How will peace with Taliban impact search for bin Laden?

While the nation’s attention was focused on the stock market’s plunge Tuesday after Congress failed to pass the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, appeared to be taking a swipe at his ally the United States.

Perhaps it was the moment, Karzai’s traditional message to Afghans for the Muslim religious holiday of Eid-al Fitr, or it was his eagerness to end the conflict with Islamic militants that has been going on for years. But, in urging the Taliban to lay down their arms, the president said he would personally protect them and other militant leaders from U.S. and NATO troops if they return to Afghanistan.

“Don’t be afraid of the foreigners,” said Karzai, who won the presidency in a democratic election under the auspices of the U.S. and other coalition countries. “I will stand in front of them.”

U.S. and NATO troops, along with Afghan security forces, have launched a counterinsurgency campaign to end the increased violence against the government by the Taliban and other militant groups.

While Karzai noted that he first held out the olive branch two years ago when he urged the king of Saudi Arabia to facilitate peace talks, his message this week goes beyond what he has said in the past.

Indeed, he seemed to be offering Taliban leader Mullah Omar and others a safe haven in Afghanistan — just as they did for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist organization when they ruled the country.

It was the Taliban’s ties to bin Laden and al-Qaida that prompted President Bush to put together a coalition force, led by the U.S., for the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on American soil.

Ties to al-Qaida

The 22 terrorists had ties to al-Qaida and had trained in camps run by bin Laden in the remote mountain region in Afghanistan.

The invasion resulted in the Taliban’s extremist Islamic government being ousted and militants run out of the country. Bin Laden and members of his inner circle also fled. Since then, the world’s leading terrorist and other al-Qaida leaders and Taliban militants have taken refuge in the remote tribal areas on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

There is a bounty on bin Laden’s head, but efforts to kill or capture him have failed.

Al-Qaida and the Taliban have joined forces in the campaign to overthrown the Karzai government in Kabul, which prompts the question: What will happen to bin Laden if the Taliban agree to lay down their arms and return home in peace?

It is a question that goes to the heart of President Bush’s war on global terrorism, a war that has as its fronts Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bin Laden has become the symbol around the world of America’s inability to strike at the heart of global terrorism.

President Bush has been roundly criticized for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the ouster of Saddam Hussein, because it required the redeployment of American troops from Afghanistan. There are credible reports that the Americans had bin Laden cornered and were moving in on his hiding places in the mountains in Afghanistan.

But the redeployment enabled him to escape.

Thus, when Afghanistan’s president urges the Taliban to return home and join with him in rebuilding the nation, he should explain what he would do if Sheik Omar and the Islamic extremists tell him that bin Laden is off limits to Afghanistan’s security forces and American and NATO troops.

The murder of 3,000 innocents in the 9/11 terrorist attacks demands justice — in the form of bin Laden’s capture or death.