Solar May Produce Most of World’s Power by 2060, IEA Says

Solar generators may produce the majority of the world’s power within 50 years, slashing the emissions of greenhouse gases that harm the environment, according to a projection by the International Energy Agency.


Photovoltaic and solar-thermal plants may meet most of the world’s demand for electricity by 2060 — and half of all energy needs — with wind, hydropower and biomass plants supplying much of the remaining generation, Cedric Philibert, senior analyst in the renewable energy division at the Paris-based agency, said in an Aug. 26 phone interview.

“Photovoltaic and concentrated solar power together can become the major source of electricity,” Philibert said. “You’ll have a lot more electricity than today but most of it will be produced by solar-electric technologies.”

The solar findings, set to be published in a report later this year, go beyond the IEA’s previous forecast, which envisaged the two technologies meeting about 21 percent of the world’s power needs in 2050. The scenario suggests investors able to pick the industry’s winners may reap significant returns as the global economy shifts away from fossil fuels. More >>>

Location:Cayman Islands

The Kingdom of Magical Thinking

In 1935, an oilman visiting the Middle East reported back to his headquarters, "The future leaves them cold. They want money now."



Although the temptation of overspending has repeatedly undermined oil-rich governments from Caracas to Tehran, Saudi Arabia avoided this trap over the last decade through fiscal discipline that has kept its expenditures below its swelling oil receipts.

But in a recent report striking for the candor of its unpalatable conclusions, Saudi investment bank Jadwa laid out the kingdom's inexorable fiscal challenge: how to balance soaring government spending, rapidly rising domestic oil demand, and a world oil market that gives little room for further revenue increases. And that was before the recent economic turmoil knocked $20 per barrel off oil prices.

Saudi Arabia's government spending, flat since the last oil boom in the 1970s, is now rising at 10 percent or more annually. And it will rise faster still: The House of Saud's survival instinct in the wake of the initial Arab revolutions led King Abdullah to announce $130 billion of largesse in February and March. The resulting increases in government employment and salaries can be cut only at the cost of more discontent.

And that's only what the kingdom is spending on its "counterrevolution" at home. Saudi Arabia will pay the lion's share of the pledged $25 billion of Gulf Cooperation Council aid to Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Oman. With Iraq, Syria, and Yemen likely flashpoints yet to come, the bill will only increase. Already, nearly a third of the Saudi budget goes toward defense, a proportion that could rise in the face of a perceived Iranian threat. More >>>

Location:Cayman Islands

Pakistan calls for maintaining neutrality of UN peacekeeping operations

UNITED NATIONS,Aug 27 (APP): Pakistan told the Security Council Friday that the credibility and neutrality of UN peacekeeping operations, the world body’s flagship activity, must not be compromised on the altar of political expediency.


Participating in a discussion on “Peacekeeping: taking stock and preparing for the future,” acting ambassador Raza Bashir Tarar stressed the need for adherence to the UN Charter, whose basic thrust is on maintenance of international peace and security, to ensure long-term success of peacekeeping.

“The Charter provides legitimacy to UN peacekeeping,” the Pakistani envoy told the 15-member council. “UN Peacekeeping enjoys universal acclaim, cost-effectiveness and professional precision,” he said, adding that peacekeeping offers hope amidst violence and conflicts.
“Recent events have proved that peace operations conducted unilaterally or by different coalitions are poor and costly substitutes to UN peacekeeping,” the Pakistani envoy pointed out. At the same time, Tarar said United Nations operations were largely under-funded and under-resourced, and it was no longer sustainable for troop-contributing countries to subsidize them.
Pakistan, with 11,000 soldiers in blue helmets, is the largest troop contributor to the UN peacekeeping mission around the world. He also emphasized the critical importance of dovetailing peacebuilding into peacekeeping strategies, a task that the Peacebuilding Commission was best placed to develop. More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Deterrence, Demonization, and Drumbeats on Iran

When a rhetorical drumbeat about anything continues long enough and loud enough, the substance in it comes to be widely accepted as common wisdom no matter how flimsy a factual basis, if any, the substance had to begin with.





The demonization of Iran, and in particular the notion that an Iranian nuclear weapon would be a can't-possibly-live-with, must-prevent-at-all-costs proposition has become such a subject. Especially dismaying is the adding to the drumbeat by members of Congress or other political leaders who ought to know better. To what extent their doing so results from their own perceptions having been shaped by drums that have already been beaten and to what extent they are consciously manipulating a theme that sells is unclear. But the result is the same.

