29 U.S. senators have asked President Barack Obama Friday to cut off aid to the Palestinian government if it joins with Hamas, in a previously unreported letter (PDF) obtained by The Cable.

"The decision of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to form a unity government with Hamas - a designated terrorist group - threatens to derail the Middle East peace effort for the foreseeable future and to undermine the Palestinian Authority's relationship with the United States," begins the letter, which was spearheaded by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Robert Casey (D-PA).

Menendez is the third ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Casey chairs SFRC's Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs subcommittee. The letter was also signed by Democratic heavyweights Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The details of the deal between the PA and Hamas aren't entirely clear. Many of the sticking points between the two Palestinian factions appear to remain unresolved and the contents of the reconciliation deal's classified annex remains unknown, but, as the senators' letter notes, Hamas foreign policy chief Mahmoud al-Zahar has said that "our plan does not involve negotiations with Israel or recognizing it."

Hamas also publicly condemned the May 1 killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in Pakistan.

For all these reasons, the senators want Obama to make it clear that the PA will forfeit  U.S. foreign assistance if it goes through with the plan to join forces with Hamas. The United States gave the PA about $550 million in aid in fiscal 2011, a mixture of project funding and direct cash to the government.

"As you are aware, U.S. law prohibits aid from being provided to a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless the government and all its members have public committed to the Quartet principles," they wrote. "We urge you to conduct a review of the current situation and suspend aid should Hamas refuse to comply with Quartet conditions."

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) agrees. "No taxpayer funds should go, they must not go" to the new Palestinian unity government, she told the Washington Post May 4.

The Obama administration is currently examining the Palestinian reconciliation deal, but officials have repeatedly said in recent days that any unity government must reject Hamas's current policies.

"Any Palestinian government must renounce violence, it must abide by past agreements and it must recognize Israel's right to exist," White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, told the American Jewish Committee on April 28.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner repeated Daley's message at Thursday's press briefing, and implied that a government that includes Hamas would not be able to work with the United States.

"We've said very clearly that we'll work with a Palestinian Authority government that unambiguously and explicitly commits to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations between the parties. And that includes the road map," Toner said. "And our position on Hamas has not changed. We still believe it's a foreign terrorist organization."

"The Obama Administration knows the law prohibits U.S. aid going to a Palestinian government in which Hamas plays any role. That's why the administration has said several times in the past week that the United States will only deal with a Palestinian government that meets the Quartet conditions -- renounces violence, recognizes Israel, and accepts all previous agreements," said former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, now a partner at the consulting firm Davis-Block LLC. "If Hamas wants to transform itself, surely that would be welcome, but it's not likely."

What the world missed as it fixated on Osama bin Laden.

Pakistani residents rest in front of the final hiding place of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 5, 2011. Pakistan faces the prospect of Osama bin Laden's final hiding place becoming a shrine or macabre tourist spot unless the military destroys a compound attracting hundreds of visitors a day.

The difference between the situations in Syria and Libya is that the Syrian government might still come around and pursue a reform agenda, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday.

In an interview with Lucia Annunziata of  Italy's "In Mezz'Ora" in Rome, Clinton was asked whether the United States was applying a double standard when dealing with Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi and other Arab dictators who are killing their citizens, such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Clinton explained that she still held out hope that the Syrian government would institute reforms that could satisfy the demands of protesters and end the government-sponsored violence against civilians. There was no hope for that outcome in Libya, she said.

"There are deep concerns about what is going on inside Syria, and we are pushing hard for the government of Syria to live up to its own stated commitment to reforms," she said. "What I do know is that they have an opportunity still to bring about a reform agenda. Nobody believed Qaddafi would do that. People do believe there is a possible path forward with Syria. So we're going to continue joining with all of our allies to keep pressing very hard on that."

Clinton argued that the United States and its international partners have acted aggressively in the case of Syria, but admitted that acting against the Assad regime is more complicated, in many ways, than organizing action against the Libya regime.

Clinton was also asked how long she thought the war in Libya would last.

"Well, I think everyone, including, of course, the United States, is working urgently to try to bring about a political solution," she responded. "The obstacle is Col. Qaddafi."

Clinton insisted Qaddafi's death was not part of NATO's mission in Libya, although she noted he might be killed if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"The objective is to protect civilians. But there are legitimate targets, like the command-and-control bunkers and facilities that we know he and his family control," Clinton said. "This is a conflict and he could become a victim of the very violence that he initiated."

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There's a terrific piece in the National Journal today, adding up the costs of the "war on terror" and pointing out that unlike some other costly wars in American history, this one has produced almost no economic benefits. That is, unless you think people standing in TSA lines are using those idle minutes (hours?) to dream up lots of innovative new ideas that will fire up the U.S. economy. I rather doubt it.

If we had a rational discourse on this subject, it ought to provoke two questions.  First, how did we get into this mess in the first place? Specifically, what were the U.S. policies that contributed to the rise of groups like Al Qaeda, and made it difficult-to-impossible to head them off before they hit us? (You'd think the 9/11 Commission would have tackled this question head on, but of course that proved too controversial for them). This subject hasn't been wholly neglected since 9/11 (i.e., there was some discussion of the familiar "why do they hate us?" question), but even raising the question could get you accused of being someone who "blamed America first." So hardly anybody asked if maybe 9/11 was also a wake-up call, and that there were some aspects of U.S. foreign policy that needed to be rethought. Of course, raising the question doesn't necessarily mean that the policies that contributed to Al Qaeda's rise (e.g., stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, unconditional support for Israel, propping up the Mubarak regime in Egypt, etc.) were necessarily wrong, but it does suggest that these policies were more expensive than we previously believed.

The second question would be: which responses to 9/11 have worked well, and which policies have proven to be costly failures?  Ideally, the United States ought to conduct a ruthless assessment of the post-9/11 response, in order to determine -- to the extent possible -- which of the post 9/11 policy changes were effective and which were not. The purpose here isn't a witch-hunt directed at former government officials, as I assume that even the neocons who led us blindly into Iraq believed that this decision was in the best interests of the country. But now, nearly ten years later, we ought to be mature enough to recognize that some of the actions we took after 9/11 weren't that smart, while some other responses turned out to be quite effective. And both ends of the political spectrum should be open to revising their views: some policies abhorred by liberals (such as electronic eavesdropping) may actually have been a net positive, while some actions favored by hardline conservatives (such as waterboarding and other forms of torture) should be seen as misguided failures.

That is how a mature great power would deal with the vast and costly response that began on 9/11: it would try to learn the right lessons from the past decade so that it did better the next time it faced an unexpected challenge. But in the polarized, partisan, and fact-free world of contemporary policy discourse, how likely is that?

Let's face it, putting this week's events in historical perspective is a bit of a fool's errand. I'll leave it to you to figure out why they turned to me to help on that mission, one that has a dramatically lower likelihood of success than, say, flying under cover of darkness deep into the heart of the world's fourth most populous nation, dispatching the world's most elusive fugitive, and getting out ahead of a hornet's nest of scrambling fighter jets.

Frankly, I'm still not even entirely sure I'm capable of putting the major events of the last century in perspective, much less those of last weekend. After all, Germany lost two world wars and today we are told it is Europe's indispensable nation, more influential than ever. And most folks think we lost in Vietnam, but three and half decades later the Soviet Union is gone, communism is discredited, and Vietnam is both a vibrant economy and open to business with the United States -- so whose vision of victory was realized?

Nonetheless, let's try to put this week in perspective by highlighting a few winners, a few losers, and then a few stories that were overshadowed by this week's headlines that may actually turn out to be more important.

The winners who have thus far emerged from the shootout at the Abbottabad corral include, in reverse order of the size of the win:

10. Sohaib Athar: The mild-mannered 33-year-old programmer who tweeted the news of the attack has enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame and managed it with a wry sense of humor.

9. Anwar al-Awlaki: The New Mexico-born Merchant of Venom is among the front-runners to pick up the bin Laden mantel as the world's most wanted terrorist along with Ayman Al-Zawahiri and a handful of others. The bad news for them, they just moved up on the U.S. counter-terrorism target list ... which may be the most dangerous place in the world to find yourself.

8. India: The most Paki-skeptic of all places on earth is quietly ... and not so quietly ... reveling in all aspects of the raid: the damage to their historic enemy's credibility, the apparent porousness of their likely adversary's borders, and the general blow to Pakistan's stature in the world.

7. War Dogs: Whether it was a German Shepherd or a Belgian Malginois who went along with the Navy SEAL team on the raid, the pooch is definitely not only the world's top dog for a week, he or she has done a great service to combat canines everywhere. If you doubt it, see FP's own Becky Frankel's great photo essay on the subject

6. Leon Panetta: The super-public servant greased the skids for his smooth ascendancy to the top job in the Pentagon by not only being the man overseeing the successful bin Laden mission but for reportedly being alone among cabinet members suggesting the president go for the plan he ultimately followed. He could have been the sacrificial lamb; instead he made himself a slam dunk (sorry, George Tenet) for bigger and better things.

5. The Shooter: We don't know his name in keeping with the secrecy and the low-key code of the SEALs. But this is a guy who is one leak away from a book deal, a movie, the key to every city in America and to never having to buy himself a beer ever again. Oh, and there's also that eternal gratitude of a nation thing on top of it all. 

4. SEAL Team Six: The elite of elites has placed themselves permanently in the history books with a feat that ranks up there with the raid on Entebbe and well beyond virtually all movie fiction. They have not only done credit to their brethren in the U.S. special forces community but may have done more than any senior officers to change the way the war on terror is fought going forward.

3. The Families of U.S. Service Men and Women in Afghanistan: They're coming home sooner now. This was their mission too. You can hardly beat that ... and because there are so many of you, that's why you edge out those folks at the pointy end of the spear who completed the mission.

2. Barack Obama: His finest hour. Decisive. Cool. Able to both strike hard and do so with the kind of American values and restraint that elevated the mission and stands in stark contrast to the bombast and recklessness of some of his predecessors.

1. The Planet Earth: A day without bin Laden is a better day for everyone.

Losers

It is hard to imagine losers from an almost universal victory like the death of a mass murderer, but there were a few. They include:

5. Fringe Critics of the President: One big argument against Obama has fallen by the wayside. In fact, if you want another big winner, one possibility might be the American people. There is a chance that by marginalizing the nutcases and Tea Partiers further, this win for Obama will leave only the serious candidates like Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and Mitch Daniels in the Republican field. Who knows, we might even have a thoughtful, respectful, substantive debate in the 2012 elections. I know it's difficult to imagine, but take a moment. Imagine.

4. Osama bin Laden: He's dead. Otherwise he would be higher up the list. But dead men know no shame -- especially those who apparently knew none in life, either.

3. Hamid Karzai: Say goodbye to all the nice men with fat checkbooks in all the desert camo outfits. U.S. officials may say what they might, but their departure from your country was accelerated substantially this week. Think that's good news, Hamid? Patience, friend.

2. Pakistan: It's hard to pick out who are the bigger losers -- the military and intelligence low-level types who will be rounded up and punished for helping OBL, the higher level types who will be punished for letting the Americans in and out with nary a scratch or an alarm, the even higher level types who are likely to see the flows of cash they are skimming from American aid cut off, or the highest level types who have seen their credibility shattered and their hold on power put in jeopardy. Unfortunately, also threatened are the good people of Pakistan who don't deserve more chaos or weaker leaders, many of whom were actually helping fight the war on terror and will now be compromised by their countrymen who were abetting enemies of civilization.

1. Mullah Omar, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Anwar Al-Awlaki: See above. You guys all moved up the list. Time to get your affairs in order, write good-bye notes, that kind of thing.

Finally, while this story dominated the news this week, to put it in perspective, consider that as we raided Abbottabad, at other locations in Pakistan, scientists and technicians were continuing to build up Pakistan's nuclear arsenal even as the country's political and military leaders saw their grip on power grow more tenuous.

While OBL was being gunned down, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network, and al Qaeda cells everywhere were planning new attacks.

While the story buzzed, the story that would otherwise have been the top story of the week -- the deal between Hamas and Fatah brokered by the Egyptians -- assured that after the Arab Spring may come an even more unsettling and dramatic Arab Autumn.

While bin Laden was the topic on everyone's mind, unemployment went up, housing in the United States continued its double dip, Europe teetered, and inflation remained a serious issue in China, Brazil, and elsewhere.

In other words, to put this week's momentous events in perspective, it's worth noting that as is always the case, the next stunning headline was being written somewhere else, beyond our attention, possibly even beyond our imagining.

Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs ignited debate about al-Qaeda's future as well as the future of militancy in Pakistan, where various outfits retain the capability to strike locally and globally. In the near term, analysts expect al-Qaeda Central's leaders in Pakistan will seek to ensure their security and execute a succession plan in the wake of bin Laden's capture, necessitating a communications lockdown and forestalling any direct retaliation. Instead, al-Qaeda Central is likely to rely on other outfits to respond on its behalf, either locally or globally. It already has called on fellow Muslims in Pakistan "to rise up and revolt to cleanse this shame that has been attached to them by a clique of traitors and thieves who sold everything to the enemies."[[BREAK]]

The threat of retaliation comes from a mélange of militants from various established outfits, splinter groups and independent networks. The internecine nature of this confederation also means that even if bin Laden's demise does provide space for a political resolution in Afghanistan, the threat from militants in Pakistan is unlikely to disappear. Despite understandable frustration, the United States must continue to engage with Pakistan. But the nature of that engagement should change, with a view toward the longer term, which means a greater focus on building civilian as opposed to military capacity. 

