SURPRISE!

According to an anonymous Vice source (yes, we have sources, just like “real” journalists) with ties inside the Pakistani ISI (it’s their CIA), Osama Bin Laden has been tracked to a mountain hideaway in the Taxkorgan Tajik region of China’s predominantly Muslim Xinjiang area and has been under US, British, and Pakistani secret-service surveillance since mid-September of last year. The source also reports that top US officials have been trying to open a dialogue with the Chinese government since positively identifying Bin Laden sometime in the middle of last September, but to no avail.

The Chinese government has refused to talk to the Americans about the report, but recently moved troops into the area for what it describes as “antiterrorist training activities.” In an effort to monitor these troop movements without escalating the tension between the Chinese and Americans, the Pakistani government, under the direction of US Special Forces, has also moved troops close to the border area in the past several weeks.

The report confirms a story that appeared in an article in this magazine in 2002 claiming that Bin Laden may have been operating covertly out of the Chinese mountain range for months before the September 11th attacks, perhaps anticipating the US-led coalition strikes that took out the Taliban regime in nearby Afghanistan. “If you think about it, it makes total sense,” claims our unnamed source. “Bin Laden is smart, so he must have planned a perfect hideaway before 9/11. And what would be a more perfect hiding place than China? The Americans are not going to fuck with the Chinese. They need that cheap-labor fix.”

In late November of 2005, an official communiqué written by a high-ranking officer in the ISI expressed concern over the deployment of Pakistani troops in such close proximity to the Chinese border. “The Pakistanis were afraid that they were getting caught in the middle of a major geopolitical crisis and that they were being asked by the Americans to provoke a confrontation with the Chinese. But when I intercepted the communication, I had no idea what it was about. Why would the US provoke China through the Pakistani armed forces? Then I started digging. I wasn’t prepared for what I would eventually find.”

Apparently America has been surveying the region since the summer of 2005 after zeroing in on intercepted cell-phone calls that sounded like they could be Bin Laden. Sometime in September they received positive confirmation via computer-enhanced satellite photos. “When I finally got my hands on one of the photos I was blown away. It was hard to make him out at first, but then I found the CIA’s computer enhancements (as seen on Murder She Wrote). Then I shit my pants.”

EDOARDO MORETTI

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