Osama bin Laden

[Casey]

Osama trail leads to Iran?

By Marco Liconti

KARACHI: Osama bin Laden may be in Iran. One of the most senior American diplomats in Pakistan has said the US believes Osama may have been intercepted and detained against his will by Iranian agents while travelling along the border between eastern Iran, Balochistan and Afghanistan.

It is a journey already tried out in the past by several Al Qaeda members, may be even by Osama himself, and therefore considered safe, explains the diplomat, who agreed to talk on condition of anonymity.

According to the diplomat, the "Osama in Iran" theory already features in American intelligence reports Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan or Afghanistan. "Until last September we knew, we were sure, that he was in south Waziristan. Now we think Iran, or Yemen. These are the theories they are putting forward," he explained.

For this reason, the United States is no longer putting as much pressure on Pakistan for the military operations to continue in south Waziristan or to open up new fronts in other areas on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the diplomat said. "To open new fronts along the border risks destabilizing Pakistan and there is no reason to do that, given that we are no longer sure Osama is in that area."

The Yemen theory indicated that Osama had fled to the Gulf country, driven partly by the desire to personally head up the new Al Qaeda offensive across the border in Saudi Arabia. But the most convincing hypothesis, considering the climate of tension between Washington and Tehran over the nuclear issue, is surely the Iranian one. And this is the one the diplomat insists on pursuing.

In the past there has been talk of the possible presence of leading Al Qaeda figures in Tehran, in a militarized compound directly controlled by the Pasdaran (Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards corps).

Al Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and one of Osama's sons are the most illustrious names rumoured to be held there. Some say the Al Qaeda men are kept in conditions of "genuine hospitality", while others say Tehran is enforcing an "obligatory stay" and keeping them "under surveillance".

Further fuelling these rumours was an announcement last year by Hassan Rohani, secretary general of the Iranian National Security Council, that Al Qaeda-linked arrests have been made and that these would lead to a future trial.

"They [the Iranians] have played these games in the past, letting whoever they pleased come and go, and freeing those who were no longer useful to them," the diplomat said.

Yet this time, Osama bin Laden himself could have become trapped in one of the Iranian intelligence "games". The Al Qaeda leader may have tried to seek temporary refuge in Iran after being forced to abandon south Waziristan, following the Pakistani and US military offensive and the arrest of a series of Al Qaeda members who could have revealed the exact location of his hiding place. Probably entering Iran through Balochistan and possibly passing through the border city of Taftan, Osama may have been taken into custody by agents from Tehran.

If that's the case, the Iranians may be considering using him as a bargaining chip to stave off possible military action from the United States. "It is a possible scenario.

They could do it, of course. What remains to be seen is how we will react," the diplomat, said, adding however that the capture of Osama no longer tops the list of Washington's priorities. "After Bush's re-election, it is no longer a priority aim. The stabilizing of Iraq and the Iranian nuclear threat come first."

The diplomat declined to comment on rumours that the United States is organizing commando operations against Tehran, using Pakistan, and in particular Karachi and the province of Balochistan, as a support base - a scenario described in a recent investigative report by the American weekly the New Yorker.

That same scenario has been confirmed by Pakistani military sources, and its plausibility is further strengthened by indications of the construction of two new American military outposts in Balochistan: the first in the vicinity of the Khuzdar airbase, and another closer to the border with Iran, at Dalbandin.

In recent weeks, the Pakistani press has also reported the presence of American commandos in Karachi, in light of the possible action on Iranian territory. According to the reports, it has been chosen as a training ground because of its geographical layout, which is very similar to that of Tehran. However, Pakistani military sources who confirmed the reports, refused to comment on what kind of action the American troops are planning. - By arrangement with ADNKRONOS-Italy.

http://www.dawn.com/2005/02/20/int2.htm

[Petronas]

Upping The Ante In Bin Laden Hunt
Feb 19, 2005 5:25 pm US/Eastern

WASHINGTON (CBS) Thousands of U.S., Afghan and Pakistani troops and who knows how many spooks and special forces teams have searched for him for more than three years now, with no success. Now, hoping that plain old greed and publicity will prompt a slew of new leads, U.S. officials are blanketing Pakistani television with more "Most Wanted" ads for Osama bin Laden and his terrorists, CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports. "You may get a reward of up to $25 million (and) be resettled to any new place with your family," the ads offer.

So far, about a dozen tips a day are coming in, although many Pakistanis remain dubious. "Maybe in one percent out of 100 it'll make an impact," said one young man in a café. "But in my opinion, I don't think so."