Taking Stock of the Major Players

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has already promised retribution in Pakistan, which is understandable given that it has acted as a stalking horse for al-Qaeda in the past. Although the TTP has been on the front end of attacks in Pakistan, bin Laden's organization is believed to have been pulling some of the strings behind the scenes. Militants formerly associated with Punjabi outfits, such as Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), could contribute to a fresh round of attacks, as they have to previous operations in the past. These groups forged ties with al-Qaeda during the 1990s and some of their members began working with it to launch attacks in Pakistan soon after 9/11. Thus, at precisely the same time the army and ISI can expect additional (and deserved) pressure from the U.S. to stop playing favorites and crack down on all of the militants on Pakistani soil, the country may also be poised to witness a new wave of violence.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, maintains the most robust transnational networks of any Pakistani militant outfit and is viewed as an increasingly global threat. However, despite the fact that its above-ground wing Jamaat-ul-Dawa organized street demonstrations to mourn bin Laden, it is far from certain the group would be willing to launch an operation on behalf of al-Qaeda. The army and ISI are believed to be putting significant pressure on LeT's leaders to refrain from overtly engaging in attacks on Western interests abroad. Unless Pakistan wants a showdown with the United States this is unlikely to change. However, this also presumes a level of organizational coherence and control that may be at odds with the ground reality. LeT militants are present on both sides of the Durand Line, meaning not all of them rely on safe haven in Pakistan. Furthermore, individuals or factions within LeT can utilize its infrastructure as well as transnational capabilities to pursue their own operations without the leadership's consent. Enhanced organizational integration with other outfits heightens the opportunities for freelancing, with former LeT members acting as an important bridge to al-Qaeda as well as other militant outfits.

Al-Qaeda is not a significant military force in Afghanistan, and any organizational turmoil it experiences is unlikely to impact the start of the spring fighting season. Neither the Taliban nor the Haqqani Network, the two most prolific actors in the Afghan insurgency, has embraced out-of-area attacks or operations in Pakistan, though the latter has supported actors that do. The bigger question is how bin Laden's demise will impact their respective Pakistan-based leaderships.

The army and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) are unlikely to end their support for either entity, both of which are considered essential to protecting Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan. However, America's ability to unilaterally strike bin Laden's compound in the heart of Pakistan provides it leverage, in part because the operation raised questions about the ability of the army and ISI to protect senior leaders in the Taliban and Haqqani Network. More importantly, although al-Qaeda's connection to both of those entities goes deeper than just bin Laden's history with either outfit, that personal relationship was an important one. Osama's demise creates space for a political reconciliation in Afghanistan, in the event the U.S. chooses to pursue such a path. Problematically, there is no guarantee the army and ISI could, or would attempt to, dismantle the militant infrastructure in its entirety even if Afghanistan is settled according to Pakistan's interests.

The Protean Militant Milieu

Historically, there were three loci in which militants in Pakistan were active: Afghanistan, Indian-administered Kashmir and sectarianism attacks at home. Two new areas of activity have emerged during the past several years: a revolutionary locus manifested by the insurgency against Pakistan, and a global locus characterized by out of area attacks against America and its allies. Sectarian attacks continue, and have become a means of destabilizing the state. The Kashmir jihad has stagnated, though LeT remains committed to that cause and to attacks against India. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has become a focal point for every major militant outfit as well as a host of smaller networks and splinter groups.

Regardless of official army and ISI policy vis-à-vis militants on its soil, any political settlement in Afghanistan is likely to have positive and negative ramifications at the ground level. With the Kashmir jihad moribund, the abatement of the Afghan insurgency would mark the first time in decades that Pakistani militants were not faced with active open fronts on which to fight. A solution deemed acceptable by the Taliban would provide an impetus for many militants to demobilize and would rob jihadist leaders of a valuable rallying cry. However, those unwilling to lay down their arms could drift further into the sectarian, revolutionary or global orbits. Furthermore, whereas the Taliban might be willing to break ties with al-Qaeda, other actors might not. At this point the country is host to a consortium of established outfits, splinters, networks and freelance operators whose most enduring feature is its protean nature. These actors will continue to pose a threat to Pakistan, its neighbors and the West until the entire militant edifice is torn down.

Too Big To Fail

The response in Pakistan has not been promising. By focusing on the raid into Pakistani territory and glossing over the fact that bin Laden was living on Pakistani soil, the army appears to be doubling down on obstinacy. Nor is it helpful that the government says it will refuse the U.S. access to those who survived the raid. The one glimmer of hope thus far was the statement earlier this week by the Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, that the government would launch an investigation into how bin Laden managed to live for so long in Abbotobad and whether his support system included any serving officials. It now appears the military has taken charge of the investigation, which does not bode well for transparency. None of this is particularly surprising; even after being humbled by the U.S. raid the army remains the most powerful institution in the country, and regardless of what misgivings they may have, those in the civilian government have a history of circling the wagons in times like this.

Despite all of this, the United States must continue to engage Pakistan: first, because the Pakistani populace should not be punished for the behavior of its military leadership; second, because the United States cannot degrade the militant threat emanating from Pakistan on its own; third, because doing so would help to disprove the narrative in Pakistan that American will abandon it after objectives vis-à-vis al-Qaeda are achieved; and fourth, because Pakistani stability is necessary for greater stability in South Asia, a region in which the United States will continue to have equities for a long time to come.

The question is, who should the United States engage and assist? While recognizing the contributions and sacrifices the Pakistani military has made in the struggle against some militant outfits, it should also be apparent by now that relying so heavily on the military is not a recipe for long-term stability in a militant-free Pakistan. Instead, the U.S. should focus more attention on capacity building for civilian intelligence agencies and law enforcement, which are precisely the institutions that should be on the front lines of counter-terrorism in Pakistan.

This must be part of a wider realignment of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and one that sees greater emphasis given to building up civilian institutions in Pakistan. For too long the United States has relied on the army as its primary interlocutor out of perceived operational necessity, often with frustrating results. The military-to-military relationship is an important one, but over-reliance on the army is at odds with the aim of fostering civilian governance in Pakistan. The United States finds itself with additional leverage this week, and should use some of it to promote that cause. Doing so is in keeping not only with American interests, but also American values.

Stephen Tankel is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of the forthcoming book, "Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba."

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It used to be that when economists used to talk at Sub-Saharan Africa, their conversations would always turn to one country, South Africa. A decade ago, it was the wealthiest, it had the strongest institutions, it had the most developed stock market. But what it really boiled down to was this: South Africa had what no other Sub-Saharan African country could claim to -- a powerful middle class. 

How things have changed. A new report released by the African Development bank today estimates that more than a third of the continent's population -- 313 million people -- are now middle class. Wake up investors: "Africa’s emerging middle class comprises roughly the size of the middle class in India or China."

That matters -- a lot. As the report bluntly puts it, "The middle class is widely acknowledged to be Africa's future, the group that is crucial to the continent's economic and political development." For businesses looking to invest in the continent, the possibilities are now much great -- Africa is a consumer base, not just a rich mine for natural resources. Services are in high demand and the new middle class is quickly adopting many of the luxuries of modern life. The Bank's research goes on to examine how a middle class status correlates with lots of good things -- higher levels of education, better access to the internet, better infrastructure, and even smaller average family size. This becomes a self-driving process; the report attributes the arrival of many newcomers to the middle class to the creation of new, private companies meant to serve, you got it, the middle class.

But the benefits of a middle class don't end with economics. Having a middle class can be a massive boom to political growth as well. It may be no coincidence that two of the countries with the largest percentage of middle class citizens -- Tunisia (89.5 percent) and Egypt (79.7 percent) -- got fed up with their corrupt, incompetant regimes. The young generation of African businessmen, thinkers, and leaders won't put up with business as usual; they have too much work to get done.

What's perhaps most promising of all about these numbers, however, is what they tell us about the future growth of the middle class.  The study divides people into upper middle class, lower middle class, and a new category called "floating middle class." The latter group has just risen out of poverty, and their daily consumption ranges from $2 to $4 a day. The floating middle class is also the sub-set that has grown the fastest in recent years, up from just over 10 percent of the population in 1980 to more than 20 percent today.  Think of it as a measure of future potential: they are rightly called the "emerging" middle class because the extent of their consumption power and economic drive has yet to be fully released. Watch for this group to grow -- and start moving up the class ladder -- in years to come. 

Given all this, perhaps the only thing about Africa that isn't changing quickly is our perceptions of it. There's an image impressed in all of our minds of a starving child, symobilizing an impoverished continent. If that was ever true, this is an excellent reminder that today, it's at most a snapshot. Yes, there's great human suffering and it's not hard to find. But Africa as a whole is becoming a middle class continent.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher remains the top administration official in charge of missile defense negotiations with Russia despite reports to the contrary, a senior administration official told The Cable.

The Washington Times reported this week that Tauscher "was given a demotion" and no longer was serving as the lead administration official in charge of the negotiations, which are part of the bilateral working group meetings that the United States and Russia have been conducting for over a year. The same article reported that Tauscher had annoyed colleagues due to her abrasive style, and that she often referred to herself in the third person as "The Tausch." Jim Miller, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, was now in charge, according to the report.

But that's simply not true, one senior administration official and one State Department official told The Cable. They pointed out that Tauscher is in Brussels now, meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's lead negotiator on missile defense cooperation.

"Ellen leads our team to the talks and her counterpart is Ryabkov and any contention that she has been demoted is just plain wrong," the senior administration official said.

Tauscher is in charge of diplomatic engagement with Russia on this issue and Miller is the technical expert who works with her, the official explained.

"Jim's an extremely able player on missile defense issues, and has been involved in discussions with the Russian Ministry of Defense that complement the overall talks on missile defense," the official said.

As for the accusation that Tauscher refers to herself as "The Tausch," that is apparently a nickname that was given to her by colleague and friend Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) when both served in Congress, according to the State Department official. It's a term of affection that some on Tauscher's staff have adopted, but not a nickname she is known to use herself, the official said.

The senior administration official also took issue with the Washington Times' assertion that the U.S.-Russia missile defense talks have "largely [been] kept secret from Congress and the public."

 "The fact of these talks is a matter of public record -- that's not to suggest the details of the talks aren't private," the senior administration official said. "As the president has made clear, we see the possibility of missile defense with Russia as something that can serve both of our interests, it doesn't constrain us in any way."

Tauscher explained the rationale of pursuing missile defense cooperation with Russia in a speech at the Global Zero conference in Washington on April 8.

"Thirty years ago at the height of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan saw virtue in cooperating with Moscow on missile defense. We in the Obama administration do, too, because Missile Defense cooperation could make us safer and facilitate talks on further reductions on strategic, non-strategic, and non-deployed nuclear weapons," she said. "We want Russia inside the missile defense tent where it will see that missile defenses that the United States has planned to put in Europe are not about undermining Russia's strategic deterrent."

Meanwhile, the administration has been moving forward on implementing the Phased Adaptive Approach that was announced in 2009, which altered the Bush administration's plan to plant missile interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. The latest announcement was a deal with Romania announced on May 3 to station interceptors there.

The article was written by Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz, who has written articles critical of Tauscher's bureau for months and has long drawn the ire of the State Department. As one State Department official said in January, "This particular reporter, as you know, has his own foreign policy."

U.S. officials had been frustrated by Pakistan's refusal to cooperate in the mission to apprehend Osama bin Laden for over 10 years, according to government documents released Thursday by the National Security Archive.

"As the discovery of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, raises fresh questions about U.S.-Pakistan relations, newly released documents show that as early as 1998 U.S. officials concluded the Government of Pakistan ‘is not disposed to be especially helpful on the matter of terrorist Usama bin Ladin,'" stated the release on the website of the National Security Archives, which is housed at the George Washington University.

"According to previously secret U.S. documents, Pakistani officials repeatedly refused to act on the Bin Laden problem, despite mounting pressure from American authorities. Instead, in the words of a U.S. Embassy cable, Pakistani sources ‘all took the line that the issue of bin Ladin is a problem the U.S. has with the Taliban, not with Pakistan.'"

The archives posted six new documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, as part of its Osama bin Laden File. The documents date from 1998 to 2000 and therefore do not represent the policies of the current Pakistani government led by President Asif ali Zardari, nor Pakistan's policies following the 9/11 attacks. But they do show a history of deep distrust between the United States and Pakistan in the early years of the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda, despite efforts by former President Bill Clinton's administration to convince Pakistan to help bring bin Laden to justice.

According to an Aug. 21, 1998 internal memo written by then Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Affairs Karl F. Inderfurth, the Pakistani government tried to distance itself from U.S. strikes on an al Qaeda target in Afghanistan that year, which were a response to the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.  "The most sincere reaction of the government of Pakistan to the Bin Laden strikes is exasperation at the unneeded difficulties this event has created for them in dealing with their domestic political situation, and in particular, in keeping the religious parties happy and relatively off the street," he wrote.

According to internal State Department talking points from November 1998, continued efforts to exert pressure on the Taliban to expel bin Laden, including efforts to convince Pakistan to put pressure the Taliban, were unsuccessful. "Time for a diplomatic solution may be running out," the memo stated.

After Clinton met with then Pakistani President Nawaz Sharif in Washington on Dec. 2, 1998, the U.S. embassy in Islamabad sent a diplomatic cable Dec. 18 that communicated their impression that the Pakistani government "is not disposed to be especially helpful on the matter of terrorist Usama bin Ladin." The cable also quoted a news article it claimed was sourced to the Pakistani government, which warned of a U.S. military or clandestine strike to get bin Laden. The article said that the Pakistani government does "not want to have anything to do with Washington's anti Osama crusade."

