May I pull out my model of war being a lot about reducing the opponent's repertoire again?

Consider the ability to use a hideout "A" (say, FATA) as being part of the repertoire of the reds. You may now negate this and scratch it from his active repertoire - possibly only temporarily - and the reds will simply stick to whatever active repertoire have left. Their activity will become more focused on it (i.e. they will be more elsewhere), but this doesn't necessarily mean much progress for your overall campaign.

The de-activation of elements of the hostiles' active repertoire is very helpful when this is about their offensive repertoire. It does not make much sense to reduce their defensive repertoire to the point where they only employ techniques and behaviours that make it extremely difficult to continue your offensive efforts.


So far, a young Muslim from London travelling to Pakistan without having relatives there rings some alarm bells. Imagine the reds would lose the convenient bases in FATA (and assuming they were shut out of certain troublemaker Madrasses as well). Said young Muslim will probably travel to Tunisia instead, possibly with a two-week tourist travel to a beach hotel as do so many other people.

Always keep in mind the #### did hit the fan long AFTER OBL was forced to evacuate from Sudan.