Bin Laden’s Death and the New Unknown in Afghanistan

By ALISSA J. RUBIN and DAVID E. SANGER
NYT

KABUL, Afghanistan — From the Taliban’s hidden mud compounds to NATO’s headquarters in Brussels and the Pentagon, combatants in a decade-long war are asking versions of the same question: How does Osama bin Laden’s death change the struggle over who will control Afghanistan?

For the Taliban, the jury is still out: they say their insurgency was never solely dependent on Bin Laden, and they could survive his demise, but the American raid that killed him has raised the possibility that even the movement’s top leaders may not be safe in Pakistan.

Many leaders in Europe, though, see Bin Laden’s death as another reason to pull out of a war they have promised to quit anyway in the next three years. And in Washington, administration officials say they believe that Bin Laden’s death offers them a unique opportunity to unnerve the Taliban leadership and engage them in a political negotiation they have so far resisted.

“If you are Mullah Omar,” one of President Obama’s top advisers said of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Afghan Taliban’s spiritual leader, who operates from Pakistan, “you’ve got to wonder whether the next set of helicopters is coming for you.”

(More here.)