U.S. officials continued to press Pakistan on bin Laden throughout 1999, but got little positive response. A May 1999 diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. embassy in Islamabad expressed continued frustration with Pakistan's handling of the bin Laden issue. Top Pakistani officials told their U.S. interlocutors that they were taking the bin Laden issue seriously, but they did not know where he was and did not believe he was planning to attack the United States. One Pakistani official was quoted as admitting that Pakistan was preoccupied with "the recent increase in Indo-Pakistani tensions over Kashmir."

By November 2000, following the attack on the USS Cole and less than a year before the 9/11 attacks, the level of frustration had increased such that Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering opened a meeting with Pakistani officials "by expressing disappointment that Pakistan, whom he called a good friend of the U.S., was not taking steps to help with Usama bin Ladin," according to a diplomatic cable.

Foreshadowing the unilateral raid on May 1 inside Pakistan that ended with bin Laden's death, Pickering warned the Pakistanis that the United States "would always act to protect U.S. interests at a time and place of its own choice."

Speaker of the House John Boehner recently returned from Iraq with the message that he would support keeping some U.S. troops in Iraq after December 2011.  While this surely reflects what he heard from the American officials he saw in Baghdad, it distracts attention from a more important question about the future U.S. relationship with Iraq in the primary area where Rep. Boehner could actually help:   halting short-sighted plans to slash the State Department budget which could cripple the civilian mission to Iraq at an exceptionally delicate transitional moment.

Rep. Boehner can not control whether Iraq requests a new SOFA to allow troops to stay. In fact, keeping a small number of U.S. troops in Iraq is not the most important issue for the future American role in Iraq, and the trends in Iraqi politics make it increasingly unlikely that the long-expected request to renegotiate the Status of Forces Agreement will be forthcoming regardless of what Americans want.  But Congress does have a decisive role in determining whether to support and fund the civilian mission in Iraq.    Rep. Boehner can do virtually nothing about whether or not Iraqis decide to request a renegotiation of the SOFA, but he can work to ensure that Congress funds the civilian part of American foreign policy which are so urgently needed at this historical moment. He should.  

[[BREAK]]

It is understandable why the question of whether U.S. troops will stay in Iraq dominates what remains of the debate about Iraq, but it really shouldn't. I don't think that a few thousand U.S. troops remaining in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government would be that big a deal -- the removal of 140,000 troops would satisfy the Obama campaign's commitment to withdraw, and the clear commitment to that withdrawal has already had the necessary effect on reshaping Iraqi politics.  The Pentagon has long thought that a small residual force would be a safety blanket against a resurgence of civil war, provide necessary logistical support and training, and signal continued U.S. commitment. There's just a world of difference between a few thousand American trainers and the kind of eternal, large-scale troop presence which used to be proposed.

The U.S. assumption that eventually Iraqi politicians would step up and ask for an extension always seemed to ignore the importance of the political obstacles posed by hostile public opinion. Whatever private support for a longer-term U.S. role exists among Iraqi politicians (and I've heard a fair amount of it), that never extended to public discourse or public opinion. Electoral incentives and the importance of public opinion meant that virtually no politicians have been willing to publicly support revisiting the SOFA -- an important lesson to those trying to understand the likely effects of the changes in Egypt and the region on their foreign policy.  The growing power of public opinion and protest movements certainly won't make Iraqi politicans any more willing to broach such a controversial subject.

If the SOFA is not renegotiated, and no other workaround is found, then the U.S. will have to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq by December 31, 2011 just as promised. Frankly, I don't think that the presence of U.S. troops is really a decisive strategic factor anymore. Iraqi security forces have long-since taken the lead role, and despite the ongoing assassinations and explosions and general violence there have been few signs of a return to civil war dynamics.  Similarly, as expected, the Iraqi political system has eventually found its own balance as it has adapted to the declining American role -- not an especially attractive political balance,with many enduring issues surrounding the centralization of power and inefficient services and power-sharing and unfilled top government jobs and more, but reasonably robust (I keep hearing Iraqis jokingly brag about how they now have the most stable politics in the region). 

Iraq is slowly evolving into a position to be a player in regional politics, rather than an arena where others wage their proxy wars.  Whether that Iraq becomes an effective, independent partner of the United States or develops an alliance with Iran, and how Iraq relates to its Arab neighbors, are among the most crucial variables shaping the the future regional order in the Middle East -- as important as consolidating Egyptian democracy or the Iranian nuclear program.  There will be powerful forces pulling Iraq towards Iran, including not only religious ties but also economic interests and personal relationships.  Rising sectarianism across the region fueled by the Saudi crackdown in Bahrain risks pushing it ever further from the Arab states in the Gulf; it is alarming to see Allawi's Saudi-backed Iraqiyya list denouncing Kuwait as "an enemy of the Iraqi people and its new democratic system".  

As it becomes more of an independent actor, Iraq's foreign policy, like that of the new Egypt or of Erdogan's Turkey, will be strategic and interest-based but also responsive to public opinion.  The U.S. needs to build enduring relationships and engage across all sectors of political society if it hopes to deal effectively with this new Iraq.  The civilian side of the U.S. foreign policy machine has never been more important across the entire Middle East: understanding and engaging newly empowered publics, building connections with emergent civil society movements, partnering on economic development projects,supporting police training and rule of law development.  And that requires thinking past the military mission and devoting adequate resources to the civilian sector --- something which Secretary Gates and the U.S. military clearly understand, but which Congress still seemingly does not. If Rep. Boehner wants to help Iraq and the U.S. engagement in the broader Middle East, this is where he should turn his attention.

The successful U.S. SEAL strike against Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, just blocks from the Pakistan's West Point, raises questions about whether the Pakistani military and intelligence are part of the solution or part of the problem of international terrorism.  Not only does the U.S. need to learn what the Pakistani military high command and ISI knew and when they knew it, but the U.S. also has to ask a series of questions about bin Laden's heavily fortified compound, such as:

• How long was Osama bin Laden there?
• Who knew and protected him?
• Who owned the land, how was it acquired, and from whom? Who designed the compound?
• Who installed the security systems? Are they commercially available or specialized?
• Given the multitude of military checkpoints in this military town, who did they stop and who did they allow to continue on their way into the compound?

To answer these questions and others, Pakistan's government needs to convene a special independent civilian parliamentary public inquiry, like the Watergate hearings or the 9/11 Commission. The commission's representation should reflect the parliament's party makeup, including both opposition and government parties, and ideally be chaired by a member of the opposition. It should have subpoena powers for the appearance of military and civilian government officials, and well as all bin Laden-related government documents from the military and ISI. Its findings should be made public. This is the only way to enable greater civilian authority over the country's counterterrorism efforts, drive more effective and transparent programs, and keep spoilers from undermining the cause.[[BREAK]]

The United States also needs to demand accountability from Pakistan's military. Pakistani action against national and international terrorist groups is vital to U.S. and Pakistan security, but it also is clear that the Pakistani military has seen action or inaction against those groups through an anti-India lens rather than through a counterterrorism commitment.

Contrast that with Pakistan's civilian government, which, despite getting little credit, has been making some progress. For example, after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the civilian government investigated, issued indictments and made several arrests which, had the military had its way, wouldn't have happened at all. Putting more eggs into the civilian law enforcement and civilian police intelligence basket, as called for under the Kerry-Lugar-Berman law, is even more important now.

Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has also fought to extend constitutional rights to the citizens of Pakistan's tribal areas, and provide them both the full rights and civilian law enforcement protection of the Pakistani Constitution. The military has stymied these efforts, but the civilian government has countered by establishing a joint commission with all the political parties to find a way to move forward in the country's most dangerous region. The parliament also adopted the novel idea of having oversight accountability committees chaired by the opposition so that investigations into Administration conduct are free of conflict of interest.

Even though the civilian government has been criticized, the truth is, it has stumbled when the military has stood it its way. The U.S. should build upon the Pakistani government's successes by strengthening its civilian institutions. It should offer a more significant assistance package to strengthen law enforcement, policy, civil services, and the judiciary's capabilities. It should also form a more collaborative partnership with civilian leaders at the provincial and district levels to help target U.S. economic assistance.

This strengthening starts with conditioning military support on demonstrable steps to combat violent extremists and ending its longstanding policy of support and sanctuary to such elements, Pakistan or foreign. The U.S. should continue to require, but also provide additional oversight of, on the State Department certification of Pakistani cooperation on a variety of security issues.

The U.S. should also continue to insist that the "security agencies of Pakistan are not materially or substantively subverting the political and judicial processes of Pakistan" and provide stronger support for civilian law enforcement agencies in combating jihadi groups, including prosecuting the small percentage of madrassas that engage in jihadi terrorist training.

The answers to the myriad questions about the Abbottabad compound will eventually emerge. But regardless of what we learn about the Pakistan military's role in the operation -- from incompetence to complicity -- the details surrounding Osama bin Laden's death further illustrate the need to hold that military accountable and to work with and empower Pakistan's civilian government.

Mark Schneider is Senior Vice President at the International Crisis Group.

"As for duplicity, I would say that diplomacy is not single tracked. We all follow many different tracks; sometimes, apparently, working against each other," a retired senior official from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) told me and my colleagues during a private gathering in Islamabad in July 2010 that was organized as part of The Century Foundation's International Task Force on Afghanistan. "Double games or triple games are part of the big game."

The ISI has long cultivated ties with militant groups as part of the country's national security strategy, in order to mitigate considerable gaps in conventional military capabilities with its principal adversary, India, and to check regional competition within Afghanistan. The United States and its international partners have been somewhat tolerant of this Pakistani game-playing. While it has long been known that Pakistan continues to support and harbor Afghan insurgents, American dependence on Pakistani supply routes, international fears about the nuclear-armed country's own stability, and its presumed counterterrorism cooperation with respect to al Qaeda, created a dynamic that has indulged official duplicity.

The discovery that Osama bin Laden was residing within walking distance of Pakistan's military academy in Abbottabad has shaken the foundations of this unsustainable arrangement and generated widespread outrage regarding Pakistan's possible links with the most reviled of transnational jihadis.

There will now be considerable congressional pressure to at least curtail or condition U.S. aid and military reimbursements to Pakistan. But rather than ceasing all counterterrorism cooperation or downgrading ties in the near term, the United States should now use its enhanced leverage with Pakistan to push forward an inclusive political process to end the fighting in Afghanistan -- a process that necessitates positive Pakistani involvement. The death of al Qaeda's leader has created additional momentum for those on all sides seeking a political resolution to the current conflict. And in the final analysis, such a process also offers Pakistan an opportunity to realize some of its strategic aims.

It is high time for the White House to realize that recent U.S. and allied military efforts and tactical successes in Afghanistan have not shifted the overall strategic balance of the war. With a safe haven in neighboring Pakistan, and a corrupt Afghan government fuelling the expansion of the insurgency and unable to hold cleared territory, the sustainability of current military efforts remains untenable. Therefore, the Obama administration should seize on the success of its audacious military operation to kill bin Laden to push forward a political strategy of outreach to the Taliban. [[BREAK]]

Such a political settlement will no doubt require distasteful compromises for all sides and its achievement is far from certain even if all practicable efforts are made. But bin Laden's death provides Taliban leaders -- who would have to sever their ties with al Qaeda in future negotiations -- with greater political cover.

In discussions last July with insurgent field commanders and others with political connections to the major Afghan insurgent factions, many Afghan interlocutors made clear to me their own willingness to eventually sever ties with al Qaeda. But they also emphasized that such a move could only be the result of negotiations, as opposed to its opening act. Several further argued that such a move at this stage, when the U.S. surge was reaching its peak, would be tantamount to a unilateral and partial disarmament.

As we were told repeatedly, when faced with the military might of the United States, these fighters were willing to accept the assistance of any other parties that could amplify their military efforts, including al Qaeda. For many of these insurgents, their struggle was conceived in terms of Afghan national goals, and tactical cooperation was more about survival than ideological convergence. Alex Strick van Linschoten, a Kandahar-based researcher who has discussed the issue of al Qaeda at length with members of the Taliban, points out that any moves to sever ties at this juncture could "jeopardize links with other militant factions that provide material support and assistance to the Taliban, and could even incite violent retaliation against them."

But the issue of severing ties with al Qaeda will face internal resistance. Bin Laden's death improves the optics of any such move, and strengthens the ability of those insurgent leaders who favor a political approach to win over skeptics and rejectionists within their ranks. It also eliminates the key personal tie that cemented the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban and their allies in the Haqqani network, which in some cases go back to the insurgency against the Soviets.

The opacity surrounding Pakistan's role is also likely to breed paranoia among the ranks of the Taliban, who will fear that the military operation was the result of a U.S.-Pakistani deal. This heightened sense of vulnerability to double cross by their Pakistani patrons could prove useful in encouraging political engagement.

Of course, the Taliban's position is only one factor in the effort to reach a political settlement to end the Afghan war. Any viable political process will necessitate active and constructive Pakistani engagement.

Pakistan's diminished international standing as a result of the bin Laden operation may partially remedy the issues that have long bedeviled U.S.-Pakistani relations, including the moral hazard that has driven Pakistani actions. While the exact connections, if any, between Pakistan's security establishment and bin Laden remain murky, the picture that has already emerged is deeply damaging to Pakistan's credibility -- at best, they appear oblivious and incompetent and, at worst, they have provided covert support to the most odious of transnational terrorists.

