ABSTRACT
A growing number of intelligence analysts and national security officials were convinced that Osama Bin Laden was hiding there in a complex with few apparent links to the outside world. As foreign observers noted at the time, either Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) was complicit in sheltering Bin Laden, 'rogue' ISI elements were sheltering him or the agency simply failed to detect him living within a kilometer of the Pakistan Military Academy. The Pakistan government did make an honest effort to get to the bottom of the Bin Laden affair, when it set up a commission on 21 June 2011 led by Chief Justice Javed Iqbal. Bin Laden would have been useful to ISI because of his links to extremist groups worldwide, and his cult figure status would be helpful with the lagging Kashmir campaign. The decades-long campaign to reform ISI by giving it a legal mandate and making it subservient to civilian government continues.