One subtopic on which the myth-making about Iran has proceeded apace lately concerns delivery systems Iran is likely to have in a few years. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has repeatedly asserted that Iran will have by 2015 an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a weapon of mass destruction to the United States. This assertion is supposedly based on an executive-branch assessment, but as Greg Thielmann of the Arms Control Association explains, no such assessment says anything like that. There is only a worst-case scenario in an analysis released by the Pentagon that is subject to conditions such as external assistance and is by no means the same as what Inhofe is asserting. More >>>

And lest we forget, remember the 1953 Iranian coup d'état (known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup was the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States under the name TPAJAX Project.[2] The coup saw the transition of Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi from a constitutional monarch to an authoritarian one who relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979. Editor

Location:Islamabad

The explosive truth behind Fukushima's meltdown

Japan insists its nuclear crisis was caused by an unforeseeable combination of tsunami and earthquake. But new evidence suggests its reactors were doomed to fail.


It is one of the mysteries of Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the 11 March earthquake inflict on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit?

The stakes are high: if the earthquake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every similar reactor in Japan may have to be shut down. With almost all of Japan's 54 reactors either offline (in the case of 35) or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety looms over any discussion about restarting them.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) and Japan's government are hardly reliable adjudicators in this controversy. "There has been no meltdown," government spokesman Yukio Edano repeated in the days after 11 March. "It was an unforeseeable disaster," Tepco's then president Masataka Shimizu famously and improbably said later. Five months since the disaster, we now know that meltdown was already occurring as Mr Edano spoke. And far from being unforeseeable, the disaster had been repeatedly forewarned by industry critics. More >>>

Location:Cayman Islands

Call for reservoirs to store rainwater

Monsoon always have a great impact on local agriculture as good rains always increase production of both major and minor crops of Pakistan, which boosts the agriculture sector growth.


There is a need to establish water reservoirs to store this precious natural resource while promotion of rainwater harvesting technique is also a need of hour for Pakistani agriculture.

These views were expressed in the Jang Economic Session on ‘Monsoon-Impact on Agriculture and Economy’, here on Thursday. Participants in the moot included Meteorologist Riaz Khan, Monitoring Chief PMIU Irrigation and Power Department Punjab Habibullah Bodla, President Basmati Growers Association (BGA) Hamid Malhi, Director Farmer Associates of Pakistan (FAP) Rabia Sultan and Chairman AgriForum Pakistan Ibrahim Mughal. The moot was hosted by Sikindar Hameed Lodhi and Intikhab Tariq.

Riaz Khan said that water was the lifeline for agriculture and Pakistani agriculture mainly depended upon rainwater. He said winter rains and snowfall in northern areas irrigated Rabi crop. He said historically 70 mm rain on average had been recorded in winters, which filled 80 per cent of Mangla Dam. He said low and medium flood was very important for river channels as well as for improving ground water table while high floods created troubles due to non availability of water reservoirs infrastructure. Habibullah Bodla said rainwater was very useful for agriculture sector but its benefits were never exploited properly. He said in 2010, Pakistan wasted 1.2 million acre feet rainwater in flood while China save similar quantity out of its 2.1 million acre feet rainwater by storing in dams. He said it has never been thought to utilize the abundant monsoon rainwater by constructing dams. He said that this year so far good rainfall was recorded in rice, cotton and other crops growing zones. He criticized that due to poor forecast system rainwater was also wasted in Pakistan. More >>>

Location:Islamabad

An Explosive New 9/11 Charge

In a new documentary, ex-national security aide Richard Clarke suggests the CIA tried to recruit 9/11 hijackers—then covered it up.  
With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacksonly a month away, former CIA Director George Tenet and two former top aides are fighting back hard against allegations that they engaged in a massive cover-up in 2000 and 2001 to hide intelligence from the White House and the FBI that might have prevented the attacks.

The source of the explosive, unproved allegations is a man who once considered Tenet a close friend: former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who makes the charges against Tenet and the CIA in an interview for a radio documentary timed to the 10thanniversary next month. Portions of the Clarke interview were made available to The Daily Beast by the producers of the documentary.
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Study reveals 168 child deaths in Pakistan drone war

US drone strikes in Pakistan have killed more civilians than previously reported, including 168 children, according to figures compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.



The airstrikes are largely focused on the mountainous areas of Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan. In December 2010, Channel 4 News spoke to witnesses on the ground who said that women and children had perished in the bombing raids, as well as rebel fighters.

Now a detailed study by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) has been published containing new figures on civilian casualties. Its findings suggest the number of ordinary people killed could be 40 per cent higher than previously reported and that as many as 168 children have died since the strikes began.

