Hamid Mir is a Pakistani journalist. He interviewed bin Laden on November 7, 2001 (an interesting interview in that bin Laden does not take credit for September 11 and claims not to have gone to Dubai for medical treatment). Hamid Mir has now written an article on the connection of the war in Afghanistan and the American desire to control petrochemicals in Central Asia (a connection that is now being denied by some 'progressive' American writers). What caught my eye is the following:

"I am the last journalist, who interviewed Osama bin Laden after September 11 in Afghanistan. After the interview, while we were sipping Arabian tea in his hideout near Kabul, he asked me a question about Zalmay Khalilzad. I showed ignorance about the person. He informed me that they are going to vacate big cities of Afghanistan in coming days for a long guerrilla war and after that Zalmay Khalilzad will play the shots in Kabul, Northern Alliance will get nothing."

What's intriguing about this is that bin Laden was absolutely right. Zalmay Khalilzad, who had been an oil consultant, and had even done some work for Unocal, was indeed appointed by Bush as a special envoy to Afghanistan, an appointment which was announced on December 31, 2001. If bin Laden was showing off his knowledge of the internal workings of U. S. politics, where did he get such specific knowledge? In early November, somewhere in the wilds of Afghanistan, he showed accurate foreknowledge of the future importance of Zalmay Khalilzad. How many people in the United States would have such knowledge? Not only did bin Laden know about Khalilzad, if Khalilzad was going to 'play the shots in Kabul,' bin Laden presumably also knew that the Taliban and his forces in Afghanistan would be defeated. You'd almost think that bin Laden was part of a larger plan involving the domination of Afghanistan by American puppets. It remains to be seen what the Northern Alliance will get.