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Afraid he might seek safe haven on its side of the border, Pakistan plans to help find him and turn him over to the U.S.
By Washington Post
November 28, 2001
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan has launched a manhunt of its own inside Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden and other leaders of his al-Qaida terrorist network, sending Pakistani intelligence operatives across the border in hopes of locating the Saudi-born fugitive, the Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing Pakistani and Western officials.
Senior Pakistani intelligence officials said the intense search for bin Laden and his close associates was ordered after they received credible reports that bin Laden might try to flee to Pakistan along the country's porous 1,400-mile border with Afghanistan. The idea is to locate bin Laden, then share the information with the United States and allow the U.S. military to take the lead in capturing or killing him, the Post said.
The United States has mounted its own massive manhunt to find bin Laden and his remaining lieutenants. Pakistani and Western intelligence officials said they have reason to believe that bin Laden may be hiding near Tora Bora in Afghanistan's eastern Nangahar province, close to the Pakistani border.
The officials, according to the Post, said they had a credible report that bin Laden and some of his associates had been sighted there about three weeks ago and might still be in the region, which has cave complexes used in the 1980s by U.S.-funded Afghan rebels during the Soviet occupation.
The new Pakistani operation comes as President Pervez Musharraf's government has become increasingly alarmed at the prospect of bin Laden and his heavily armed fighters leaving Afghanistan in search of a Pakistani safe haven.
Publicly, Musharraf and his top advisers in recent days have sought to play down fears of bin Laden or Taliban incursions into Pakistan, insisting that they have beefed up security along the border. Special forces and regular army troops have been posted along its border with Afghanistan for the first time in 20 years, to ensure that no al-Qaida member or any leading Taliban figure could enter the country.
"I am very sure he is not" in Pakistan, Musharraf said of bin Laden over the weekend. "I don't know his whereabouts, but I'm sure he is not in Pakistan and he has not crossed into Pakistan."
Privately, however, senior Pakistani officials are not so confident, suggesting there is a serious threat that remnants of al-Qaida and the Taliban could find refuge here. And there is significant evidence that the new security measures at the border have not succeeded in closing down the traffic between the two countries.