Commenting on the findings, Unicef said: "Even one child death from drone missiles or suicide bombings is one child death too many. "Children have no place in war, and all parties should do their utmost to protect children from violent attacks at all times." More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Outsourcing National Intelligence

The unprecedented involvement of private corporations in the Iraq War has been well documented.


Private soldiers working for Blackwater USA, Triple Canopy and others provide security services against military-level threats, and they regularly engage in combat. But what is not generally known is that the secret side of the Iraq War and the larger "war on terror" is also conducted by private corporations, fielding private spies. The reach of these corporations has extended into the Oval Office. Corporations are heavily involved in creating the analytical products that underlie the nation's most important and most sensitive national security document, the President's Daily Brief (PDB).

Over the past six years, a quiet revolution has occurred in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing to corporations and away from the long-established practice of keeping operations in U.S. government hands, with only select outsourcing of certain jobs to independently contracted experts. Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors. More >>>

Location:Islamabad

GDP IS DEAD: Will the world be happier without it?

Memo to politicians: Stop promising to grow GDP and start targeting social benefits you can actually deliver—or prepare to face angry mobs. Nothing grows forever on a finite planet, not even the US economy.


It’s not surprising that everyone from President Obama to Michele Bachmann is assuring the electorate that he or she can deliver more GDP growth. When GDP numbers are up, more jobs appear and investments reap higher returns. When GDP is down, economic mayhem ensues.

Yet there are signs that more GDP growth may not be in the cards, regardless whose economic remedy is chosen. In fact, the day may have arrived when GDP itself has outlived whatever usefulness it ever had.

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a number indicating the total spending occurring in a national economy annually. Since WWII, policy makers have used GDP as their primary index of national economic health. During the late 20th century, with the world awash in cheap energy to fuel ever more industrial output and transport-driven trade, the numbers kept going up—and most economists concluded they’d continue doing so forever.

A few contrarians (including Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968) suggested that relying on GDP wasn’t a good idea. Although soaring numbers lead to financial euphoria, they can hide social ills like growing inequality; moreover, GDP fails to distinguish between waste, luxury, and the satisfaction of basic human needs. Perversely, GDP often rises during wars or after environmental disasters, due to increased government spending.

Despite criticisms, economists and policy makers have stuck with GDP—perhaps because tracking a single number makes their jobs easier.

But now, the US may have reached its practical GDP limit. The bursting of a once-in-a-lifetime credit bubble, the maxing out of consumer borrowing and spending capacity, and tightening global resource constraints (showing up as stubbornly high oil prices) have caught national economic output in an undertow. Much of the rest of the world is being drawn in, with Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy swirling ever closer to the drain. During the past two years, Americans bought an anemic recovery—a few hundred billion dollars’ worth of GDP growth—but at the cost of trillions in added government debt.

Now, as Washington descends deeper into partisan acrimony, efforts to generate further growth with yet more debt have become political orphans that no Republican and few Democrats will claim as their own. If the “recovery” was all smoke and mirrors, we’ve just run out of mirrors.
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Location: Cayman Islands

Drone Terrorism

The use of unmanned drones by the U.S. to attack civilian population with Hellfire missiles is a form of state terrorism. It is designed not to assassinate individuals (extrajudicial killing), but to instil fear and terrorise the entire population.


We all know the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan is an illegal act of aggression, and there are no legal or legitimate grounds to justify the ongoing aggression. According to countless international law experts, the war on Afghanistan is an unlawful act of aggression. It “violates[s] international law and the express words of the United Nations Charter”. Article 51 only “gives a state the right to repel an attack that is ongoing or imminent as a temporary measure until the UN Security Council can take steps necessary for international peace and security”, he added. [1]. Indeed, all current U.S.-led wars on Muslim nations are acts of illegal aggression against sovereign nations. The use of armed drones, also known as pilotless planes or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to attack defenceless people and assassinate individuals is criminal.

According to a new report by The Fellowship for Reconciliation, “Armed drones have been used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan (since 2001), Iraq (since 2002), and Yemen (since 2002), by the CIA in Pakistan (since 2004), by the UK military in Afghanistan (since 2007) and by Israel in Gaza (since 2008). It is estimated that drones are being used or developed by over forty countries”. The majority of armed drones are produced and used by the U.S. and Israel , the inventors of terrorism. More >>>

Location: Islamabad

Managing Contraction, Redefining Progress

Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend upon the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to
existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.
—Milton Friedman (economist)


Many analysts who focus on the problems of population growth, resource depletion, and climate change foresee gradually tightening constraints on world economic activity. In most cases the prognosis they offer is for worsening environmental problems, more expensive energy and materials, and slowing economic growth.

