Pakistani Intelligence: Osama Is Dead

by Bill Roggio

As Pakistan wrestles with the Taliban takeover of large swaths of its territory and the encroachment on Islamabad, its Inter-Services Intelligence agency tells us that Osama bin Laden is dead.

President Asif Ali Zardari said Monday that Pakistani intelligence believes Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead but acknowledged they had no evidence.

"The Americans tell me they don't know, and they are much more equipped than us to trace him. And our own intelligence services obviously think that he does not exist any more, that he is dead," Zardari told reporters.

"But there is no evidence, you cannot take that as a fact," he said. "We are between facts and fiction."

Zardari was responding to reports that Pakistani Taliban in the troubled Swat valley have said they would welcome bin Laden if he wants to visit the former Pakistani hill resort which is now in the hands of Taliban.

"The question is whether he is alive or dead. There is no trace of him," the president said.

If you can't trust the ISI to give you accurate information on al Qaeda and the Taliban, who can you trust? Considering the ISI orders suicide attacks on embassies in Kabul, supports terror attacks on major cities in India, and conducts resupply missions to Taliban forces as they fight U.S. soldiers in eastern Afghanistan, who else is better suited to know the inner machinations of al Qaeda?

The timing of this report is interesting, given the pressure being placed on Pakistan to tackle the Taliban sanctuaries that have blossomed in the northwest. U.S. officials have also been highly critical of the Paksitani Army and the ISI. Pakistan's military and intelligence services clearly are looking for ways to deflect criticism and divert attention from the collapse in their country.