While Pakistan has called repeatedly for political reconciliation and a political settlement to the conflict, its commitment to such a process continues to be an open question. Pakistan's security establishment has not yet signaled that it is willing to pressure its allies to abandon conflict in favor of a political path.

While all of Pakistan's familiar options for subversion remain, the bin Laden episode has raised the stakes for this beleaguered state. The specter of bin Laden has created a possible pathway for international isolation and pariah status -- if the Pakistani security establishment is intent on continuing along its current course.

Now would be the optimal moment to seek concrete steps from Pakistan. To begin with the focus should be on ensuring that Taliban leaders who seek to engage on a political level are afforded the freedom to do so without interference or threat. Instead of forsaking a relationship with Islamabad, which would bring it little strategic gain, Washington should instead pressure its chastened and embarrassed partner into making constructive contributions to an all-inclusive peace process.

Michael Wahid Hanna is a fellow and program officer at The Century Foundation.

There's a reason they brought one to get Osama bin Laden.

See the rest of the photo essay here.

The death of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone strike in August of 2009 touched off a heated debate about the future of the militant outfit and its succession. Many believed Mehsud's death was a fatal blow to the TTP, and they have proven correct partially, if not fully. Soon after Mehsud's death, cracks emerged in the TTP's leadership, weakening the group's umbrella organization, which was once seen a mounting wave likely to engulf major parts of Pakistan.

Now that the United States has gotten rid of its Enemy No. 1 and founder of al-Qaeda after almost 10 years, a similar debate is raging about the future of the group that has spread its tentacles to different parts of the world and influenced countless individuals with its jihadist propaganda.

Osama bin Laden's death, in an audacious and stunning commando raid by U.S. SEALs in Pakistan's Abbottabad cantonment, is no doubt a hard blow to al-Qaeda. But it also carries adverse consequences for its TTP affiliate. The TTP's leadership is already underground, partly because of major military actions by Pakistani security forces in areas like Swat, Mohmand, and Waziristan, and partly because of the increasing number of drone strikes in the tribal areas over the past year. In a situation where the TTP was already in disarray, the killing of bin Laden, the hero of all militant groups and particularly their footsoldiers and new recruits, will prove disastrous for their morale.[[BREAK]]

Operations in Swat and South Waziristan have almost dismantled the organizational structure of the TTP, which has continuously attacked the Pakistani state, and whose leaders include Maulana Fazlullah and Hakimullah Mehsud. Both of them were, on one hand, a source of inspiration and courage for their fighters, but served as a symbol of dread for those opposed to their agendas.

The Taliban in Bajaur under the leadership of Maulvi Faqir Muhammad have already adopted a notable silence over the past year, keeping a distance from the TTP and other groups, while those fighters in neighboring Mohmand are already in hiding in the remote areas bordering eastern Afghanistan.

The Khyber-based Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) of Mangal Bagh, one of the feared militant outfits that operated just a few kilometers from Peshawar less than two years ago, has also retreated into the remote and mountainous Tirah Valley and engaged in a war with its staunch opponent, Ansar-ul Islam. Reports over recent weeks suggest that the locals from Zakhakhel tribe, once the host of LI, are now up in arms against the group and both sides are taking casualties on daily basis.

In spite of this chaos across the tribal areas, in the short run the TTP can unleash a campaign of attacks on soft targets to take their revenge for bin Laden's death, as well as to try to tell the world that they remain a serious threat. A similar bombing campaign from local Taliban fighters occurred in Peshawar and other parts of Pakistan following Pakistani military operations in Swat and South Waziristan in 2009.

In the longer run, however, Taliban footsoldiers are likely to loose faith in the group's power and come to believe that no place is safe for a terrorist, whatever his stature and position. The continuous failure of U.S. forces to locate and capture people like Osama bin Laden had been a source of courage and inspiration for those eager to join the ranks of the Taliban, and now that he's gone, some may be discouraged from joining the jihad.

Recently, the killing of Taliban godfather Colonel Imam by Hakimullah Mehsud's fighters, and continuous violations of the Kurram peace accord, which was negotiated by the Haqqani network, shows further divisions among the militant groups that operated under the umbrella of the TTP. The death of Colonel Imam, who was kidnapped and then held in captivity for months, highlighted growing divisions between Hakimullah Mehsud and the Haqqani network. By the same token, the Kurram peace accord was signed with the covert support of the Haqqani network to get the goodwill of the Shia Muslims living in upper Kurram close the Afghan border. However, local Taliban fighters have continued attacking the Shia, proving that they are not on the same page with the Haqqanis and even with their TTP leadership, which is drawing money from the Haqqanis and providing them local support.

The only groups under the Pakistani Taliban heading that are holding strong are those led by Hafiz Gul Bahadar and Maulvi Nazir in Waziristan, where Pakistani security forces are hesitating to launch an operation against them despite pressure from the U.S. Although these groups have suffered losses as a result of the drone strikes, their leadership structures are intact and their chiefs remain in close contact with the Haqqani network and al-Qaeda members.

However, the discovery of bin Laden so far inside Pakistan will further increase pressure from the U.S. on the Pakistani government to launch a serious military operation in North Waziristan, believed to be the hideout of Haqqani network. As the U.S. plans its Afghan withdrawal and NATO countries seem to be in a hurry to conclude the war, their pressure on Pakistan, particularly after bin Laden was killed so close to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, is quite understandable. Therefore, any Taliban sympathizers in the Pakistani Army and security agencies will find themselves on slippery grounds in continuing to refuse to take decisive action against the three groups that have traditionally been considered ‘good' Taliban -- the Haqqani network, Hafiz Gul Bahadar, and Maulvi Nazir.

The talks about talks with the Afghan Taliban are also a source of concern for the TTP's leadership. Most of the Pakistani Taliban fighters consider their Afghan counterpart as a source of motivation and their fugitive chief Mullah Muhammad Omar as their leader. However, if the Afghan Taliban are actually considering talks with the Afghan government, the Pakistani Taliban will be left without an inspirational leader. 

Pakistan's religious parties, who used to avoid condemning Taliban violence in Pakistan, have also adopted a meaningful silence over bin Laden's death. No one is coming forward to criticize al-Qaeda, even for political point scoring, although several have organized protests against the U.S. raid in Abbottabad.

After years of not condemning Taliban attacks in Pakistan, the leadership of the Islamist parties may be rethinking their stances. Attacks on civilians and the leadership of those parties have provided enough food for thought for those parties to think that they are playing with fire, as demonstrated by two attacks on the pro-Taliban leader of the JUI-F, Maulana Fazlur Rehman. A Jamaat-e-Islami party rally was also attacked in Peshawar and several of its workers were killed and injured.

The JUI-F and JI's silence may be pragmatic. When I recently asked one JI leader why they don't oppose the Taliban and their violence in Pakistan, he told me, "We have no option but to stay silent. We are running schools, welfare organizations, and having our public meetings. Do you think we can continue all this if we come out in open against the Taliban?"

The JI's strident anti-Americanism is another issue, but this comment suggests Pakistan's Islamist politicians are making a covert compromise with the Taliban groups. Their leaders privately disagree with the agenda of the Pakistani Taliban, although they support the Afghan Taliban. The disenchantment of Pakistan's religious political parties with bin Laden and with the Pakistani Taliban is yet another blow to the TTP's morale.

Although the TTP and its allies are not likely to collapse immediately following the death of bin Laden, the Pakistani public and politicians' growing disenchantment with the TTP and its agenda, the organizational struggles of the various Taliban groups in the tribal areas, and increased pressure on Pakistan's security forces to go after militants in Waziristan suggests that the 'Talibanization' of Pakistan may, at last, be receding.

Daud Khattak is a Pashtun journalist currently working for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Pashto-language station Radio Mashaal.

Two shots and a splash of water, reports GSGF at WOI.

I have been struck all week at how people in their teens and twenties have reacted to the killing of bin Laden. A shadow that had hung over their entire conscious lives has been removed.

I just learned yesterday about "Jacob's Program," which sends care packages to deployed soldiers who don't get mail. Please check it out.

Chief canine correspondent Rebecca Frankel has run away again, so this is Tom filling in here. I actually think she has become a celebrity. Next thing I expect we'll hear she's dumping Johnny Depp or something.

There's one big war dog story this week: The presence of a dog on the bin Laden raid has the mainstream media all aflutter about war dogs. Welcome to the crowd, fellas. We're celebrating with a special feature on war dogs.

One reason for the popularity of this weekly feature, I suspect, is that there is some visceral connection between soldiers and dogs. As long-gone Army Maj. Gen. Aubrey Newman once pointed out, soldiers in his time were called "dog faces," wore identification information around their necks on "dog tags," and sometimes slept in "pup tents." 

Cats? As far as I'm concerned, they're working for the enemy. That said, one of my dogs, nicknamed "Mr. Soul," really likes cats.

Back in September 1986, Gen. William DePuy wrote that, "U.S. combat forces were not and are not the preferred or proper instrument for counterinsurgency operations amongst the people." (P. 373, Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy)

He is right that the U.S. military is not the preferred instrument-if the locals can do it, they should. But I can see circumstances where it is for a time the proper instrument, as in Iraq in 2007, when someone had to get the ball rolling. Also, the forces doing it must be well-trained and well-disciplined, and in 1986 that did not describe the Army that DePuy had seen for most of the previous 15 years. 

By Sir Hilary Synnott
Best Defense guest diplomatic columnist

The notion that Pakistan has, in Western eyes, been a treacherous ally since 2001 is well-founded and not new. The world has recently been reminded of the conflicting interests and practices by recollections of Prime Minister David Cameron's declaration that Pakistan has been 'looking both ways' and by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's references to the duplicity he encountered when he was a frequent visitor to Islamabad in 2001-02, when I was High Commissioner there and had similar experiences.

But the revelation of the presence in Abbottabad, one of the country's most militarised cities, of the world's most wanted criminal 'on the run' for ten years, suggests a new and different order of magnitude of perfidy.

And international reaction will have been sharpened by the Pakistan establishment's astonishingly inept attempts at self justification: Prime Minister Gilani's accusation that any failing on the part of Pakistan reflected the failings of other countries' intelligence services; and Foreign Secretary Bashir's exhortations that we should put the episode behind us and look forward. This last is reminiscent of General Musharraf's attempts to deal with the reaction to his land grab in Kargil in Kashmir in 1999.

So there will be a natural temptation to contemplate a wholesale shift in the United States' and others' relationship with Pakistan, perhaps the cessation of all aid, including the Kerry-Lugar-Berman packages for the social and educational sector.

This would be a mistake. While the status quo may no longer be acceptable and the U.S.-Pakistan relationship needs to and should be recalibrated, it will do no good to cut off hope for economic improvement and employment opportunities in a nuclear armed country with a population six times that of Afghanistan and an exploding demographic profile.

Rather, the United States should continue, resolutely, steadily and with no false expectations, to try to disburse assistance for social development. It should target and account for its military-related assistance much more carefully than hitherto. And it should close off Pakistan's access to big-ticket arms contracts, paid for from Pakistan's own sparse funds, which can only be used against India while, if possible, liberalising access to U.S. markets for Pakistani textiles.

Sir Hilary Synnott was British High Commissioner to Pakistan 2000-2003. He is author of Transforming Pakistan: Ways Out of Instability and a memoir of his service in Iraq, Bad Days in Basra.

Click: all of the AfPak Channel's coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden (FP).

Targeting trains

American intelligence analysts have reportedly discovered, based on documents and information recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that the slain al-Qaeda leader remained involved with planning attacks against the United States, rather than acting only as an inspirational figurehead in recent years (NYT, Post, Guardian, WSJ, BBC, CNN, Tel, Times, AFP). Handwritten notes from February of 2010 indicated that al-Qaeda was considering an attack timed to the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 strikes on New York and Washington that involved targeting railroads in the U.S., though officials said there was no evidence that the plot was more than "aspirational." [[BREAK]]

The C.I.A. reportedly maintained a safe house in Abbottabad, a military garrison town a few hours' drive from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, for months before the May 2 raid, and developed an extensive network of local informants and other sources (Post, NYT, Reuters). The New York Times reports that the last time U.S. forces thought they had bin Laden in their sights was in 2007 near Tora Bora, Afghanistan (NYT).

Today, U.S. president Barack Obama is planning to meet with some members of the Navy SEAL team that carried out the raid, which involved secret, radar-evading helicopters (CBS, CNN, NYT). Since 2009, the U.S. has been secretly increasing the ranks of "hunter-killer commandos" in Afghanistan, and used this increase to "try to pressure the Pakistanis themselves to move against militants" (WSJ). For more on the legal aspects of the bin Laden raid, read our sister newsletter, the Legal War on Terror (FP).

Al-Qaeda has just released its first confirmation of bin Laden's death in a statement posted on militant websites dated May 3, saying that his blood "will not be wasted" (Reuters, AP). Pakistani officials tell the Wall Street Journal that bin Laden split from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, around six years ago, because bin Laden reportedly had money troubles and was losing popularity in the network, though U.S. officials say they had not heard of a split (WSJ). U.S. officials did say they had strong evidence that the funding for the al-Qaeda leader had been an issue.

Five years in the same room

One of the three wives of bin Laden has reportedly told Pakistani intelligence, which is carefully managing a "a steady drip of testimony" from the women and children in their custody, that she had lived in the same room in the Abbottabad compound with bin Laden for five or six years (Guardian, McClatchy, WSJ, Guardian, AP, CNN, BBC, ABC). Pakistani authorities say they will not allow the U.S. automatic access to the survivors, who are believed to be held in at a medical facility in Rawalpindi (ET, ET). Pakistan's foreign ministry has said the women and children would be returned to their countries of origin, though since Saudi Arabia revoked bin Laden's citizenship in 1994, his relatives in the country would have to adopt the children. Maulana Abdul Aziz, the head of the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad, has reportedly offered to adopt bin Laden's children (Toronto Star).