However, their analyses often fail to factor in the impacts to and from a financial system built on the expectation of further growth—a system that could come unhinged in a non-linear, catastrophic fashion as growth ends. Financial and monetary systems can crash suddenly and completely. This almost happened in September 2008 as the result of a combination of a decline in the housing market, reliance on overly complex and in many cases fraudulent financial instruments, and skyrocketing energy prices. Another sovereign debt crisis in Europe could bring the world to a similar precipice. Indeed, there is a line-up of actors waiting to take center stage in the years ahead, each capable of bringing the curtain down on the global banking system or one of the world’s major currencies. Each derives its destructive potency from its ability to strangle growth, thus setting off chain reactions of default, bankruptcy, and currency failure. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

A Secret War in 120 Countries: The Pentagon’s New Power Elite

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day.


Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.
After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.
Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling—a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence—in about 60 percent of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged—provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world. More >>>

Location:Islamabad

Pakistan's roller-Coaster economy: tax evasion stifles Growth

Over the last sixty years, Pakistan's economy has seen severe ups and downs. Once considered a model for other developing nations, Pakistan has


been unable to sustain solid growth. Furthermore, a third of its population now lives below the poverty line, and its literacy rate is abysmally low.

Pakistan's economic instability stems in large part from low government revenue resulting from the elite's use of tax evasion, loopholes, and exemptions. Fewer than three million of Pakistan's 175 million citizens pay any income taxes, and the country's tax-to-GDP ratio is only 9 percent. Tax evasion means fewer resources are available for essential social services.

Pakistan spends too much on defense and too little on development: It has spent twice as much on defense during peacetime as it has on education and health combined.

The government knows how to increase its revenue through tax reform, but the rich and powerful have resisted such measures for fear of lowering their own incomes.

Without sufficient revenue the government will continue to be burdened with an unsustainable debt. It needs to end tax exemptions for the wealthy and develop broader, long-term economic plans for sustainable growth. More >>>

In the past, the United States and other Western nations have come to Pakistan's rescue by paying off debts and funding development initiatives. Pakistan's elite has no reason to support reform as long as these bailouts come with no conditions attached.

Location:Islamabad

Crisis management: A good lesson to learn?

Last month three terror attacks once again struck Mumbai, killing approximately 25 people. The attacks turned out to be the doing of an India-based Islamist outfit, the Indian Mujahedeen, and did not involve Pakistan-based Islamist militants.

In the media coverage since, terrorism experts on South Asia have posited that this attack was not a decisive shift in Islamist terrorism in India -- their argument, instead, was that Pakistan-based militants, increasingly autonomous in their operations, still remain the most likely source of a large-scale attack on Indian soil.

Since the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, major cross-border attacks have resulted in bilateral crises. This was the case with the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament and again after the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed over 160 people. With this in mind, it should not be discounted that future cross-border attacks could raise tensions again. More >>>

Greening the Desert II

Greening the Desert II with Arabic subtitles from nadia attar on Vimeo.

The World Needs a New Language

We know it is dangerous to cross a red light, so we wait until it turns green.


We do not go out sailing when the weather forecast promises a great storm. We accept it when a doctor tells us to take medicine to prevent hypertension.

We do not drink the water if there is sign saying that it is contaminated. We are constantly accepting different potential risks and manoeuvring to limit them.

But when it comes to climate change, our willingness to accept it as a potential great risk is missing - and so is our motivation to respond to it with our normal risk-behaviour.

97 percent of the climate scientists believe global warming is happening, that humans are largely responsible and that we need to take action now. From their perspective there is a mountain of evidence on the reality of climate change; the nearest thing to an open-and-shut case that scientist can produce. They are constantly trying to convince us -- the public -- of this fact.

But still the concern shared by almost every scientist is not concurrent with the general public opinion. 44 percent of Americans still believe that global warming is primarily caused by planetary trends, according to a poll from Rasmussen Reports conducted in April. And 36 percent do not believe climate change is a serious problem.

Thus we are currently witnessing an enormous reality gap between science and the public -- with very different perceptions of the risks posed by climate change.

If scientists could solve climate change on their own, the lacking public support wouldn't be a problem. But they can't. Without the endorsement from the general public, the fight against climate change does not stand much of a chance. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Is Iran Really After a Nuclear Bomb?

One question has dominated the U.S. conversation regarding Iran for years: how long until they get the bomb?


