer size and extraordinarily mountainous terrain, the current level of forces available to the U.S.-led coalition appears inadequate to perform all the tasks it has been assigned. In addition to eliminating bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda, for example, the coalition's forces are being asked to keep President Karzai's government in power, rebuild the country's economy and transportation infrastructure, help organize a democratic political system, defeat the growing Taliban-led insurgency and eliminate the world's largest heroin industry.
Yes, our military is finite. This is clearly George Bush's fault. Also, if we hadn't invaded Iraq, we'd have an infinite military.
That force seems inadequate for the tasks assigned to it, and may well be outnumbered by the manpower involved in the growing Islamist insurgency.
Perhaps so. But the relevance of this military-finiteness is dubious to the issue of finding/capturing OBL, if either of the following is true:
1. OBL isn't in the "Pakistan/Afghanistan border area" at all,
2. OBL isn't alive in the first place.
and I don't think we have compelling evidence that both 1. and 2. are false. If 1. or 2. is true, then we could pour a 10 zillion man army into Afghanistan, and it wouldn't matter. People - like Scheuer- who insist/insinuate that this is what we need to do, are implicitly assuming that both 1. and 2. are false.
And they do not have good reason to do so.
p.s. Although, DevSix, I know your position on the issue differs from mine. Any updates by the way?
It is much easier to spin the truth...than to hide a lie (for all sides involved). And that is exactly what you're suggesting is/has been happening for years -
Of course, OBL may not be dead. But I know of no good reason to believe that he is not dead. Scheuer apparently doesn't either.
When your CinC, SecDef, CIA and numerous other SOF Commanders "go on record" telling you they believe someone to be alive (not dead).....You should read between the lines....(Just because you don't have "clearance" doesn't mean said Intel doesn't exist). I'll leave it there.
Here Scheuer assumes that not only is OBL alive but that Scheuer knows where OBL is living ("the Afghanistan-Pakistan border"). I don't know why OBL-is-alive people are so quick to assume they nevertheless know almost exactly where he is. Why couldn't he be in, oh, Yemen? Is there some law of physics that prevents OBL from going anywhere other than Afghanistan or Pakistan?
First off Scheuer is exactly right here - Most American's (most people around the world) have no clue to how brutal the terrain is within the Pak/Stan border regions - The Pak-Stan border stretches roughly 1,500 miles....Which is about the distance from Washington, D.C., to Denver......It includes every type of landscape from deserts to snow-capped mountains...(it is as close to a nightmare as can be in terms of running sustained operations)...It is completely lawless along virtually all of it to boot.
And for the record....One can know to a great certainty that someone is alive..and within a given "zone"...while at the same time not knowing exactly where they are at a given moment within said zone. These are two two completely viable but separate realities...
Best regards,
What we need is bate that he can’t refuse. Done right, sooner or later he will bite.
Not really. Under my scenario no one has to be "hiding the lie" except maybe a couple of Osama's closest confidantes and boy-toys. It may simply be that very very few people actually know the truth. I don't guess that anyone in our government knows the truth for sure either way, for example. So just to be clear, my theory doesn't involve them "hiding" anything.
When your CinC, SecDef, CIA and numerous other SOF Commanders "go on record" telling you they believe someone to be alive (not dead).....You should read between the lines....(Just because you don't have "clearance" doesn't mean said Intel doesn't exist). I'll leave it there.
That's a good point. And indeed, I believe that they believe OBL is alive.
It's just that I don't believe OBL is alive (absent some real evidence).
And by the way, the razor "if XYZ are saying it, since they see classified stuff, that makes it more likely to be true, so I should go with what they're saying even if I doubt it" didn't exactly work out well when it came to the Iraq/WMD question.
First off Scheuer is exactly right here - Most American's (most people around the world) have no clue to how brutal the terrain is within the Pak/Stan border regions -
I agree that the terrain in these regions is difficult (from everything I've heard), and it's probably also true that relatively few Americans actually know that. I just wasn't sure what relevance that has however to the question of OBL's fate/whereabouts.
.One can know to a great certainty that someone is alive..and within a given "zone"...while at the same time not knowing exactly where they are at a given moment within said zone. These are two two completely viable but separate realities...
I recall this to be your position, yes. And I don't dispute it. Of course it's possible to know someone is alive and in region X without having more detailed information regarding where in region X that person is.
I see no reason to believe that this is such a case, however. The government (or pundits anyway) have been insisting that OBL is pinned down to the "border region" for six years now. Why? Two possibilities:
1. they get an ongoing, more or less regular stream of intel which is high-probability proof that OBL is in the region. (Which makes it difficult to understand why they haven't caught him)
2. they don't get an ongoing stream. They got maybe good intel in, like, 2003-2004. And they therefore assume he's still alive, and still there, because... well, I don't understand why.