The ads are a prelude to what is expected to be a dramatic increase in the reward money for bin Laden, from its current $25 million to $50 million sometime later this month. Counter-terrorism experts believe it also reflects a subtle shift in U.S. thinking about where bin Laden may be hiding.

Instead of staying in the barren mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where many believed he fled after 9/11, some officials now conclude he may be within range of TV viewers in Pakistan's larger cities. They cite, for example, the cleaned-up, almost pressed look of bin Laden's clothing in his most recent videotape, and the fact that it was delivered to television networks very quickly after its taping. Plus, several other al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden's chief lieutenants Khalid Sheik Muhammed and Ramzi Binalsheib, were captured in large Pakistan cities.

"We do know that we've been quite successful in apprehending al Qaeda figures in Pakistan, and perhaps there will be information about these people," says the State Department's Frances X. Taylor. It might also help if Pakistani viewers understood the details of the reward: that's $50 million to the penny being offered. Overseas informants, officials point out, don't pay any income tax.

http://wcbs880.com/terror/terror_story_050083057.html

[The 801]

Ugh, its from the Drudgereport... sorry..

Iran denies rumors it has arrested bin Laden
Mon Feb 21 2005 10:20:00 ET

Iran denied Monday suggestions on some local Internet sites that it arrested Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, the Western world's most wanted man, on the border with Pakistan.

"This information is wrong and bin Laden has not been arrested by our security forces," government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said at a weekly press briefing.

Some Iranian Internet sites quoted American officials as saying the Al-Qaeda leader, who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head, had been arrested two weeks ago by Iranian forces.

The Saudi-born militant is blamed for the September 11, 2001 terror strikes on the United States and a string of other attacks around the world.

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3.htm

[The 801]

Bin Laden Asks Zarqawi to Make U.S. a Target -Source

1 hour, 41 minutes ago Top Stories - Reuters

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) recently asked his chief ally in Iraq (news - web sites), Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to consider the territory of the United States as a target for terrorist attacks, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on Monday.


"There has been communication between bin Laden and Zarqawi, with bin Laden suggesting to Zarqawi the U.S. homeland as a target," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official called the bin Laden communication "a fairly recent development" but declined to provide details for fear of compromising U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.

The Department of Homeland Security said it issued a classified intelligence bulletin over the weekend warning state officials that the federal government had received nonspecific information about al Qaeda plans to attack the United States.

Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the threat was still being analyzed, but was not enough to raise the U.S. terrorism alert level, which is currently set at yellow to signify an elevated threat.

"The interesting thing is the implication here that Zarqawi could pull such a thing off, that he has that reach," said Daniel Benjamin, a terrorism analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"It's particularly interesting that bin Laden would think that Zarqawi could do this," he said.

Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant, is a leading figure among Islamic insurgents who are waging a deadly campaign against U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites), suggested ties between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.


The bipartisan commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington later concluded no collaborative relationship existed between Saddam and the bin Laden network blamed for the attacks.


CIA (news - web sites) Director Porter Goss told the Senate intelligence committee this month that the Iraqi insurgency that flared in response to the 2003 invasion has begun to pose an emerging international terrorism threat.


Goss said Zarqawi in particular was trying to establish a safe haven in Iraq from which to operate against Western nations and "apostate" Muslim governments.

"It raises the question: Is bin Laden looking to Zarqawi because he has seen his successes in some areas and he's wondering whether he can leverage additional resources in other areas," the counterterrorism official said.

"One would have to get into bin Laden's head for what his reasoning is," the official added.


(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles and Caroline Drees)


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=1&u=/nm/20050228/ts_nm/security_binladen_dc


Looks like grabbing AZ's people last week is paying off.....

[Casey]

Osama bin Laden Archive
http://www.afghanistanwar.com/showthread.php?t=4999

[Casey]

Bin Laden letter intercepted
14/03/2005 19:02 - (SA)

Dubai - Osama bin Laden attempted to communicate with Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a month ago through a letter that was seized when a ground courier in Pakistan was intercepted, a counter-terrorism expert said here on Monday.
"About four weeks ago, we intercepted communication between Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi," which occurred when "a ground courier was intercepted," Bob Newman, director of international security and counter-terrorism services with The GeoScope Group, told an Airport, Port and Terminal Security (APTS) Middle East conference.

"We (US intelligence) intercepted the man and looked in his pockets. That's how we found out," he added.

Newman, whose Colorado-based organisation provides teams to help track down terror suspects at the planning stage, later told reporters the courier was stopped in west Pakistan, "carrying a letter".

