When asked, “If Osama bin Laden was in the house next door, would you notify the authorities?,” the answer from the tribesmen I met was a resounding “no.” As Frederick Mackeson, a British colonial officer, observed of the tribesmen in 1850, “their fidelity is measured by the length of the purse of their seducer, and they transfer their obedience according to the liberality of the donation.”