The Pakistani Army speaks

In the first public reaction from the Pakistani Army to the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden, Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani warned that a repeat of the operation would not be tolerated and would lead to a review of Pakistan's "level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States" (NYT, Post, Dawn, Geo, ET/Reuters, AP, WSJ, AJE, FT, FT, Guardian, Dawn). A press release from the Pakistani Army, available here, also strongly warned neighboring India against conducting similar operations, and stated that Pakistan's "strategic assets" -- nuclear weapons -- are well-defended. Gen. Kayani also reportedly decided that U.S. personnel in Pakistan -- around 275 at any given time -- should be reduced to the "absolute minimum" (NYT, DT).

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, who reportedly told Gen. Kayani about the Abbottabad raid around 3am local time on Monday morning, said via a spokesman that he had not been informed of any decisions by Pakistan about the presence of U.S. military trainers there (DT, AFP). Top Pentagon official Michele Flournoy said the Obama administration does not have "any definitive evidence" that Pakistan knew bin Laden was living in Abbottabad, which a new poll shows 72 percent of Americans disagree with (NYT, CSM).

Members of the U.S. Congress are calling for a complete review of the U.S.'s some $3 billion in annual aid to Pakistan, after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on March 18 certified that Pakistan was making a "sustained commitment" to ending support for Islamist militants, a key condition for the provision of aid (CNN, McClatchy). Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has "ordered a full court press" from Pakistan's lobby in Washington to counter allegations that Pakistan knew bin Laden was in Abbottabad or helped shelter him (Reuters). Some 1,000 people near Abbottabad protested against the U.S. raid, and in Quetta, the Islamist political party the JUI-F organized a rally to "pay homage" to bin Laden (AFP, AFP). Protests also occurred in Multan and Peshawar.

Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, a top U.S. commander who recently finished a tour in southern Afghanistan, said that Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, "should be worried" following the raid on bin Laden's compound because "it shows the Americans are focused" (AFP, Reuters). The Post assesses that legislators seeking to use bin Laden's death to renew calls to speed up the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan are unlikely to succeed because they "still lack the support of either party's leadership" and "still do not have an urgent piece of legislation -- a bill central to the war effort -- to force a distracted Congress to focus on Afghanistan" (Post).
 
Non-bin Laden news

In the first suspected U.S. drone strike reported since April 22, missiles killed as many as 15 people, including foreign militants and one civilian, in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan (AFP, AP, ET/Reuters, AP, Geo, Post, CNN, The News). Clashes between militants and Pakistani security forces continue in Mohmand, and in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistani police killed two would-be suicide bombers after their car refused to stop a checkpoint (DT, ET). In Quetta, unknown gunmen opened fire on around 50 people exercising on a soccer field, killing six (AP).

The NYT reports that yesterday's rally in Kabul against the Karzai government's reconciliation efforts toward the Taliban attracted more than 10,000 people, mostly from northern Afghanistan (NYT).

New uniforms

Although the Badminton World Federation has ruled that skirts are part of badminton's official attire, women of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in northwest Pakistan are taking to the courts wearing hijabs and with covered legs (ET). The FATA Sports Board has organized a tournament for May 16.

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Middle East

• Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan survived an assassination attempt in northern Turkey, claimed by a Kurdish rebel group. 
• A suicide bomber killed 21 people south of Baghdad in an attack one official said may be retaliation for the death of Osama bin Laden. 
• Egypt's former interior minister was sentenced to 12 years in prison. 

Asia

• Japan is halting the construction of three nuclear reactors over earthquake fears. 
• Thousands of Afghans rallied to reject a government peace deal with the Taliban. 
• Eight members of Pakistan's Shia minority were killed in a bombing in Quetta. 

Americas

• Brazil's Supreme Court ruled that the country should recognize same-sex marriages. 
• Mexican President Felipe Calderon defended his government's war on drugs as a march against Mexico's ongoing violence reached the capital. 
• Inmates at a prison in Venezuela ended an eight-day hostage crisis. 

Europe

• Britain's Liberal Democrats suffered heavy losses while Scottish nationalists gained in local elections. 
• France expelled 14 Libyan diplomats.
• An inquest cleared London's emergency services of responsibility for deaths during the 2005 London underground bombings.  

Africa

• Alassane Ouattara is due to be sworn in as president of the Ivory Coast. 
• The wife of South Africa's intelligence minister was sentenced to 12 years in jail for drug trafficking.  
• The Sudanese government will create two additional states within Darfur. 

ASIF HASSAN/AFP/Getty Images

By Wolfango Piccoli

British voters are set to reject electoral reform in the May 5 referendum and deal a blow to the incumbent Conservatives and Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) in local and regional elections held concurrently. The fight over the electoral reform will damage the relationship between the coalition partners, but the government will survive and early elections are unlikely.

The referendum lies at the heart of the power-sharing deal struck between the Conservatives and the LDP. The LDP demanded the vote as a key condition for joining the coalition after the Tories, who want to retain the existing first-past-the-post system, failed to win a clear victory in last year's general election. The Labour party is split on the issue, but its leader Ed Miliband supports a system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference.

Local government elections will also be held in Scotland, Wales, and much of England, providing the first comprehensive indication of how the main parties have fared since last year's general election. Labour is expected to make the most gains, with some pollsters suggesting the party could gain more than 1,000 council seats. Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party is expected to suffer big losses, possibly as many as 900 seats. The LDP meanwhile could lose control of around half of the 22 councils it is defending, possibly including prized possessions such as Bristol, Hull, Newcastle, and even Sheffield, where party leader Nick Clegg's seat is located.

In such a scenario, Nick Clegg will have to contend with disgruntled party members (mainly from the left of the party), who may step up their criticism of the coalition and he may even have to fight a leadership challenge. But there is no viable replacement and he will continue as party leader. To recover, Clegg is likely to champion (with the prime minister's consent) an accelerated reform for the House of Lords, push ahead with his social mobility agenda for higher education, and fight for changes to the National Health Service.

The Liberal Democrats will not, however, leave the coalition. The party would cede all credibility if it were to walk away. Also, the LDP is down in the polls, which provides no incentive to provoke an early election. Neither will the Tories be tempted to end the relationship. They are unlikely to win a parliamentary majority in a snap election. But it will not be business as usual after 5 May. Clegg's party will strike a more independent tone, reminding the Conservative Party that it owes the LDP for its ability to govern.

Wolfango Piccoli is a director in Eurasia Group's Europe practice.

Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC) Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril is coming to Washington on May 12, about a month after he postponed his previously planned visit due to a cancelled flight.

The opposition's official representative in Washington, former Libyan Ambassador Ali Aujali, announced the visit on Thursday, and said Jibril will meet with administration officials, lawmakers, and give a speech at the Brookings Institution. During his previously scheduled trip, he had planned to speak at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"We are deeply grateful to the US for its diplomatic leadership, military support, and humanitarian assistance in the fight against the Qaddafi regime," said Ajuli in a statement. "During his visit, Dr. Jibril will help to fill out the picture and the plans of the opposition and its leadership in its efforts to establish a free and democratic Libya."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be out of town for Jibril's visit, on an official visit to Greenland. But she met with Jibril today on the sidelines of the Libya Contact Group's second round of meetings in Rome.

Before the meeting, Clinton announced that the United States would seek to give some of Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's frozen assets to the opposition.

"I'm pleased to announce that the Obama administration, working with Congress, has decided to pursue legislation that would enable the U.S. to tap some portion of those assets owned by Qaddafi and the Libyan government in the United States, so we can make those funds available to help the Libyan people," she said.

Clinton also said that Qaddafi must relinquish power, and promised that the NATO-led coalition would not stop striking his military until he stops killing his own citizens.

The Obama administration has been gradually ramping up its support for the Libyan opposition. The White House approved $25 million in non-lethal aid to the rebels on April 26. But the State Department has yet to abandon its official recognition of Qaddafi's regime and recognize the TNC as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people.

As part of Jibril's ongoing plea for aid, he promised that all Libyan government contracts would be honored by a new government led by the TNC.

Clinton said there were many ways to help the rebels, but didn't get into specifics. "We'll be discussing a financial mechanism, we'll be discussing other forms of aid," she said.

Congress is up in arms over the Pakistan government's possible involvement in the sheltering of Osama bin Laden, and lawmakers are readying a long list of ways to place pressure on Pakistan until it gets answers.

Most of the sticks being contemplated on Capitol Hill involve the cutting of foreign aid. And while there likely will not be one overarching bill to cut off all aid to Pakistan, lawmakers and staffs are finalizing plans to reduce or restrict assistance. And unfortunately for Pakistan, this debate will take place within the larger context of a budget debate that includes an emphasis on cutting foreign aid.

The issue of how to deal with Pakistan divides both parties and both chambers. Traditional conservative/liberal distinctions do not apply, and lawmakers are bringing their long-held skepticism of Pakistani aid into the debate. In each party, there are roughly two camps -- those who want to withhold or at least reduce aid now, and those who want to wait to see if information is forthcoming that Pakistani officials were actually involved in supporting bin Laden's efforts to evade capture.

In the Senate, two top Democrats who control the writing of key legislation that allocates Pakistani aid have been particularly critical: Senate Armed Services chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and Senate Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT). They are joined by House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA), who issued a blistering statement on Thursday criticizing the administration's handling of the military assistance to Pakistan.

"Under the current legislative scheme, I don't think our military assistance is serving the interests we are intending it to serve," Berman said in a Thursday interview with The Cable. "What I'm asking the administration to do is focus on getting Pakistan to change its approach and go after extremist groups. If they're not successful, we should reconsider giving this money."

Berman was critical of the administration's decision to certify that Pakistan "demonstrated a sustained commitment towards combating terrorism," a requirement under the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid bill passed last year, which is worth $7.5 billion over five years.

He also argued that a huge fund to reimburse Pakistan for counterterrorism operations, known as the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund (PCCF), has not been effective. That fund was transferred to the State Department last year, but the administration decided to give it back to the Pentagon in the fiscal 2011 budget deal, in order to trim State's overall budget number.

That places it back under the jurisdiction of Levin's committee, which is starting work on its fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill now. And PCCF is one of many ways that lawmakers are preparing to use aid funding as leverage over Pakistan.

"There are plenty of ways to hold the funds up. There needs to be a real form of tough love," said one senior Democratic aide said. "We're not trying to hamstring the administration, we're trying to give them leverage with the Pakistanis."

Berman's focus on the military aid is shared by other top Democrats, including Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), who sits on both the defense and foreign ops appropriations subcommittees.

"We should cut off the military aid but not the economic development aid," Moran told The Cable Thursday. "We should insist the aid be used for education and economic development, but not for subsidizing the military presence on the border with India, which is what its being used for now."

Leahy is among those who never believed that the economic aid to Pakistan was being spent in an effective way, or with proper planning and oversight. His staff crafts the Senate's funding bill for Pakistani aid, but that bill won't surface for months, because all appropriations bills are on hold due to the ongoing budget debate.

The fiscal 2011 foreign aid allocations still have not been finalized, giving appropriators another avenue to trim the money going from U.S. taxpayers to Pakistan. The budget deal struck to keep the government running last month set overall allocations, but didn't get into the details of how the aid would be disbursed.

"We have to work with a smaller number overall for foreign aid, so that invariably will affect amounts for Pakistan," said one Senate appropriations staffer.

Several congressional aides told The Cable that other options include slowing the transfer of Kerry-Lugar money to Pakistani coffers, enforcing other provisions in the law that require the administration to consider Pakistan's progress on issues like corruption and human rights, or adding new legislative conditions on Pakistan aid.

There is already one bill in Congress, sponsored by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), that would require all aid be frozen until the Pakistani government proves it was not complicit in hiding bin Laden. But that bill is not likely to see the light of day on the House floor and several aides said it didn't make sense.

"How do you prove a negative? It's just ridiculous," one Republican House aide said.

But there are other ways to condition aid short of making Pakistan prove its innocence. Congress could require the administration to certify that Pakistan is cooperating with the bin Laden investigation. Or Congress could add conditions that have nothing to do with bin Laden, such as requiring Pakistan to raise its famously low tax rate for the rich before the United States provides any more direct budget support.

On the other side of the debate, an uneasy alliance of senior national security-focused lawmakers are stressing the importance of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and warning that abandoning Pakistan could have dangerous long term effects, as it did after the U.S. cut off aid in 1990.

That group includes Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA), Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ), and Senate Appropriations State and Foreign Ops ranking Republican Lindsey Graham (R-SC). On the House side, both heads of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee, Kay Granger (R-TX) and Nita Lowey (D-NY), are urging a go-slow approach, although Granger has said she wants to examine cash payments to the Pakistani civilian government, known as "direct budget support."

Even House Foreign Affairs chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) -- who has pledged to cut aid to countries not cooperating with the United States -- is urging caution.

"They are an important partner. We would be jeopardizing our security if we cut off aid," Ros-Lehtinen told the Washington Post.

As more information in the bin Laden back story emerges and lawmakers get their ducks in a row, what's certain is that each and every aspect of aid to Pakistan is going to be scrutinized carefully.

"This is a delicate and balanced assessment that we have to carry out," said a senior GOP House aide. "There are enormous pressures on Congress to do something and everyone is in agreement that the relationship has to be assessed. The difficulty is finding what levers are most effective."