"We believe it was authentic. But was it really an attempt at clandestine communication or was he (bin Laden) testing our ability to intercept him? We believe he may have been trying to see if we could intercept his courier," he said.

A US counter-terrorism official said in Washington last month that the Al-Qaeda leader had suggested to Zarqawi that he get involved in attacks inside the United States, where bin Laden's followers carried out the September 11 2001 attacks.

The official would not comment on how the two had communicated.

In December, bin Laden named the Jordanian-born Zarqawi "emir" of the terror network in Iraq. The United States has placed $25m bounties on both men.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1676307,00.html

[1001]

Musharraf: We lost Bin Laden trail last year

Pakistani President says his forces were very close to discovering Bin Laden’s whereabouts.

By Rana Jawad - ISLAMABAD

Pakistani forces hunting Osama bin Laden lost track of the Al-Qaeda leader after coming close to discovering his whereabouts several months ago, President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview.

Musharraf told the BBC late Monday that intelligence agencies had indications eight to 10 months ago about the whereabouts of Bin Laden but then the trail went cold.

"There have been occasions where, through interrogation of those who have been captured, the Al-Qaeda members who were apprehended there, and through technical means, there was a time when the dragnet has closed," Musharraf said.

"We thought we knew roughly the area where he possibly could be. That was, I think ... not very long ago, maybe eight to 10 months back," said Musharraf, who is a close ally in the US-led war against terrorism.

Musharraf said the net had been closing on the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but he fled.

The Pakistani leader said his forces got their clearest trace of Bin Laden when they were operating in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border last year, the period when they claimed to have killed some 300 foreign and local Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

But since then, Musharraf said, the security forces had seen no sign that the Al-Qaeda leader or his associates were in the area.

"They can move and then you lose contact," he said.

In May and July 2004 Pakistan also rounded up scores of Al-Qaeda operatives including some key figures, who had taken shelter in other parts of the country after fleeing tribal sanctuaries.


Notable among these were Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian indicted in the 1998 twin bombings of US embassies in Africa, and a Pakistani computer expert Naeem Noor Khan, thought to have been planning a series of attacks in Britain and the United States.


Security officials have told AFP that Ghailani, who sneaked into the Pakistani tribal regions from Afghanistan soon after the fall of Afghanistan's hardline Taliban regime in late 2001, had received messages from Bin Laden as late as 2003.


Ghailani was handed over to the United States and flown out of Pakistan last December.


Security officials believe Bin Laden slipped across the mountainous border into Pakistan after fleeing a massive US assault in eastern Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains in December 2001.


There has been speculation in security circles here that he could be somewhere in the mountainous border area near the Chitral valley in northern Pakistan.


Pakistan also conducted a series of operations in tribal regions near Afghanistan's Kandahar province further to the south back in April 2003, a month after the arrest of the 9/11 chief co-planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammad.


Tens of thousands of troops have remained deployed in the rugged northwestern lawless regions since 2002 to purge hundreds of suspected foreign Al-Qaeda fighters believed to have been hiding there with local support.


Lately the battleground has shifted to North Waziristan after security forces claimed they had wiped out militants' hideouts and training camps in neighbouring South Waziristan.

http://195.224.230.11/english/?id=12980

************



Busharraf! How ridiculous he is!
That shows the world how ridiculous the war on ´terror´ is!!!

:D

[Alli]

That shows the world how ridiculous the war on terror is!!!

:D You're right. We should just all let them blow us up.

[Petronas]

Usama's Niece Back in New York City
Tuesday, March 15, 2005

She walks down the street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, thin and stylish, just another well-heeled beauty chatting away on her cell phone. Except that she isn't — she's Usama bin Laden's niece. Wafah Binladin left the city in the months before her uncle's ghastly attack, but she's back now, living at a friend's posh pad off Park Avenue, pursuing her career as a pop star and living it up on the social scene at swanky Soho House. A former Columbia student who grew up in Geneva, she takes the subway around town, Elton John sheet music under her arm, trading on her connections and looking for a way into the music scene. But friends say Wafah is wearing out her welcome with her upscale pals.

"She wants to be a pop star, but no record company will have her," said one pal. "At first, we all had sympathy for her and thought she was a nice girl with an unfortunate family connection." But the pal said Wafah's "attitude" is alienating people. "She's this extremely wealthy girl who is used to getting what she wants and having people jump at her every word," the friend said. "She keeps saying, 'Poor me — I have no family because I left to pursue my dream.' She has no family because her uncle is a terrorist," the pal said. "And the way she treats people! Now she is trying to make money by giving French lessons. But if people don't want her French lessons, she'll hang up and scream, 'B----!' "

Wafah has also been known to scream at "friends" whose connections did not pan out for her: "You are of no use to me!" One pal said, "She called up my [connection] and screamed at them: 'You will meet with me! Now!' They were like, 'No way!' She's a spoiled rich girl, and it's wearing thin."

