Osama Bin Laden, an Afghanistan-based American journalist and writer believes, "went out through Iran and is probably in Saudi Arabia or Sudan or somewhere like that". He left moving westwards, not eastwards, she said. Sarah Chayes, who arrived in Afghanistan in October 2001 to report for the National Public Radio as America got ready to invade the country and remove the Taliban regime, stayed on after her assignment ended in 2002. She eventually moved to Kandhar, and recently released her book on her Afghan experience titled 'The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Aghanistan after the Taliban'.
In an interview with India Abroad, Chayes, asked about her criticism of Pakistan and America's failure to "come down hard" on Pakistan for its "support" to the Taliban, said, "It (the support) never stopped, and it was pretty naïve of the American government to assume that it would stop. This has been their (Pakistan's) national policy for the last 30 years to exploit an extreme religion to advance a regional, tactical agenda. I don't believe Pakistan is behind 9/11, but I do think that for 30 years they have been using religious extremism in one form or another in their kind of power game in the region, and I don't think they ever stopped."