By Brian Dowing

That Osama bin Laden has been living comfortably in Abbottabad and evidently directing al Qaeda from there – all within earshot of a Pakistani military facility – has been a tremendous embarrassment to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but it comes as no surprise to Indian or many other intelligence services, though realization in Washington has been too long in coming. Paradoxically, US intelligence's recent success in Abbottabad has underscored a long-running failure.

ISI has long been complicit in aiding al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-i-Taiba, Jaish-i-Mohammed, and a slew of other militant groups operating along the Af-Pak line and in Kashmir. It organized Sipah-i-Sahaba to intimidate and kill Shia and Christians inside its country.

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