What is likely to happen in the end? If the Obama administration argues aggressively that the money is needed on national security grounds, they are likely to get their way.

"If the president, Gates, Clinton, and Panetta all stand up publicly and say we really need the aid, they'll probably get the aid," said one GOP senate staffer. "The Pakistani accounts may get a haircut, but they won't go down to zero."

Awaking to the news on Monday morning that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in Abbottabad, Pakistanis had two ways to react: express outrage that the world's most-wanted terrorist had successfully sought sanctuary within their country's borders, with or without the assistance of Pakistan's security establishment; or, decry the fact that the United States had violated Pakistan's national sovereignty with a unilateral strike deep into its territory.[[BREAK]]

The fact that the Pakistani state and independent media have opted for the latter is no doubt frustrating for Washington, which is urgently trying to assess whether Pakistan remains an ally in the effort to stamp out terrorism. Since the news of bin Laden's killing broke, the Pakistani media has been railing against the American "insult" and "invasion" of its territory. The government, too, issued an obdurate statement describing the U.S. raid of bin Laden's compound as an "unauthorized unilateral action." What should have been an introspective moment has already become a defiant one. Rather than ask why bin Laden was able to live in Abbottabad, possibly since 2005, Pakistanis are asking how the U.S. managed to penetrate Pakistani airspace and hover for 40 minutes before leaving.

While Pakistanis fret about territorial violations, U.S. government officials have started asking difficult questions about bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, and the nature of his support network within the country. Some members of Congress have called for economic assistance to Pakistan to be significantly reduced or suspended. Such enough-is-enough reactions are understandable, yet counterproductive, for they will only stir more defiance and reactionary tendencies among the Pakistani public. 

The fact is, Pakistanis are largely unmoved by the killing of bin Laden, but they are anxious about its potential fallout. The nation is currently bracing for a blowback, as the Taliban threatened retaliatory attacks barely hours after bin Laden's death had been announced.There are also widespread concerns about more unilateral strikes on Pakistani soil, especially after U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers announced on Monday that at least a dozen senior al-Qaeda leaders are based in Pakistan.

Moreover, the Indian reaction to the news of bin Laden's killing has hardly helped matters. More than future U.S. actions, Pakistan fears that India may be emboldened by the Abbottabad raid to launch unilateral strikes against terrorist camps proximate to the eastern border. It is this cumulative paranoia of what might yet ensue that informed the weak response to the incident by Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, who stated that the bin Laden operation "shall not serve as a future precedent for any state, including the U.S. Such actions undermine cooperation and may also sometime[s] constitute threat[s] to international peace and security."

In this perceived moment of vulnerability, the Pakistani public sphere is unlikely to turn against the Pakistan Army (except to criticize it for failing to prevent the U.S. incursion) and question its role in the bin Laden fiasco. Although the military and intelligence apparatus are the progenitors of Pakistan's current predicament (whether through duplicity, complicity, or incompetence), they are also being framed as the nation's last hope. 

Since Pakistan's creation, the army's institutional imperative has been to ensure state survival against threats posed by external enemies. The post-bin Laden concerns about interventionism play right into what Dr. Hasan Askari Rizvi has termed the Pakistan Army's "savior complex." In an ironic twist, a moment that should spark a crisis of credibility and a call for accountability could become an opportunity for the army to consolidate its role as the nation's protector against a variety of outside threats deemed to be existential. If this happens, the U.S. can only expect more of the same in its dealings with Pakistan.

But in the army's protectionist stance lies a rare opportunity to chart a new course in U.S.-Pakistan relations. Earlier this week, the Pakistani Ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, said that the government would conduct internal investigations to determine how bin Laden was able to live undetected in the Pakistani heartland, and whether any state or security officials were helping to shelter him. On Thursday, however, the Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir backtracked on this idea, suggesting that investigations into the whole episode be left to historians.

Pakistan's civilian government should not back down from the chance to conduct an inquiry. By supporting the civilian government in such an effort - whether in terms of capacity, by helping establish protocols and a timeline, or by applying back channel pressure on military officials to comply -- the U.S. and other members of the international community can help Pakistan's nascent civilian government hold the army accountable. Such a move would significantly boost the government's credibility by helping it answer the Pakistani public's many burning questions regarding the bin Laden incident.

No doubt, inquiries in Pakistan are a bit of a sham, a highly refined form of political dodging and deferral. The current government alone has launched several inquiries into matters ranging from corrupt practices in accommodating Hajj pilgrims to match-fixing allegations against members of the national cricket team. None of these have yielded positive outcomes. Moreover, historic inquiries such as the Hamoodur Rehman commission - which investigated alleged atrocities committed in Bangladesh during the 1971 war with India - have set a poor precedent for such processes (that report was not made public until decades after the fact, and was found severely lacking).

But this needn't be the case again. Citing pressure from the international community to provide answers, the civilian government should appoint an independent, public commission to investigate the nature and scope of bin Laden's network within Pakistan. The commission should also investigate the army and intelligence agencies' claim that bin Laden's presence, and the U.S. raid it provoked, were the consequences of an "intelligence failure." Such a commission should be empowered -- and encouraged -- to summon high-ranking military and intelligence officials for interrogation.

This inquiry must be a purely civilian exercise that drives home the fact that the Pakistan Army is ultimately accountable to the Pakistani people through their elected representatives. It should be conducted solely by Pakistanis, without any foreign interference, but its findings should be shared with the world. And if the commission determines that bin Laden's presence and the Abbottabad raid resulted from army and intelligence failings, it should launch a stringent review of the Pakistan Army's defense expenditure. 

These actions will help reorient the conversation in Pakistan to focus more on the pitfalls of the country's current national security strategy. It will also put U.S.-Pakistan relations back on the right track. Seeking long-term, sustainable bilateral relations with Pakistan, the U.S. enacted the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009.  Assistance mandated by that act seeks to support Pakistan's democratically elected civilian government to develop increased oversight of national security issues, and maintain "effective civilian control of the military" and its institutions.  

Despite the positive language, though, the Obama administration has prioritized military-to-military exchanges with Pakistan, owing to a narrow focus on counterterrorism operations and the military and political endgame in Afghanistan. The recently concluded episode involving Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January, showed the extent to which the U.S. government is willing to defer to military officials at times of crisis. However, it is the world's historic reliance on the Pakistan Army that led us to Abbottabad. A new approach by the U.S., and a new debate within Pakistan, may yet show us the way out. 

Huma Yusuf is a columnist for Pakistan's Dawn newspaper and the Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Now that he's accomplished the central aim of George W. Bush's foreign policy, Barack Obama can finally get started on his own.

Top politicians in Washington spent years telling us that catching bin Laden didn't matter…until it did.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent statement that she was "pleased that we managed to kill bin Laden" has provoked some pretty strong reactions from other political leaders, even within her own party:

“These are revenge fantasies one shouldn’t indulge in. That’s the Middle Ages,” said Siegfried Kauder, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats and chairman of the parliament’s legal affairs committee.

The deputy floor leader of the Christian Democrats, Ingrid Fischbach, called it inappropriate for a Christian to express joy at a premeditated killing of a fellow human. And Hartfried Wolff, legal spokesman for the Free Democrats, Merkel’s coalition partners in government, agreed: “I just cannot take any joy out of someone else’s death.”

Those are her political friends. Her foes want her to explain her comments in parliament and the Green politician Katrin Goering-Eckhardt, vice president of the Bundestag, said: “Killing a person is no reason to celebrate.”

Unless there's a video somewhere of Merkel shooting off a pistol while driving donuts on an ATV, this response seems just a little bit over the top. 

Amrullah Saleh, until last year the director of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security tells the Guardian he had a pretty good idea of where bin Laden had been hiding for years and tried to tell the Pakistani government: 

He said they believed Bin Laden must be there based on "thousands of interrogation reports" and the assumption that Osama – "a millionaire with multiple wives and no background of toughness" – would not be living in a tent.

"I was pretty sure he was in the settled areas of Pakistan because in 2005 it was still very easy to infiltrate the tribal areas, and we had massive numbers of informants there," he said. "They could find any Arab but notBin Laden."

Their intelligence became more precise in 2007 when they believed he was hiding in Manshera, a town a short distance from Abbottabad where the NDS had identified two al-Qaida safe houses.

But the former spy chief said that Pervez Musharraf, then president of Pakistan, was outraged at the suggestion that Bin Laden was hiding in such a prominent part of the country. In a meeting with Musharraf and Hamid Karzai the Pakistani president became furious and smashed his fist down on the table. "He said, 'Am I the president of the Republic of Banana?'" Saleh recalled. "Then he turned to President Karzai and said, 'Why have you have brought this Panjshiri guy to teach me intelligence?'"

Saleh was evidently not on the same page as his poss, President Hamid Karzai, who repeatedly said he believed bin Laden "probably is dead."

World opinion seems to be divided on the propriety of America's sometimes-raucous celebration in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death. Hopefully, though, we can all agree that Americans -- by virtue of long-standing national tradition -- should at least be indulged a few attempts to make a quick buck off of the affair.

Book publishers have been especially eager to track down authors who can write knowledgably and efficiently - read: quickly! - on the subject of Al Qaeda. As one publishing executive told the Wall Street Journal, "If it's not going to be great, it's got to be as fast as possible."

A number of authors have been happy to oblige. Former Newsweek Jon Meacham has already begun editing an e-book essay collection called Beyond Bin Laden for Random House. Peter Bergen, author of The Longest War and The Osama bin Laden I Know, has been signed by Crown to write a book tentatively titled The Manhunt, covering Washington's search for the fugitive terrorist. The Free Press has also said that it is hoping to publish a digital work by Bergen.

Following Hollywood's standard playbook, Penguin Press announced Wednesday that it had signed New Yorker correspondent Steve Coll to write, in essence, a sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, which covered America's vexed relations with radical Islam from the 1980s through September 11. The new book will discuss the last ten years of that relationship.

Finally, there are those publishers who already have a perfect book in the works, but somehow failed to predict months back that a potential assassination in early May would provide the opportunity for marketing synergy. Sales strategies have been scrambled, as relatively unknown authors prepare to bask in the full media spotlight. The Black Banner, a narrative account of the war on terror written by Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who served on the front lines against Al Qaeda, is certain to be marketed heavily when it's published in September by Norton.

Then there's St. Martin's Press, which had originally scheduled a May 24 release for a book by retired Navy SEALs Howard Wasdin and Stephen Templin on the subject of the military's secretive Team Six. When that unit succeeded in its secret mission to kill bin Laden on May 1, the publishing house immediately pushed to get the book in stores as quickly as possible. The release date has now been moved to May 10. "Sometimes you get lucky with current events," Mark Resnick, executive editor at St. Martin's, told the New York Observer.

Appointing Gen. David Petraeus to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency might make good politics for Obama -- bottling Petraeus up in a strictly non-partisan position -- and may or may not be a good move for Petraeus, depending on his future ambitions. My interest is more prosaic: would the move be good for the CIA?

Possibly. Petraeus is not just smart: he is capable of challenging groupthink, which is exactly what the CIA needs. If Petraeus is ready to rewrite the book on intelligence the way he did, not just for counterinsurgency doctrine, but for the Army's culture as a whole, he could do wonders for the CIA. But if Petraeus lets himself go native or surrounds himself by the intelligence establishment, he'll just keep the chair warm for the next Director.

Let me say right off that I do not think the intelligence community is hopelessly broken, it does provide an irreplaceable service to policymakers and I have the highest respect for the folks I worked with during seven years at the CIA. But I do not think the taxpayers are getting the most bang for their buck. Here are a few things Petraeus  should tackle.

Get the analysts out of the shadows.

The Directorate of Intelligence (DI) has the capability of being a leading foreign affairs think tank in the world. Instead, it has largely limited itself to being a massive, overpriced, secretive magazine staff for a readership of one, pouring most of its resources in to the President's Daily Brief (PDB). Analysts live under a maze of restrictions that bar them from public activities, ostensibly to protect their objectivity and credibility. The restrictions are silly. Instead of enhancing their credibility, the restrictions just isolate them and make contact with other experts in their field difficult, awkward, and sporadic.

Analysts can and should be open and regular participants in the world of academia, think tanks, and conferences, encouraged to publish and speak on their areas of expertise. Their writing may actually have a larger impact if they focus less on the PDB and more on the broader foreign policy establishment, which is where policy is shaped in broad outline before it makes it to the President. Petraeus might even experiment with having the DI publish a regular, unclassified product. It's not like we keep our classified documents secret anyway.

Get the National Clandestine Service (NCS, or, to any self-respecting intelligence professional, the DO) to report gray information

The operations officers of the clandestine service are an invaluable tool of national security by collecting human intelligence. In non-spy lingo, that means they persuade foreigners to sell secrets. However, they focus exclusively on secrets. The service vets its reports to ensure that it is only reporting information that is sufficiently "clandestine." That is understandable: the NCS wants to ensure it is not duplicating the media or the State Department. However, the division between "open" information reported by the media and the State Department, and "secret" information reported by the NCS, is artificial. There is also gray information, stuff that is important, not strictly a secret, but also very hard to get. Tribal dynamics, for example, are not "secrets" but they are rarely reported with much detail or accuracy by anybody. In war zones and failed states, NCS officers are often the only people well-placed to observe and report this kind of information. They should be encouraged to do so, but that would require a profound cultural and institutional shift in what the NCS understands its mission to be.

