Five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden is seen only when he wants to be seen.
In video released last week, he appears huddled in the rugged mountains of southern Afghanistan with two aides who helped plan the attacks, then shaking hands with dozens of supporters at a training camp, possibly including several of the hijackers themselves.
Made by Al Qaeda’s media branch and broadcast on Al Jazeera, the videotape was intended as an ominous reminder of the kind of terror that Al Qaeda can unleash.
But here on the ground in Afghanistan, bin Laden is nowhere to be seen. The hunt for him, once a priority for the Bush administration, has ratcheted down into a hushed, seldom-mentioned campaign, while U.S. and NATO troops face escalating battles against the resurgent Taliban that once sheltered him.
“Nobody knows where he is, to be honest,” said Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the 20,000 U.S. troops patrolling southeastern Afghanistan. “He’s very slick. He’s been on the run now for 4 1/2 years. And he doesn’t make mistakes.”
Most experts believe that bin Laden is hiding along the porous, rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He likely is on the lawless Pakistan side, protected by tribal hospitality and inhospitable terrain.
The Washington Post reported Sunday that U.S. Special Forces hunting bin Laden have not received a credible lead on his whereabouts in two years and quoted one counterterrorism official as saying the manhunt has gone “stone cold.”
The Post said that, in the last three months, the Bush administration has ordered the CIA to sharply increase the intelligence officers and assets dedicated to the case. But the story described how the five-year hunt has been hobbled by the U.S. focus on the Iraq war, infighting between the Defense Department and CIA, and a more recent reduction in Pakistan’s efforts to help out.
A team led by the U.S. Special Forces is still hunting bin Laden and other terrorists in Afghanistan, U.S. military officials say. Their activities are secret, although they are allowed to move anywhere inside the country.
“That force is practically unconstrained,” said Jawed Ludin, the chief of staff to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “It’s unlimited. They can operate in the entire country.”
What they are not allowed to do is track bin Laden into Pakistan, at least openly. The government, an ally of the U.S. in the war on terror, says this is because the tribal areas would never allow foreign troops on their territory, and haven’t since the days when Pakistan was part of a British colony.
Pakistani authorities said they don’t know where bin Laden is, or whether he is even in the tribal areas, long considered off-limits even to the Pakistani government. Pakistani officials said they would capture bin Laden if they knew where he was, and they reject any suspicions that authorities are harboring him on their side of the border.
“Please don’t think that somebody’s collaborating, and letting him live there and hiding him, and the government of Pakistan is hiding him,” Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said during a visit with Karzai in Kabul on Wednesday. “Nothing of the sort is happening.”
Indeed, Pakistan has won praise for fighting Al Qaeda, even while accused of sheltering the Taliban and other Islamic militants. Two Western officials in Islamabad, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said Pakistan has had Al Qaeda on the run in the region, disrupted and leaderless.
Pakistan arrests 700 operatives
Pakistani authorities have arrested more than 700 Al Qaeda operatives in the last five years, including four major ones.
U.S. officials in Afghanistan said they cannot talk much about the hunt for bin Laden because they don’t know much about it. For them, the threat from the Taliban is much stronger, much more real.
Taliban-led insurgents have taken over parts of southern Afghanistan in recent months, a setback in the fight against terrorism. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are linked, and the success of the Taliban means help for Al Qaeda, experts say.
Al Qaeda is “the reason we came,” said Ronald Neumann, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. “It’s the long-term threat if we lose.”
On the ground in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers say bin Laden is always on their minds. In the southern part of Ghazni province, several U.S. soldiers spotted a bin Laden look-alike, snapped his picture and joked about collecting the $25 million reward.
But their job isn’t hunting bin Laden. It’s hunting the Taliban.
“I really don’t worry about him,” said Sgt. Kemosi Evans, 28, who saw a friend die after a roadside bomb in June. “I’d rather take care of what’s going on now, right in front of me.”
The stymied hunt for bin Laden seems to reflect how he has become largely marginalized, rarely appearing in public and instead allowing his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri to make videotaped statements. Some people think he’s dead. Conspiracy theorists think the U.S. has already caught him. Others say he’s sick with kidney failure. One former associate said a bin Laden video from two years ago probably was shot in the remote eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan.
But most experts believe that bin Laden is isolated, surrounded by a close-knit group of supporters and cut off from contact with actual Al Qaeda operatives.
“You think he’s effective?” Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao asked. “He’s not effective. He can’t really run that organization.”
But he’s still able to command media attention, as last week’s video–and another longer, more sophisticated one released Sunday night–show. He may no longer be so important to the terror network, but the Al Qaeda brand has moved throughout the world, from Iraq to Indonesia.
Some Afghans who once fought alongside bin Laden say the U.S. war against terrorism has done more for Al Qaeda than bin Laden has. They blame the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for turning many Muslims against the West.
`Thousands of followers’
“Right now, I think bin Laden has thousands of followers,” said Ahmadshah Ahmadzai, who says he met bin Laden during the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. “There isn’t just one bin Laden. There are more than 100,000. All the Arab nations are with him.”
Standing at least 6 foot 4, bin Laden, 49, the son of a Saudi multimillionaire, would stick out in any crowd, even the wild tribal areas of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But bin Laden would find shelter more easily there than in most places, largely because of the hospitality of the Pashtun tribes, known for protecting their guests at all costs.
The border cuts across the Pashtun belt, the stronghold for the Taliban movement.
Bin Laden also is seen as a friend by many Pashtuns because of his help fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which he joined in 1984. He met many Afghan fighters, who remember him as a quiet man. Bin Laden was then unremarkable, which in itself was remarkable –a wealthy Arab, dressed in the clothes of a peasant.
“I grabbed him from behind and shook his shoulders and joked with him, saying, `Oh, I thought you were a beggar, let me give you five afghani,'” recalled Mohammed Siddiq Chakari, an Afghan who says he fought alongside bin Laden against the Soviets in the battle of Jaji in 1987.
Bin Laden left Afghanistan after the Soviets fled, moving back to Saudi Arabia and ending up in Sudan. After political pressure, bin Laden and his followers returned to Afghanistan in 1996, at which time it was under the control of the Taliban. Bin Laden had supporters in many quarters.
“There are people who were friends with Osama bin Laden who now deny it,” said Waheed Mozhdah, an Afghan fighter who met him in Peshawar, Pakistan, and later worked in the Afghan Foreign Ministry under the Taliban.
Some believe that while bin Laden’s capture now seems less likely than ever, it is less crucial than before.
Gary Berntsen, a former CIA officer who led a unit into Afghanistan that was charged with capturing or killing bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks, said his arrest matters less the longer he’s free. The capture of bin Laden likely wouldn’t stop Al Qaeda.
“Bin Ladenism will be around for quite some time,” said Berntsen, whose book “Jawbreaker” details the failed attempt to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora in Afghanistan in 2001, during which he believes the CIA was not given enough manpower to prevent the terror leader from escaping.
“Of course it was heartbreaking, because we should have ended it then and there,” Berntsen said, recalling how he had called for reinforcements that never came. “We should have ended it.”
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kbarker@tribune.com