Intelligence analysts are constantly updating their estimates, and politicians are always asking for the latest timetables. The problem is, it’s an impossible question. It might also be the wrong one to ask.
Despite the rhetoric from Iran’s president, the country’s nuclear program up to now has not been “like a train without brakes” moving inexorably toward the ultimate weapon. Iran has devoted billions of dollars, a large share of its impressive scientific establishment, and nearly three decades of work toward mastering nuclear technology, yet it has no nuclear arsenal. Compared to Pakistan, which had a far inferior technical foundation yet was able to acquire nuclear weapons capability in about a decade, Iran seems to be dragging its feet.

The really interesting question, then, is not when will Iran have the bomb, but rather why don’t they already, and how can we keep it that way?

In some important ways, nuclear weapons are just like any other tool that governments might choose to acquire. Though our political systems are vastly different, Iran’s decision-making process over whether to build nuclear weapons is not so unlike any decision that the U.S. government must make. There are short-term interests and long-term ones, domestic and international considerations, and the messy process of bringing personalities and institutions together to make a complicated choice with complicated ramifications. And it all occurs within a very specific political environment.
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Location:Islamabad

UNGA Debate on Right to Water Highlights Impact of Climate Change

27 July 2011: The UN General Assembly (UNGA) held a debate on the human right to water and sanitation, during which a number of speakers highlighted that climate change constitutes an obstacle to the enjoyment of this right, stressing the particular situations of small island low-lying States.


The debate took place on 27 July 2011, at UN Headquarters in New York, US. In his opening address, Joseph Deiss, UNGA President, recalled that, in July 2010, the General Assembly adopted a resolution on the human right to water and sanitation, which he said was an important first step towards the explicit acknowledgment of that resource as a human right.

Egypt said States must take all necessary measures to extend human rights, including the right to clean water and sanitation. He added that Egypt’s efforts were challenged by funding, climate change, population growth and other factors, and indicated that his Government had adopted an integrated national plan to address these challenges. Senegal stressed the need to address climate change and drought in order to achieve the right to water, calling for increased assistance.

Cuba called for enhanced cooperation in the face of climate change, calling for the creation of mechanisms that are not dependant on the international financial institutions.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines expressed support for the UNGA resolution by which the Assembly had recognized the right to water and sanitation as a human right. He underlined that his country's achievements in terms of ensuring the realization of that right, considering its limited resources, illustrate the importance of political will. He emphasized the urgency of “looming threats” to achieving the right to water, namely climate change and desertification. He added that his country often resorts to transporting water by ship and said sea-level rise would have a disastrous effect. He concluded by calling for mainstreaming the issue in the global agenda.

Maldives explained that her country's main source of water is shallow groundwater, underscoring its extreme vulnerability to water scarcity. She called for considering the legally binding right to water in the context of sea-level rise, climate change, and other critical phenomena. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

U.S. Commandos Raid Pakistan All the Time

It’s not just the drones. In recent years, U.S. special operations forces have regularly and “surreptitiously” slipped into Pakistan, raiding suspected terrorist hideouts on Pakistani soil.


The team that killed Osama bin Laden — those guys alone had conducted “ten to twelve” of those missions before they hit that infamous compound in Abbottabad.

In a remarkable story for this week’s New Yorker, Nicholas Schmidle puts together the most detailed picture so far of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. But the most combustible component of the explosive article might be the disclosure that U.S. commandos sneak into Pakistan on the regular.

Over the last week, current and one-time top officials have debated the wisdom of the U.S. launching unilateral strikes in places like Pakistan. Former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told a gathering of security professionals in Aspen that the attacks weren’t worth the local antipathy they generated. Retired Gen. Doug Lute, who oversees Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy at the White House, admitted that there was a major “humiliation factor.” But he told the conference that now was the time to “double down” on the raids, with al-Qaida in disarray. “We need to go for the knockout punch.”

Most people in the audience assumed Lute was talking about additional drone attacks. Perhaps Navy SEALs would deliver the hit, instead.

In many minds, that decisive blow landed last May, when Navy SEALs took out the world’s most wanted terrorist. Schmidle’s piece confirms much of what we already knew about the bin Laden raid: yes, they used a stealthy spy drone and a radar-evading Black Hawk and a particularly ferocious dog; yes, bin Laden was unarmed; yes, the SEALs found his porn.

But Schmidle reveals tons of new details, too. One SEAL bear-hugged bin Laden’s wives, to keep them from detonating suicide vests (an unnecessary precaution, it turns out). The commandos considered tunneling into the compound — until overhead imagery showed that the water table would prevent any digging. At least three of the SEALs were part of the operation that rescued Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates.
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Getting Bin Laden - The New Yorker Magazine

Location:Islamabad