Again, if OBL really is alive, there's no law of physics which prohibits him from altering his location and EVEN from exiting BOTH Pakistan and Afghanistan. I'm always amazed and how many people (people who profess to believe OBL is a living human being) seem to never even contemplate the metaphysical possibility that OBL could be somewhere other than Afghanistan and/or Pakistan. Human beings are not landmarks. They can move! Best,
We had Intel up our as$es regarding Zarqawi in Iraq - We had over 140,000+! U.S. boots on the ground and support over the majority of the citizens.....Yet, it took us over 3+ years to put Zarqawi in the ground -
In Stan we have less than 15,000 true combat soldiers at any given time (and even a much lower number that can work effectively within these border regions for any extended time) - We also have support of less than 10% of the population (and that is being generous to our side).
He’s dead, but they don’t want to tell us. They know it makes us look bad that we can’t find him. So it’s not likely they will tell us, and spoil their fun. Better to make us look bad to the world.
Sure one can move - But it would be foolish for one to move from there area in which he is most likely to remain alive - (UBL has never put himself in position to be used as a pawn by some Cent Gov't - Those who think Iran or Yemen are simply off).
Again, there are a great number of HVT we have been after since 01 - (we've killed apprx half dozen of these Taliban HVTs in the past 8 months alone...after chasing them for 5 years....Did they not exist?). Reality is, in the short term all the intangibles favored AQ/Taliban HVTs to remain with our OODA loop (especially when one understands risk adverse HQs and JAGs into the equation).
So, I guess what you're saying is that you think we do, indeed, get a steady stream of intel putting OBL in the "border region", and there's no contradiction. That could be true. I don't know, because if it is, it's obviously not spread in the media. But I see little reason to believe that it is true. The case that it is true - and this is basically the case Scheuer makes - is to say that the government wouldn't be acting so sure that OBL is there, if it weren't true.
But I'm less than overwhelmed by that argument. Government is a huge bureaucracy, it does many things on inertia and with no regard for rationality. The fact that OBL is hiding in the "border region" seems to have become a Permanent Institutional Truth. It's something everyone just knows. (Like the fact that Iraq had WMD stockpiles.)
But most of the people who know this thing, seem to have no good reasons for doing so. best
That makes sense to western-type thinking - But the reality is AQ does not hide their leaders deaths. They celebrate them. It is how they honor them. It would be seen as a great insult to UBL had he passed and AQ failed to recognize his passing....Again, understand for AQ and radical Islam it is much easier to spin the truth....then to hide a lie....
1. OBL can't be foolish? he can't do something foolish or less than optimal? (?) You're really making the argument "it can't be true that Osama did X because X would be foolish for Osama to do"? Human beings do lots of foolish things. "X would be foolish!" is not a good argument at all that some human didn't do X. All other things being equal it actually makes it more likely that the human did X ;-)
2. How does he know which area exactly is the precise one "in which he is most likely to remain alive"? If he's stayed alive all this time, maybe he's only done so because he's moved around. Maybe he attributes his survival to the ability to move around. In that case... why I reckon he'd move around!
(UBL has never put himself in position to be used as a pawn by some Cent Gov't - Those who think Iran or Yemen are simply off).
See, this is the kind of argument that is just completely unconvincing. You claim to some intimate knowledge of OBL's life history and then sweepingly proclaim that it's "simply off" to say that he could do such-and-such in the future. That is not a real argument; that is not real supporting evidence/data you have just supplied me. It's a thinly-cloaked appeal to authority (yours); you're an authority on what OBL Would Or Would Not Do. Therefore, if I say "maybe he did X", you don't have to have evidence either way regarding whether he did X, you just consult your own Expertise on what OBL Would Or Would Not Do, and tell me your answer ("simply off").
Not convincing.
And the expertise you implicitly claim to have doesn't even go to my actual claim in the first place. For one thing, I never suggested that if OBL were in Yemen or Iran or somewhere, he would be doing so with the cooperation of those respective governments.
(we've killed apprx half dozen of these Taliban HVTs in the past 8 months alone...after chasing them for 5 years....Did they not exist?).
No. Of course they existed. And I think OBL existed too! never said otherwise. But also I think he's dead (something I never claimed any of those other HVTs in the first place.) That's what I think. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong - I freely admit it's possible that I'm wrong, and if I were proved wrong, I'd say so. But it would take actual evidence to convince me of this.
Reality is, in the short term all the intangibles favored AQ/Taliban HVTs to remain with our OODA loop (especially when one understands risk adverse HQs and JAGs into the equation).
That's true. Yes, any HVT hiding in those places has an advantage over us.
This isn't convincing evidence that OBL draws breath however.
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