Taliban guerrilla fighters in eastern Afghanistan in 2007.
''Pakistan today is already in the midst of a small scale civil war. Last year 25,000 Pakistanis were killed or wounded in terrorism-related violence, and that's just civilians. That's three times the number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan in the same year. It is a very fragile, very volatile and very combustible country right now. In many ways it is the strategic prize in this whole equation. What happens in Afghanistan will have huge ramifications for what happens in Pakistan. A jihadist victory in Afghanistan would have enormous reverberations and could even signal a take over by jihadist forces in Pakistan.''
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is the relevance of the al-Qaida leadership in all this? What would happen, for example, were Osama Bin Laden to be killed by a US drone?
Riedel: It would have a tremendous symbolism. He would become an instant martyr for militant Jihad. And it would have consequences on the ground, too. We shouldn't think of bin Laden as living in a cave. He is actively engaged in controlling a global terrorist organization. I don't mean that he runs everything. But he provides strategic direction. The truth is, we don't have a clue where he is. We haven't had eyes on High Value Target Number One since 2002. We believe he is in Pakistan, it is a pretty good bet. But the largest manhunt in human history has so far produced no shred of evidence as to where he is.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,728806,00.html
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