Even if they want to? The country has lots of rough terrain for him to hide in, no money, and virtually no government–just various factions of right-wing religious loons who travel the countryside, spreading misery as they go.
I dont think they want or plan to surrender him. He probably has something on them anyway…it would incriminate them which would cause bombings…dont count on us catching Bin anytime soon. He is dug in.
The Taliban are the de facto government whom the Pakistanis are talking to. Presumably, if the Taliban wanted to cough him up, it could get done, unless some sort of breakaway faction within their own ranks actually harboring bin Laden told the official Taliban leadership to get stuffed - a distinct possibility.
I doubt that we get him out of there without a fight. If we invade with ground troops, and enlist the aid of the northern anti-Taliban factions (with or without Ahmad Shah Masood, who may or may not be dead at this point) who know the terrain, we might still have to chase him all over the place to catch him. A scenario I would consider likely, and that I haven’t heard discussed much, is that as the security around bin Laden starts to crumble under pressure, some party other than UN-sanctioned forces manages to assassinate him. Like maybe some of those anti-Taliban factions, who probably don’t really like us any better than the Taliban do, but would certainly accept any firepower would could bring to bear in overthrowing the Taliban. They are going to be very difficult allies, as what they really care about is running Afghanistan themselves.
Kind of like bin Laden during the Russian invasion, or Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, huh?
It is my understanding that it would be extremely difficult to turn over OBL if he didn’t wish to go. He has a great many well armed followers to protect him.
all they really need to do is give us his exact location at a specific time
I wonder, too, if the Taliban actually CAN hand over bin Laden, no matter how badly they want to. Is it possible that bin Laden is the one in control of the country, and the Taliban is just a figurehead left in place to keep bin Laden/Afghanistan from becoming an internationally-acceptable military target?
I don’t think that’s the situation at all. Osama bin Laden has been there for a while but ruling the country is not what his goals are. The Taliban is the force that has taken over Afghanistan. Even if this were not true, the Taliban is perhaps the least ‘internationally acceptable’ government out there.
I found a moderately interesting article from 1998. The author, who saw the developing situation in 1989, suggests that the Taliban mainly relies on bin Laden for his money, and doesn’t particularly have strong ties otherwise. After all, they are actually deliberating over handing him over.
Hmm, let me clarify what I meant, or try to, anyway 
I didn’t mean that he was actually running the country, but that he might have more actual and effective power than the Taliban. That the Taliban might be doing the actual ‘country running’, but they may not have the power and resources to kick bin Laden out (or hand him over)if he doesn’t want to leave.
Anyway, I thought that their refusal to hand him over might be because THEY can’t roust him out of the mountains, either, but won’t/can’t admit their helplessness to the rest of the world.
asassinated on about 9/9? Betcha a donut hole it was done by ObL’s people as a present to the Taliban. The Taliban would never give up ObL. He’s too good an ally.
The aforementioned Ahmad Shah Masood, or Massoud. Press releases as of the 17th were not unananimous in confirming him dead, though it seems pretty certain (there were reports a few days ago of his aides claiming he was still alive - there were also reports of his funeral).
Yes and no.
I think that if OBL REALLY wanted to hide, it would be hard to find him, even with the Taliban 100% on our side (just think of Eric Rudolph.)
On the other hand, I suspect that to run his network effectively, OBL cannot hide 100%. People need to be able to contact him, he needs to be able to contact people. Those people need to be able to know it’s really him, and so on.
Without the support of a government, this would seem really difficult to me.
That’s what I don’t understand. He may be rich from his family’s business, but sooner or later, you’ve got to go to the bank. Is all his fortune in small bills buried in the mountains? Find the banks and freeze the money. Somebody’s gotta be paying the bills.
They’re working on that. It looks like he may have been planning to finance his next operation by short-selling and trading in put-call options on American Airlines, United, and other airline and insurance industry stocks. Authorities are following the money-one hopes that they’ll be able to shut down the movement of these funds before they get turned into cash under bin Laden’s mattress …
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/010919/07/attacks-suspicious-trading