Nobody really knows where Osama bin Laden is. Some no longer care either. It seems that he has become irrelevant. Pakistan’s intelligence agency and the country’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, believe that bin Laden is dead. Even former president Benazir Bhutto, who was murdered by extremist terrorists, believed that the poster boy for terror is dead.

The fate of the founder of al-Qaeda remains a mystery. Zardari, whose government was given millions of dollars to be able to track down the billionaire bearded bogeyman, says nobody in Pakistan knows anything anymore except that bin Laden could be hiding in the Chitral valley region, but that’s likewise conjectural. Zardari adds that even the Americans have more information.

Pakistan does not know where the supposed al-Qaeda leader is hiding, yet the country is accused by the international community of coddling him. Pakistan’s intelligence agency is also accused of double-dealing and two-timing as it allegedly has ties with extremists while on the take from countries that want these extremists eliminated.

The question is does it still matter whether bin Laden is dead or alive?

Fact is, bin Laden dead or alive is no longer crucial to the wave of radical Islamism. With or without him, terrorism still seems to flourish. That he continues to fund these terrorists from mountainous hinterlands is a scenario that stretches the imagination.

He is said to be dead, as even Western analysts believe, but his death has not changed the situation on the ground. What’s more, his presence already seems irrelevant to the continuing spate of terror-related violence that is really spurred by the political agenda of real and alive radical Islamists.

The term ‘al-Qaeda-linked’ has been the most abused tag. It’s time to rest the poster boy of terror.

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Via The Huffington Post