Many people, including some intelligence agencies’ officers, know the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. The fugitive Al Qaeda founder is protected by fiercely loyal tribal chiefs in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, claims veteran journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave in the Washington Times. Borchgrave, who in the past has written that Osama Bin Laden is alive and well and living in the city of Peshawar, claims to have high-grade sources in both Pakistan and the United States. He writes that in his meeting with NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani, the MMA leader felt “no compunction” in recounting his “Taliban likes and American dislikes”. Borchgrave calls the North Waziristan peace deal “a sham from the get-go”. The paper signed by tribal chiefs was, in effect, a deal with the Taliban, whose guerrillas continued to cross the “mythical border” with impunity. General Musharraf’s perceived weakness was rewarded with the affair of Lal Masjid in Islamabad, he adds.
Borchgrave writes, “Musharraf has never seriously cracked down on religious zealots who want him dead for ‘capitulating’ to Bush. And he now finds himself on the horns of a painful dilemma. He can see what most of the world perceives as an inevitable humiliating US withdrawal from Iraq, followed by a collapse of the NATO consensus in Afghanistan...But Musharraf knows he cannot afford to ignore President Bush’s resolve in the light of a new National Intelligence Estimate, which said publicly and unequivocally that Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies are back in business in FATA — big time.””