The mega-manhunt has drawn a blank, despite 100,000 troops, high-tech help and $25-million bounties.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 2, 2006
AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN BORDER - The al-Qaida terror camps are gone from Afghanistan, but the enigma of Osama bin Laden still hangs over the lawless borderlands where tens of thousands of U.S. and Pakistani troops have spent nearly five years searching for him.
Villagers say the CIA missed by only a few miles when it targeted bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, with a missile strike in January. Then in May, U.S. Special Forces arrested one of Zawahri's closest aides, suggesting the trail has not gone entirely cold.
As for bin Laden himself? He may be nearby. Yet hopes of cornering the Saudi-born al-Qaida leader seem as distant as ever. The last time authorities said they were close to getting him was in 2004, and in hindsight those statements seem more hopeful than factual.
Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the most publicized manhunt in history has drawn a blank. The CIA has reorganized agents searching for the al-Qaida leaders in the face of the evolving nature of the terrorist threat. And the American military's once-singular focus is diffused by the need for reconstruction and a growing fight against the Taliban, the resurgent Afghan Islamic movement that once hosted bin Laden.
American soldiers climbing through the forested mountains of Afghanistan's Kunar province - where in the 1980s bin Laden fought in the U.S.-backed jihad against the Soviets - still hope to catch or kill him. But they say bolstering the Afghan government is their primary mission now, amid the worst surge in Taliban attacks in five years.
"It is like chasing ghosts up there," said Sgt. George Williams, 37, of Watertown, N.Y., part of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, which is pushing into untamed territory along the border with Pakistan. "Osama bin Laden is always going to be a target of ours as long as he is out there, but there are other missions: to rebuild Afghanistan and attack the militants still here."
The top leaders of al-Qaida remain free despite more than 100,000 U.S., Afghan and Pakistani forces at the frontier. High-tech listening posts, satellite imagery, unmanned spy planes - not to mention a $25-million bounty on each man - all aid the hunt.
Yet both bin Laden and Zawahri are believed to be communicating to the outside world, posting messages on Islamic Web sites to inspire further attacks on the West. Although the al-Qaida leaders are too isolated to directly run a terrorist operation like Sept. 11, Pakistan says the latest alleged plot, to bomb U.S.-bound jetliners from Britain, may have been blessed by Zawahri.
The frustrating campaign has frayed critical cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, neighbors separated by an ill-defined frontier and a history of mutual suspicion.
Pakistan has captured most of bin Laden's lieutenants, including 9/11 attacks coordinator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and claims to have reduced the remaining al-Qaida command to mere figureheads. Pakistan has lost 350 troops fighting al-Qaida and Taliban-linked militants.
Yet Afghan officials allege that Pakistan is sanctuary for Taliban rebel leaders and lets them recruit from radical Islamic schools. They even suggest that Pakistan is hiding bin Laden, perhaps to ensure that Pakistan remains of strategic importance to Washington.
Latfullah Mashal, a former Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman, goes so far as to pinpoint bin Laden's hideout in a remote valley in Pakistan's North Waziristan region. He says there's a mountain fortress with a network of tunnels, guarded by African militants who never venture outside.
Pakistan, which formally ended its support for the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks, rejects both allegations. It has about 80,000 troops in its wild tribal regions along the Afghan frontier, including a U.S.-trained and equipped quick-reaction force.
"I don't think any other country has played a bigger role than Pakistan," said Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao.
Retired Lt. Gen. Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai, who led the Pakistani army into the region after the Sept. 11 attacks, said sealing the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan would require between 150,000 and 200,000 troops "and still there's no 100 percent guarantee that infiltration would not take place."
Strained by the demands of Iraq, the United States has only about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan. The roughly 10,000 in the border area must cover about 30,000 square miles of some of the most forbidding territory on Earth: jagged mountains, both arid and forested, that become impassable in winter. Steep valleys and rushing rivers are spanned by rickety rope bridges; dark caves could be booby trapped. Villagers also obstruct efforts to run down al-Qaida remnants.
"Bin Laden has a network of contacts and places to go to if he needs to that's pretty close to 20 years old. He's a veteran of that region, so it's very hard to find him," said Michael Scheuer, who once led the CIA unit that was dedicated to hunting the al-Qaida leader. "Bin Laden's status as a hero in the Islamic world is also a telling factor in why he's not been caught."
For U.S. troops, the Afghan mission is increasingly dangerous. At least 272 U.S. service members have died in and around Afghanistan since October 2001. Some 44 U.S. service members died in Afghanistan in 2004, 92 in 2005 and 61 so far in 2006.
Western, Afghan and Pakistani officials agree that the nearest they got to bin Laden was in the Tora Bora mountains, south of Kunar, in November 2001 when he was fleeing the U.S.-backed war that toppled the Taliban regime.
The Pakistani intelligence official said Pakistan at first thought bin Laden was dead, perhaps killed by a bomb at Tora Bora, until a letter he penned to his family was recovered from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed when he was arrested in March 2003.
After that, repeated attempts have been made to get bin Laden and Zawahri.
- In late 2003, Pakistani forces raided Lattaka, a village in North Waziristan, to get bin Laden but he wasn't there.
- In 2004, amid a flurry of military action on both sides of the border, U.S. Lt. Gen. David Barno said he expected to bring bin Laden to justice that year - although officials now say they had no hard intelligence to go on. "It was all guesswork," said Pakistan's Aurakzai. "No one ever gave us precise information that bin Laden or al-Zawahri is in such-and-such area, even a general area."
- Pakistan stepped up its military action in 2004 with a series of bloody operations in South Waziristan province. They busted al-Qaida bases complete with computer and communications equipment. However, most foreign militants at these sanctuaries were not Arabs close to bin Laden but Central Asians, Pakistani officials said.
- Sometime that year, Pakistan learned that either bin Laden or Zawahri was elsewhere in South Waziristan. "An operation was carried out where we were close to getting him, but the trail got cold," said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf. He declined to be more specific.
- In the most recent case, in January, the CIA fired a missile from a Predator drone into the remote Pakistani village of Damadola, 155 miles northeast of Waziristan. The target was Zawahri, who was expected to attend a dinner there. Pakistani intelligence and local residents say the Egyptian doctor-turned-terrorist did not show, but they later learned he was at a supporter's home in Salarzi, about 71/2 miles to the east.
The missile killed at least 13 civilians. Reports that a number of senior al-Qaida operatives also died were never confirmed, as none of their bodies were found.
The associate who allegedly hosted Zawahri, a timber merchant and tribal chief called Haji Nader, was later arrested by U.S. Special Forces, said Commander Youssef, police chief in Naray.
Pakistani intelligence officials say bin Laden and Zawahri likely live separately, each with a tight entourage of trusted Arab retainers and several rings of defense.
Although Pakistan claims to have reduced al-Qaida's leaders to symbols, Pakistani intelligence says its agents have heard that the alleged British-based scheme to bomb trans-Atlantic jetliners was blessed by Zawahri. That would mean Afghanistan remains the headwaters of the world's most feared terrorist movement nearly five years after almost 3,000 people were killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
"There's a little bit of whistling past the graveyard when we say the organization (al-Qaida) is broken," Scheuer said.