Draw down the counterterrorism surge

A huge proportion of the intelligence community's assets were rightly diverted to tracking terrorists after 2001. But terrorism is unlikely to be the U.S.'s principle foreign policy challenge in coming decades. The principle challenges probably will include, at one pole, China and Russia, and, at the other pole, widespread state failure and anarchy in much of the world. Islamism, of the political, radical, extremist, or violent variety (pick your modifier), may also be a long-term challenge. But that is a broader challenge than al-Qaida's terrorist campaign and includes political, diplomatic, and economic facets to it. My sense is that we should rebalance the allocation of our resources away from CT and towards these broader challenges. Our heavy focus on counterterrorism is too narrow.

Tackle clientitis

Analysts and operatives can, on occasion, go native. They start to see the world through the perspective of the foreign country (Pakistan, to take a completely random example) on which they spend their careers. This destroys their objectivity and undermines their usefulness to U.S. policymakers. The solution is not simply to rotate personnel to different countries every few years, because that erodes their depth and expertise. We need to encourage depth without sacrificing perspective. Petraeus should form a cross-directorate task force to study the problem, develop ways to identify and track clientitis, and find ways to prevent or cure it.

President Obama rightly gets credit for authorizing a daring and successful ground raid into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden. But Obama is not a lone hero: it is instructive to trace the path U.S. policy took to get here over the last 25 years to demonstrate how presidents are always building on the groundwork laid by predecessors.

Covert action is authorized by a Presidential Finding. Findings are rare; more often, presidents sign Memoranda of Notification (MON) to further extend or modify an existing Finding. That is why to find the relevant finding behind the Abbottabad strike, we have to go all the way back to one signed in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan. The 1986 Finding describes the basic authorities for covert worldwide counterterrorism action by the military and intelligence community. The Finding was signed concurrently with the birth of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC), and finally started the slow gears of American bureaucracy churning against terrorists across the globe. Reagan was the first to make fighting terrorism official U.S. policy. (See Steve Coll's Ghost Wars).

President Bill Clinton signed a number of MONs further extending counterterrorism authorities, several specifically targeted at al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, according to the 9/11 Commission Report and Ghost Wars. The military and intelligence community designed several operations to either kill or capture bin Laden several times in the late 90s. Clinton was the first to make fighting al-Qaida U.S. policy.

President George W. Bush dramatically expanded the counterterrorism authorities with an expansive MON signed shortly after 9/11 (detailed in Woodward's Bush At War). The authorities enabled intelligence operatives and special operations forces to embed with the Afghan Northern Alliance and overthrow the Taliban in 2001 (see Gary Schroen's First In and Gary Berntsen's Jawbreaker). They also eventually gave birth to the rumored drone program (here is a fascinating website that attempts to track the rumored done strikes). But the drones are relevant for Abbottabad not because of their missiles, but because of their cameras and sensors; they've helped build up years and years of data about militants which analysts have been able to mine for the smallest detail, crucial in the hunt for bin Laden.

Perhaps most directly relevant for the road to Abbottabad, Bush made a few key changes to the counterterrorism programs in 2008. Frustrated by years of stalemate, he expanded the authorized target list, began to approve missions without prior Pakistani approval, and also authorized ground incursions into Pakistan to pursue al-Qaida. (see Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, Chapter 1).Abbottabad was not the first widely-reported Navy SEAL incursion into Pakistan. Bush authorized a raid on the town of Angor Adda in September 2008 in pursuit of al-Qaida targets. The raid went poorly -- it was undertaken during Ramadan, when civilians were awake and feasting at night-Pakistani officials lashed out, and ground incursions were halted. But the precedent was set.

By the time Obama was faced with the compound in Abbottabad, he had the option of going in because of the large and sophisticated counterterrorism infrastructure and legal authorities built by his predecessors over a quarter-century. What Obama gets credit for is keeping these tools in place after he took office, and making full use of them. Unlike Clinton and his National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, Obama actually authorized a strike against bin Laden when given the chance. And Obama was not deterred by the scandal of Angor Adda. That previous ground incursion proves that Obama took real risks when authorizing the Abbottabad strike. If Abbottabad had failed, it may have permanently ended the U.S.'s ability to go after terrorists inside Pakistan (as well as critically weakening the Obama presidency).

Presidents usually get more blame for the bad and more credit for the good that happens on their watch. Obama rightly deserves high praise for authorizing the Abbottabad mission. But Obama was right to give credit to the unnamed military and intelligence professionals whose tireless work over a decade made this victory possible. And I appreciated that Obama called President Clinton and, especially, President Bush to tell them the news on Sunday night. They share in this victory too.

Like many significant events, the attack that killed Osama bin Laden looms larger than the simple facts of what occurred because of its resonances. Some are historical, signaling the closing of one chapter or the beginning of another. Some are emotional, providing closure, a sense of justice, a sense of triumph or even a redefined sense of identity. Some are political, impacting views of our allies, our enemies or our leaders.

The bin Laden mission contains all these elements which is why, though the post-bin Laden world is in most important ways identical the world on the day before his death, this moment will seem a watershed for so many people.

The bin Laden mission has already altered (and strained) our relationship with one key ally, Pakistan; suggested a coming change in our relationship with another, Afghanistan; and impacted to varying degrees our standing among our allies and enemies. But, among the operation's most interesting political dimensions are what it has revealed about the relationship between the American people and America's leaders.

There is an undeniable irony in the fact that the greatest foreign policy triumph of the brief Obama presidency appears to be the one moment in which he became most fully the president George W. Bush always wanted to be. The Democrat who was elected as the anti-Bush has seen his popularity and perceptions of his competence soar for serving as the decisive, "war on terror" commander-in-chief who oversaw a "High Noon" like showdown between good and evil. The thoughtful, lawyerly, multilateralist did what had to be done, acting unilaterally, violating another nation's sovereignty, keeping an ally in the dark to preserve security, and gunning down a man without benefit of trial.

There are however, important paradoxes within this paradox. It would be a mistake to conclude that Obama was merely being celebrated for getting in touch with his inner cowboy. While that was no doubt important for a great many Americans, for others the President was elevated by the event precisely by how-un-Bush-like his handling of it was. This is especially manifest in the sensitivity he showed with regard to Islamic burial rituals and his decision not to circulate images of the dead bin Laden. Tough but sensitive is precisely why Gary Cooper's triumph in "High Noon" is so much more compelling than the raw John Wayne alternative of most westerns.

The Bush-Obama paradox manifests itself again when considering just what kind of a dividing line in history this might be. On the one hand, it is celebrated as the culminating moment to date in the War on Terror, the realization of the express initial mission undertaken in the moments after the 9/11 attacks. But this event should also be seen as what it probably is, a pivot point enabling the ultimate reversal of Bush's heavy engagement in the Middle East. Obama has never seemed comfortable with America's large-scale military involvement in the region, promising an exit even as he added troops in Afghanistan. He and key aides have sought a satisfactory exit for most of our troops and the ability to move to different models of international involvement: more multilateral, a greater emphasis on diplomacy, more positive engagement with the Muslim world in particular...and frankly, a search for more approaches that allow us to address growing critical needs at home. Thus, on the foreign policy front, Obama's most-Bush-like moment may be his last such moment...unless the moment and its headiness changes him as a president more than he or his allies might currently anticipate.

My guess is that while the President and his team will continue to vigorously pursue counter-terror initiatives as they must, this moment signals not just the death of bin Laden, but the death of American nation-building, counter-insurgency and wholesale investment in the forced transformation of the Middle East. We will seek to identify and eliminate threats and we will seek to collaborate with the world at large at promoting reforms and moderate viewpoints. But in the end, we will see this moment as the end or the beginning of the end of the Bush years or what David Sanger has called "The Legacy" and we will view it as the beginning of an Obama-era shaped by an Obama who will feel much freer to be his own man and who will make policies much less defensively. After all, who among his opponents will be able to call him diffident or uncomfortable with security concerns ever again?

Finally, the ultimate paradox here is that this in the end is not just or even primarily an Obama triumph or a Bush triumph. It is actually much less a presidential triumph than you would know from watching or reading or listening to the media. While the camera focuses on the man in the Oval Office, in this, as in almost all matters, the power of presidents is limited. The credit for operational successes like this one belongs far more with the men and women who risked their lives in the streets of Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere searching for intelligence; with both the special forces that risked their lives carrying out the mission, and the others that have been advancing it around the world for a decade; with the true allies among the Pakistanis and Afghans and other nations who have assisted us even as some of their countrymen chose a different course; with our military families who waited behind and even with the bureaucrats; and with members of Congress and all the others who contributed time and effort over the last not two but three administrations to contributing the bits and pieces necessary to tracking down and eliminating this man.  

It is therefore utterly appropriate and even telling that such a collective effort is defined both by its Obama-ness and its Bush-ness, because as different as they are they are also in some key ways the same -- parts of a complex, contradictory American whole that is the real author of such successes as well as our long-term policies, place and influence in the world.

Why did the United States choose to launch a raid against al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, rather than bombing it? It wasn't because of a "law enforcement mindset." And it wasn't compelled by human rights law. Rather, it was the best option based on the military objectives, available intelligence, and the law of armed conflict. 

On the one hand, practical considerations dictated this riskier kind of raid. The United States needed to have a body to prove, once and for all, that the hard-to-kill bin Laden was in fact dead. The recent media fascination with whether the U.S. will release photos of his body lends credence to this concern.

A second issue prompting the raid was that the Obama administration was worried about collateral damage. This problem is more serious than some may initially suspect. Abbottabad is a heavily populated city, with nearly 1 million residents. Moreover, numerous civilian residences and the Pakistani military academy were near bin Laden's "drone-proof compound." There's little doubt that the risks to nearby residents certainly weighed on the minds of senior policymakers and President Obama. The matter of collateral damage alone, though, may not have been enough to tip the scales away from a bombing operation.

Instead, the issue may have been the uncertainty over whether bin Laden was even in the compound. Nation-states are simply not permitted to  drop bombs in the hope they will kill the right person; they need to be reasonably certain they are attacking the right target. That fact leads us to the legal concerns that may have necessitated a raid rather than a bombing operation.[[BREAK]]

The Requirement to Positively Identify a Target

Most contemporary discussions of collateral damage skip the threshold legal question likely posed by the Obama administration, namely whether bin Laden or some other lawful military target was actually inside the compound. Unless that question could be answered to a reasonable degree of certainty, any bombing operation would have been unlawful, even with no or minimal collateral damage to surrounding persons and objects.

This reality flows from the principle of distinction, (or "positive identification" in U.S. military parlance) a fundamental tenet of the law of armed conflict. Armed forces are required to "at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives." Positive identification, according to U.S. policies, requires that commanders know with reasonable certainty that "a functionally and geospatially defined object of attack is a legitimate military target." In short, directing attacks against civilians (in this context, non-uniformed personnel) is not permitted, unless they are directly participating in hostilities.

This requirement closely tracks with the text of Protocol I Article 52(2), of the Geneva Conventions, which defines military objectives as "those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to the military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage." This definition, by implication, includes enemy personnel as legitimate military objects. In the case of "civilians," such as bin Laden and those with him in his compound, this identification task also required that those civilians meet the requirement that they are "directly participating in hostilities." As al-Qaeda's leader, bin Laden would easily satisfy this definition, as would his bodyguards and couriers, if only they could be positively identified. 

If the U.S. cannot positively identify a lawful target, the law of war and U.S. policies instruct that no bombing operation can take place. This is not to say that the law of armed conflict requires perfection in positively identifying a target (look to America's ongoing CIA drone campaign in Pakistan to see examples of when mistakes have been made); rather, the drafters of the law of armed conflict intended these rules to be a guide to decision-making in warfare, and recognized that bright line rules and fixed borderlines between civilian and military objectives might be difficult to distinguish. However, in the case of uncertainty about identity, the law stands firmly in favor of presuming civilian status, hence the U.S. requirement of positive identification. Thus, the burden is on the attacker to exercise discretion and caution, and they are judged by whether they acted reasonably and honestly in the exercise of those responsibilities. 

The positive identification test does not involve any balancing of potential collateral damage against military advantage. Instead, the focus in this case would be on whether the target is a civilian directly participating in hostilities, whose killing furthers a definite military advantage. Of course, those concerned with collateral damage should not overlook the importance of the positive identification step, as its relationship to collateral damage cannot be overstated -- failed positive identification is, according to research I have conducted, one of the leading causes of collateral damage in current U.S. military operations .    

Applying the Requirement of Positive Identification to the bin Laden Operation

It turns out that the Obama administration was not particularly certain about bin Laden's presence at the compound. Recent reports suggest there was a 20 percent - 40 percent chance that he wasn't in the building. Granted, substantial circumstantial evidence suggested some high value target was in the compound -- but this was not the type of information that would lawfully permit a bombing operation anywhere, let alone one deep in the heart of Pakistan. 

Rather, what the law requires, and what the U.S. government needed, was a positive identification of at least some of the building's residents. Eventually one man, bin Laden's courier, was tracked to the compound. The intelligence community also believed that the courier's family, his brother's family, and an unknown third family that matched the description of bin Laden's family were also in the home. They even believed a tall man who never left the house was also inside. Tally it up and you have one positive identification - of the courier, not bin Laden -- and a building full of maybes. 

