ABSTRACT
The historical irony is that the US government probably would have tolerated a Taliban regime in Afghanistan were it not for Osama Bin Laden. When Osama Bin Laden was expelled from Sudan in 1996, he returned to familiar turf in eastern Afghanistan, where Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) facilitated a meeting for him with the local Nangarhar Shura. ISI's extensive if discreet contacts with al-Qa'ida at multiple levels convinced some US officials that the road to capturing Bin Laden ran through Islamabad: either it could serve as intermediary between the US and the Taliban for Bin Laden's handover or it could aid a US mission to capture Bin Laden. Picking up on Ahmed's interest in US Civil War history he had written his staff officer's thesis on the Battle of Gettysburg the CIA took him to the battlefield where a US Army War College professor served as his personal guide.
