Meanwhile, in Pakistan . . .

Two stories from last week that shed light on the problem of hunting for al-Qa'ida in Pakistan.

First, a new Pew survey shows a majority of Pakistanis disapproved of the Abbottabad raid and think bin Laden's death was a bad thing. The first is easy to explain, as even Pakistanis who were ambivalent about bin Laden could oppose the violation of Pakistani sovereignty the raid represented.  More puzzling, I think, is the latter result, in which 55% saw the terror mastermind's death as a bad thing. Although 46% of Pakistanis reported "having confidence" in bin Laden according to a 2003 Pew Research survey, by 2010 this number had dropped to 18%.  Again, there is a simple explanation for this, i.e. bin Laden was not particularly popular with Pakistanis anymore, but their pride resented the Americans invading their territory to kill him.  But the question at the heart of these polls is important, as a key factor in whether strategic manhunts are successful or not is the popularity of the targeted individual with the local population from which HUMINT and indigenous forces can be drawn.

Second, and somewhat relatedly, the New York Times reported on Thursday that U.S. intelligence analysis of bin Laden courier Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's cell phone contained several numbers connected to a Pakistani militant group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen.  On the one hand, this is a little less significant than it first seems: it doesn't establish direct contact between bin Laden and Harakat, and even if it did, Harakat and al-Qa'ida have been allied for a long time.  On the other hand, this is important in that it would suggest how bin Laden could have moved from Afghanistan to Abbottabad without ever raising the attention of Pakistani authorities (assuming they were looking for him, of course . . . Harakat was founded with the assistance of Pakistan's ISI in the 1980s, its leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil has long been one of bin Laden's Pakistani BFF's and lives openly on the outskirts of Islamabad), or necessarily enjoying widespread popularity across Afghanistan.