Realistically, President Obama and everyone else at the White House who considered the bombing option probably thought about the fact that bin Laden might have been in the compound. But that chance, as a matter of law, was simply not part of the calculus because he wasn't positively identified as being present. Thus, when the value of the courier (the only known target) was balanced against the likely collateral damage, the obvious conclusion was that a bombing mission could not take place. A contrary choice would have been a gamble, and that gamble takes place in a context of heavy scrutiny and criticism of U.S. counterterrorism policies by allies and various other groups. Those political realities certainly impacted the administration's judgment. For this mission, only boots on the ground could positively identify bin Laden, minimize collateral damage in a heavily populated area, and bring him (or his body) back, thus justifying this deep incursion into Pakistani territory. 

Success This Time Does Not Spell The End of Drones and Bombing

But just because a raid was used effectively this time does not mean that in all future operations the U.S. must first try the SEAL Team Six (DEVGRU) option. It also does not mean that the raid was required by human rights law, or that all future operations should be conducted pursuant to law enforcement rules. Rather, it was simply the best option among many military strategies. This time, the mission was reportedly accomplished with no civilian or military casualties. If, in the coming months, al-Qaeda figure Ayman al-Zawahiri or radical cleric Anwar al-Alwaki are found and can be targeted from the air rather than risking a human operation, nothing about the manner of bin Laden's demise should alter the decision to bomb either of them. 

Bin Laden was long thought to be hiding in a cave somewhere in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). As it turns out, he was in a mansion in an affluent neighborhood in Abbottabad. Had he chosen to hide in a cave, a missile or a bomb would have been a perfectly appropriate means by which to kill him. Of course, that's likely why bin Laden chose Abbottabad -- he knew that U.S. concerns over collateral damage were his best defense. What he didn't count on was that various detainees and intelligence assets would provide clues to those around him, that President Obama would be willing to authorize a raid rather than a bombing mission, and that the U.S. military would be able to carry out such an operation. Sunday's success did not prove that bombing and drones are no longer valuable as counterterrorism tools.  Rather, it taught us that they are one of many options available to the military when engaging terrorists.

Gregory S. McNeal is an associate professor of law at Pepperdine University, and blogs at LawandTerrorism.com  

Turkey's leaders are looking less like the new Ottomans they've imagined themselves to be and more like stumbling politicians afraid of a new regional order.

It's been quite a week here at FP. Here's a quick guide to all the articles we've posted in response to bin Laden's death:

Don't get cocky America: Al Qaeda is still deadly without Osama bin Laden - By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Osama's dead, but how much does it matter? An FP roundtable on the afterlife of the world's most wanted man

Osama bin Who? A decades of denials and downplaying from Pakistani leaders. - By Charles Homans, Joshua Keating and David Kenner

Abottabad: Bin Laden's final home Osama couldn't have picked a more unlikely place to hide out - By Cameron Abadi

Slide Show: Osama the Icon The global cult of the terrorist mastermind

We Told You So India cackles of the news of bin Laden's death in Pakistan- By Henry Foy

Manhunt A visual history of the search for Osama bin Laden

The Lies They Tell Us Can the Pakistani government's web of deceit survive the death of Osama bin Laden? - By Mosharraf Zaidi

Spinning Osama One thing is clear from the wildly divergent arguments about what comes next after the al Qaeda leader's killing: You can find a pundit willing to say anything - By Blake Hounshell

Think Again: Al Qaeda The world's most notorious terrorist organization was never quite what Americans thought it was -- and Osama bin Laden's death doesn't mean it's down for the count - Daniel Byman

Wanted: Charismatic Terror Mastermind. Some Travel Required  How will al Qaeda pick its new leader? - By Leah Farrall

Kill Teams A short history of state-ordered hits in foreign lands - By Joshua Keating

Killer Seals A rare behind the scenes glimpse at the nation's most elite military unit

Tortured Logic The United States didn't need to waterboard anyone to get Osama bin Laden - By Matthew Alexander

The Killer's Lair Scenes from Osama bin Laden's hideout

War Dog There's a reason they brought one to get Osama bin Laden - By Rebecca Frankel

Click: one stop shopping for the AfPak Channel's coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden (FP).

Event notice: today at 6:30pm EST in New York, Peter Bergen will discuss what's next for al-Qaeda (Asia Society). The event will also be webcast.

No photos

After a "brief but intense" debate inside his administration, U.S. president Barack Obama has decided not to release the photos of slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's body or burial at sea, citing concerns that the images could be used to incite violence or as a propaganda tool (CBS, NYT, WSJ, Independent, CNN, Tel, AJE, Guardian, LAT, Times, AFP). CIA chief Leon Panetta said earlier in the week that the photos would eventually be made public, suggesting a split within the Obama administration, and Attorney General Eric Holder said he was concerned about possible revenge attacks (Post, WSJ, Post). A Pakistani security official who entered the Abbottabad compound where the U.S. Navy SEALs raid was carried out early Monday morning an hour after it occurred, however, sold several images to Reuters, showing three dead men, none of whom appear to be bin Laden (Reuters, McClatchy). The Reuters photos are available here (warning: very graphic). [[BREAK]]

Details continue to emerge about the Abbottabad compound and operation: property records reportedly show that the land on which the compound was built was purchased  between 2004 and 2005 by one of bin Laden's trusted couriers, who went by Arshad Khan, for $48,000, after administration officials assessed the value of the property at $1 million (AP, AP, ET, WSJ, Post, Tel); U.S. officials say bin Laden had 500 euros and telephone numbers sewn into his clothes when he was killed, suggesting he may have had plans for a quick getaway (ET, CBS, Times); and the raid may have been "one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy SEAL members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden" (NYT, Post, Reuters). Several stories also profile the SEAL Team Six, the secretive elite force which carried out the operation and has now returned to the U.S., and Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, the leader of the military's Joint Special Operations Command (NYT, AP, Post, ABC).

The Pakistani military has taken charge of the investigation into how bin Laden was able to hide in plain sight, detaining 11 people (NYT). Indonesian officials say Umar Patek, a top terrorist suspect who was arrested in Abbottabad earlier this year, was planning to meet with bin Laden (AP).

Pakistan in the hot seat

Pakistan faces increasingly strident questioning over its stated ignorance of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, a military garrison town around 40 miles from the capital of Islamabad, as Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani claimed the intelligence failure was made by "the whole world, not just Pakistan alone" (NYT, FT, CNN). The reputation of the Pakistani Army, usually considered the most effective institution in the country, has been called into question as Pakistani politicians and journalists demand explanations and an inquiry, and U.S. and European intelligence officials are becoming more convinced that current or retired Pakistani officials provided some kind of aid to bin Laden (Post, NYT, AFP, Reuters, WSJ). The Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami is urging its followers to protest Pakistan's relationship with the United States tomorrow (Reuters).

Pakistan's foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, warned the U.S. this morning of "disastrous consequences" if it carries out any more unauthorized raids on Pakistani territory (AP, ET/Reuters, Dawn). The Pakistani military has been publicly silent, though Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has reportedly been holding regular meetings with his top commanders (UPI, ET, NYT, Dawn). Chris Allbritton and Mark Hosenball have a must-read investigation into the long history of mistrust between Pakistani and American intelligence, and Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman describe how U.S. officials thought over the years that bin Laden was ensconced in Pakistan's tribal regions (Reuters, AP).

A few more stories round out the bin Laden news today: the FT reports on how much the U.S. has spent on national security since the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001 (FT); the NYT and Guardian investigate the canine component of the Navy SEAL team that carried out the Abbottabad raid, and the NYT reports on tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan (NYT, Guardian, NYT); and the LA Times writes that U.S. officials say the harsh interrogation of detainee Hassan Ghul in a Polish prison in early 2004 provided a clue about the identity of bin Laden's courier (LAT).

Non-bin Laden news

Afghanistan's attorney general's office said it had arrested a translator for U.S. forces on allegations of taking bribes to help set up contracts with the U.S. (AP). A motorcycle bomb injured eight civilians in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad (Pajhwok). And some 2,000 protesters in north Kabul demonstrated against Afghan president Hamid Karzai's overtures to the Taliban, at a rally with former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh and former presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah (AP). Bonus read: Peter Bergen on can we win in Afghanistan? (TNR).

In Pakistan, a school was blown up in the northwestern district of Nowshera, and schools remain closed in South Waziristan (ET, ET).  

Twitter records

Twitter announced that the hour in which Obama spoke on Sunday night to announce the death of bin Laden saw 12.4 million tweets sent (CNN, Tech Crunch, CSM). Between 10:45pm EST on Sunday night and 2:20am on Monday morning, Twitter users sent around 3,000 tweets per second.

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Despite a rich history, Istanbul is a city coping with the difficulties of modernization and rapid growth.

One of the world's great cities is growing too big for its britches.

By Peter H. Brooks
Best Defense South Asian natural resources bureau chief

"Water security for us is a matter of economic security, human security, and national security, because we see potential for increasing unrest, conflicts, and instability over water."
--Statement by U.S. Secretary of State Hilary, March 22 2011, World Water Day.

"The national security implications of this looming water shortage...will be felt all over the world."
--US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Feb. 22, 2011.

"...fresh water scarcity at local levels will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national security."
-- Testimony of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Feb. 10, 2011.

With a bombing campaign in Libya, counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an ongoing recovery in Japan why are the leaders of the U.S. foreign policy establishment talking about water? Well, when you consider that by 2030 global demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by forty percent you can begin to understand their concern.

But does more scarcity mean more conflict? Are we really in for a future full of water wars? The answer is not quite so clear.

The Fallacy of Water Wars
Mark Twain once said, "Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fightin over." The history of water conflict is extensive and well-documented (pardon the pun). But by and large water conflicts are local, intra-state affairs.

In the last fifty years, of the 1800 or so interstate, water-related disputes the vast majority ended in peaceful agreements on water usage. But many of these agreements were low-hanging, diplomatic fruit, unlikely to be so easily negotiated or resolved again, particularly as demand for fresh water continues to rise. The peaceful relations in three river basins in particular are beginning to show signs of strain. [[BREAK]]

Indus River Basin
In South Asia tensions are mounting between India and Pakistan over the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), an agreement governing the flow of the vital Indus River.

When the Senate report quoted above was released in late February, the Pakistani media jumped on it as proof of India's violations of the IWT. Some opinion-makers have even said that a water war is already underway or at least a "water war of words". Op/Eds in Pakistan argued that India exercises "water hegemony" by continuing to violate the IWT or at the very least by benefiting from its flaws. Some outspoken, fringe voices even suggested the use of nuclear weapons to solve the problem. And all of this in the last month!

Given India's overwhelming military strength, Pakistan's counterinsurgency campaigns in its North West Frontier, and America's vested interests on both sides, the dispute seems likely to remain a water war of the words, but there is certainly no guarantee of peace between the countries.

Tigris/Euphrates River Basin
In 1990 Turkey deliberately cut off water supplies to its southern neighbors, Syria and Iraq, over concerns of their support for Kurdish separatists in Turkey. In February 1992, then Prime Minister of Turkey, Suleyman Demiral said, "We do not say we share their oil resources. They cannot say they share our water resources. This is a matter of sovereignty. We have the right to do anything we like."

In 2009, responding to severe water shortages, Iraqi parliament demanded an increase in the share of Turkish river waters. Despite this and continued droughts, Turkey has continued building dams. As broader regional instability permeates into Syria and Iraq, expect water to play an increasingly important role in future local and international disputes between these three countries.

The Nile Basin
Three prominent Egyptian leaders in the last half century predicted water wars in Egypt. In 1979, Anwar el-Sadat said that water was "the only matter that could take Egypt to war again." In 1995 Egyptian World Bank official, Ismail Serageldin said "Many of the wars this century were about oil, but those of the next century will be over water." In 1988 Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali said, "The next war in our region will be over the waters of the Nile, not politics."

Fearful that upstream neighbors Sudan, Ethiopia (where 85 percent of the river originates), Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo would turn off the tap, Egypt has fought any attempt by neighbors to divert the Nile. The wars these men predicted have been avoided because of diplomatic agreements like the Nile Basin Initiative. But, as post-revolution Egypt evolves, these statements are important to remember, particularly in light of Ethiopian plans to build a hydropower dam and the growing uncertainty of who will rule the new Egypt.

The Future of Water Conflict
The future of water conflict -- like most other kinds of conflict -- will remain, for the most part, local in its scope. But as diplomatic options dwindle and the scarcity increases, expect water conflict to take on a more international flavor than ever seen before particularly in these three volatile river basins.

In any event, it's safe to say water deserves the attention that it is getting in our political, diplomatic, and intelligence establishments.

So before you dismiss water as some sort of fringe consideration to the future of international security consider Secretary Clinton's words from last year's World Water Day, "It's not every day you find an issue where effective diplomacy and development will allow you to save millions of lives [and] advance our national security interests. Water is that issue."

A former Marine infantry officer, Peter H. Brooks is now a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar in Rajasthan, India, studying drinking water and public governance. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program or the US State Department.

Dried up river outside of Quetta, Pakistan. (Lynsey Addario/Corbis)

The government of Pakistan is betting that we have nowhere else to go, that we are stuck with them, and that they are too big to fail. I think that proposition is about to be tested.

Hmm. What would a policy of containment of Pakistan look like?

Meanwhile, Vali Nasr has an interesting take on the bin Laden raid, which he interprets -- I think rightly-as an operation against the Pakistani security establishment. In his view, the United States government showed it can find out what it needs to find out in Pakistan, even where the military is keeping someone hidden in a military town: "The ISI used the [Raymond] Davis imbroglio to reduce the CIA's footprint in Pakistan. It did not want more Davises poking around every nook and cranny -- exactly the kind of legwork that led the CIA to bin Laden."

And I see where the most wanted Indonesian terrorist was picked up January in Abbotabad. Wonder who he was visting?