And remember how we invaded Afghanistan because of 9/11?
Most of the terrorists were saudi except one or two who were from UAE. Even if bin Laden was in Afghanistan, it was within less than a day to Pakistan.
The russians had been trying to take over Afghanistan for a long time, probably for the same reason we were doing it. To get a route from the Caspian Sea to the Gulf without having to deal with Iran.
So, Pres GW Bush, before he was governor or president, owned an oil business with the bin Ladens. He already knew their son Usama (sometimes spelled Osama.)
Reagan convinced England to join the "War on Drugs" and get Pakistan to stop growing poppies and providing the base to the heroin trade. (See the original "Traffick" with Helen Mirren.) So, then, the poppy farming moved to Afghanistan and a certain alphabet agency convince Usama to help secure trade routes for the poppies and also help keep tabs on russian interlopers. He was friends with a group of guys there and they gathered data, being a data base of intelligence information. The even adopted the local name for database. Al Qaeda.
So, Usama was a useful idiot, it would appear. And when we left Afghanistan after over 20 years, it went right back to how it was before.