Now that Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has announced the end of the massive South Waziristan’s anti-Taliban offensive (which started in mid-October and mobilized 30,000 men - the equivalent number of soldiers announced by President Barack Obama to reinforce US troops in Afghanistan), the regional US commander, David Petraeus, has said this mission was mainly aimed at Pakistani groups, not Afghan ones, which still have safe areas inside Pakistan, in Baluchistan province. He urged Pakistan to keep pressing Afghan Taliban leadership settled in those areas. It’s there the US (officially) believe might be hidden, if alive, Osama bin Laden.

Capturing or killing Osama is, according to General McChrystal (US commander in Afghanistan) pivotal to decapitate al-Qaeda. He underlined that the goal is not to eradicate Taliban community (that could be classified as ethnic cleansing) but to neutralize them as a menace to power and stability in Kabul. Given this scenario in which is impossible to achieve a classical victory by unconditional surrender, bringing Osama and Mullah Omar to justice would mean a lot.

About a week ago US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted during an ABC interview there's no intelligence on bin Laden for years. Pakistan’s PM Gilani declared he didn’t believe Osama to be in Pakistani territory. In fact it’s quite possible Mr. bin has long fled away from the Paki-Afghan rough mountain chain. He might be in southern Somalia, where al-Shabaab rules. The dry evergreen forests found in the far southwest near Kenya could provide an efficient refuge to aerial/satellite vision and there are no US interests in that region. Just seems perfect for bad guys… Maybe CIA knows where he is but it doesn’t fill strategic interests, just like before 9/11, when information on the hijackers wasn’t shared with the FBI, which certainly would have allowed John O’Neill to ‘smoke them out’ long before Mr. W. Bush pronounced this words and prevent the attacks. What do we know?

*picture credit: Adam Ferguson/VII Mentor for Time