Hunt for Osama: making sense of it all

It’s bad enough that he is alive, but to think he is comfortably hanging out with his buddy Zawahiri is infuriating.

I don’t know what to make of the Osama bin Laden hunt (read: wild goose chase). Yesterday’s news told us he was in Afghanistan, while today, thanks to CNN, we fear that he is "living comfortably in Pakistan" – on our very own soil, which has been soaked crimson with civilian casualties in suicide bombings and drone attacks.

The former represents the face of the terrorists, while the latter is an attempt, in vain, to eradicate them.

The real question is: if Nato officials are so confident of Bin Laden’s whereabouts, why don’t they go after him? If they know that Pakistani intelligence officials are involved in protecting the Al-Qaeda leader, why not expose them? The Pakistani intelligence has often been accused of supporting terrorism, and Nato’s most recent claim has once again highlighted the ugly notion. This claim can stupefy any supporter of the war on terror, making one really wonder if a higher hand at some level is supporting terrorism to destabilise our country.

As my mind trips over one conspiracy theory after another, it seems to me that talking to the Taliban might actually be a step in the right direction if we want to uncover the truth, as it may give us an insight into their long-term agenda and the source of their financial assistance.

It angers me to think that Bin Laden isn’t living in a cave but in some palatial haveli where he is probably served grapes and rooh afza on silver platters. It’s bad enough that he is alive, but to think he is comfortably alive and hanging out with his old buddy Zawahiri is infuriating. If we want to put an end to the operation in South Waziristan and to the senseless deaths of thousands of Pakistanis at the hands of jaded suicide bombers, we need to put pressure on our government to investigate the veracity of this report.