bin Laden in Chitral

The other day I was giving a speech on context and chaos and was asked if I knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding. Since I didn’t have any facts, I just said yes, he is living in the town of Chitral in Northern Pakistan.

When asked how I could be so certain, I replied I had no reason to be certain, just that I had been to Chitral, and if I was bin Laden, that is where I would be.

Chitral is a small town near the border where Pakistan, Afghanistan and China meet. It sits in the shadow of Tirich Mir, a great peak in the Hindukush range of the western Himalayas. To get there by road, when passable, requires a two-day trip from Peshawar, because Pathan tribesmen will not offer safety to those who travel after sun down.

The Pathan of Pakistan’s Northern Territories are among the fiercest, most ethics-bound people anywhere on earth. Smugglers, opium growers, descendants of Ghengis Kahn, they are a people as hard as the mountains they call home. The Pathan code of hospitality is iron bound. If bin Laden is their guest, they will protect him with their lives.

It is an exquisitely beautiful valley, with a couple of inns, a river rushing over the granite boulders in deep canyons. Terraced fields bear local grain. The last leg of the trip from the lowlandsis on a jeep trail over a 10,000 foot mountain pass, easily seen by residents below. Helicopters find difficulty at the altitudes of these mountains, and the valleys are deep.

"If you know where he is, why doesn’t the government go in and get him," I was asked. Because bin Laden has more value as a bogey man than a corpse to the Bush/Cheney regime, I replied.

But now that Cheney/Bush has proven itself irrelevant when not outright catastrophic (“Bring it ON!”), that might change. The capture or killing of bin Laden may be the last hope this administration has to avert classification as the worst in U.S. history. It might even divert attention from the lending crisis. Watch the news.