According to a report published late last year in the subscriber-only version (I’m afraid NYM does not have the funding for subscription services) of a certain Israel-based Intelligence rumor mill (generally believed to be connected to Mossad), during the second half of 2009, intelligence reports reached Washington that Osama bin Ladin, along with his staff and security entourage, had crossed the border from Afghanistan into the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

The BBC had reported that Osama Bin Ladin had allegedly been sighted most recently previously by a captured Taliban in the eastern Afghan province of Ghazni in January or February of last year.

Baluchistan is large and sparsely populated, and borders both Afghanistan and Iran. The Bolan Pass offers a direct route from Kandahar.

Taliban leader Mullah Omar is thought to be hiding in Baluchistan along with his staff and shura, despite Pakistani denials. It is generally known, however, that elements of Pakistani intelligence loyal to jihadism have been systematically hiding Taliban leaders and Pashtun insurgents in Baluchistan.

Moving to Baluchistan could have brought bin Ladin into direct contact with the Taliban’s chief leadership.

Baluchistan is really the home of anti-American Islamic terrorism. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef are relatives and are Baluch raised in Kuwait.

It also would have placed bin Ladin for the first time since 2001 with reach of the open sea. If he chose to take ship, bin Ladin could move his base of operations to the Horn of Africa or, even more interestingly, return triumphantly to the Arabian Peninsula to his native Hadhramaut in Yemen to take direct command of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Consequently, the CIA and the pro-Western portion of the Pakistani Intelligence Service are currently intensifying joint operations in Baluchistan attempting finally to kill or capture bin Ladin, Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership, or at the very least to prevent their escape by sea.

Today’s Wall Street Journal explains why Pakistan’s government found it necessary to make peace with the Taliban and other jihadis in the North-West Frontier Province.

Pakistan’s decision to end a military offensive against Islamic militants in the country’s troubled northwest frontier reflects mounting pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to deal with an even bigger security problem: a growing rebellion in the resource-rich province of Baluchistan.

Political analysts say Gen. Musharraf, boxed in by a pair of increasingly costly conflicts, has been forced to focus on the more important political threat to his government — the Baluch separatist movement — even if it means U.S.-led forces across a porous border in Afghanistan could pay a price for the Pakistani military’s withdrawal from the northwest region of Waziristan.

Under a cease-fire agreement struck this week between tribal chieftains and the military, a three-year government campaign against Islamic militants in Waziristan ended. The military released hundreds of prisoners taken in the rugged tribal area and granted amnesty to others, including some with known links to al Qaeda. Soldiers have vacated advance outposts in the region and relocated to a nearby army camp, according to a senior military official…

One of the brokers of the deal was a retired general now serving as governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, which includes Waziristan. Gov. Ali Mohammed Jan Orakzai, who comes from a tribal area, argued that the military’s campaign in Waziristan had been counterproductive. “Extremism is more a mind-set,” concurred Pakistan’s senior military spokesman, Gen. Shaukat Sultan. “You don’t open up every mind through use of force.”

In Baluchistan, meanwhile, the military’s drive to put down a separatist rebellion has intensified, sparking violent protests in the region and beyond, which grew after separatist leader Akbar Khan Bugti was killed by security forces late last month. Baluch nationalists have been demanding greater political autonomy from Islamabad and a bigger share of the region’s resources, which include large natural-gas reserves.

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