Goodbye to all that

There's a mischievous story doing the rounds in Kabul about why the Americans can't find Osama bin Laden. The whisper among embassy staff and aid workers over whisky at the U.N. club is that the key obstacle is Afghanistan's lauded interim leader, Hamid Karzai. Karzai knows the Americans will leave as soon as they get their man. He also knows his own positionand almost all hope for preventing a civil war between the country's warlordsdepends on their staying. So Karzai has Osama bin Laden under lock and key in the presidential palacefor the sake of peace.

That theory...