The game is afoot...

Intelligence reporting, at least according to the Asia Times, has indicated that a certain high profile individual has been moving around the Afghanistan/Pakistan border meeting with key Al Qaida leaders. That high profile individual would be none other than Osama Bin Laden, and his movements have apparently startled intelligence agencies who haven't seen much out of Bin Laden in over two years.

But what the hell is he up to? According to the article, intelligence analysts have a few guesses...which is all we intelligence analysts can really do at the end of the day, guess:

1) Since he is believed to have met with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the founder and leader of Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) a political party and militant organization, it's possible that Al Qaida and HIA are discussing and planning a joint operation for Afghanistan. Taking advantage of a decreasing number of coalition forces over the next few years this operation would be to win the Afghan war in favor of the Taliban.

2) Internal conflicts are causing a rift in the Taliban and Al Qaida ranks forcing Bin Laden to deal with those issues personally.

3) Al Qaida plans on somehow taking advantage of the current revolutions sweeping the Middle East in order to once again get in the global spotlight.

I am no means an Al Qaida or Afghanistan/Pakistan expert but I'm hoping the situation means number 2; number 1 is the most likely; and I fear number 3 the most.

The reporting reminds me a bit of a similar situation 1-14 CAV faced in our last deployment (because I can find similarities to any world event and 1-14's last deployment). The task-force-that-shall-not-be-named-because-I-could-wind-up-in-jail-for-disclosing-too-much occasionally received information that the head of Al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, traveled to our little corner of Iraq every once in awhile, the town of Jalula to be more specific.

Why al-Masri was coming to Jalula was a mystery and the task force was not exactly forthcoming in their information and only gave us enough so that we could do our jobs in assisting them. All I knew was that it was believed he had come to Jalula a couple of times in the past and then on a final trip in March (or it may have been February, it all bleeds together) when we actually rolled out with the task force in an attempt to capture him...dry hole obviously.

The squadron commander would sporadically ping me for the reason for al-Masri's reported travel to Jalula. Having no sources or other intelligence collection on al-Masri I could only speculate; al-Masri was a big fish in a quickly dwindling school of fish and I was focused on baracudas in our metaphorical ocean...task force could deal with al-Masri and any attempt to collect would have likely tipped our hand that we knew he was coming into the area.

There could be any number of reasons for al-Masri being in Jalula, the squadron commander's favorite was that al-Masri may have had a girlfriend in the town, a likely scenario. My theory was that it was a way for al-Masri to discuss future operations, hand out funds, and deal with internal divisions in an environment that found AQI cells and networks increasingly cut off from each other due to security measures and capture of leadership.

In the end, al-Masri would be killed in April and the reasoning for his Jalula visits would be buried with him and the secrecy obsessiveness of the special forces.