Wafah also has been known to use aliases — insisting one night her name was really Amanda, and once speculating she might change her name to Deborah, pals said. Wafah, who is living in an apartment owned by well-off friends, declined to be interviewed numerous times when approached by The Post. A friend in her building said she is avoiding media interviews and wants to maintain her privacy — despite the dark-haired beauty's bid to be a pop star.

Wafah's neighbors and local storekeepers were stunned to hear bin Laden's niece was living among them after moving from London. "It's weird, and it feels awkward that she's here," said Richard Gonzalez, 28, who lives and works nearby. But Marcus Hollingsworth, 42, manager of the Marché Madison gourmet store near the apartment building where Wafah lives, said she should not be blamed for her uncle's monstrous crimes. "She has nothing to do with her uncle, so what's the big deal?" he said.

Wafah's mother, Carmen, was married to Yeslam, one of Osama's 53 siblings, all born to patriarch Mohammed bin Laden's multiple wives. The Binladin family is one of the most prominent in Saudi Arabia — and many of the siblings have disavowed their black-sheep terrorist brother.

Wafah was born an American citizen while her father was studying at the University of California. She grew up in Switzerland in a multimillion-dollar mansion overlooking Lake Geneva, a child of European privilege, accustomed to high society and expensive shopping. She studied law at Geneva University before going on to Columbia for a three-year doctorate. An internship at law firm Schulte Roth and Zabel followed. But she had always wanted a career in music and she stepped up her singing, cutting tracks at a Manhattan recording studio.

She lived in a $6,000-a-month loft on Spring Street, and shopkeepers knew her as a big spender. A saleswoman at the clothing store Big Drop reported that she would spend thousands at a time on designer clothes. But in the months before the 9/11 attacks, she left town. Afterward, she told an interviewer she was horrified by the slaughter of innocents in the World Trade Center. "All I thought about was those people in those buildings," she said. "I couldn't get hold of my friends. Every night, I'd walk home looking up at the Twin Towers. I kept thinking, how could anyone do such a thing?" Wafah has only met her notorious uncle once and has rejected her Muslim heritage. She spells her surname — Binladin — differently, but many are surprised she has not changed it as she pursues a career in the music industry.

Until moving back to New York, Wafah was living in style in London. She was seen at various charity functions rubbing shoulders with boldface names like Natalie Imbruglia, Rod Stewart and Phil Collins as she pursued pop stardom and fame. Her friends in London reportedly included millionaire socialite Tim Jeffries, who has dated some of the most beautiful women in the world — Elle McPherson, Claudia Schiffer and Liz Hurley, among others. She attended the hottest clubs and was seen mixing it up at a trendy celebrity haunt with Jade Jagger and Jerry Hall. The sultry singer also reportedly began collaborating with Madonna's producer, Nellee Hooper, and her music style was described as "East meets West with a funky beat." "I love American movies and American music, like Destiny's Child and Mariah Carey," Wafah once said. "I love Madonna and Michael and Janet Jackson, too. I love Jennifer Lopez. She's the most beautiful woman in the world."

Wafah's mother, Carmen, said after 9/11, she was afraid her daughter would be forever tormented because of her link to bin Laden. "I can understand that when people see me, or see my daughter when she says, 'I am bin Laden,' will they believe her that she didn't know, that she didn't have contact with them [the terrorists]?" she said. She said her in-laws had even condemned Wafah and her two younger sisters because the girls were brought up in the West and developed Western values.

Still, most if not all of the family doesn't appear to shun Western money. Although the Saudi Binladen Group changed its name, at least when dealing with one U.S. firm after 9/11, at least a dozen Wall Street firms are still linked to the company, experts say.

The family's rich ties have prompted hundreds of relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the firm. In a complaint filed in U.S. court, the families charged, "While publicly denying a relationship with Usama, a number of the bin Laden brothers and brothers-in-law personally and privately support his cause and contribute to jihad."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,150479,00.html

[al-Canine]

Security entourage holds clues in hunt for bin Laden

In an interview, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, a top Pakistani commander, talks of the hunt on Pakistan's northwestern border.

By Owais Tohid | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN - After three years of poking around caves, raiding compounds, and getting the slip from motorbike mullahs, the intelligence communities chasing Osama bin Laden finally seem to know what they're on the lookout for.

To find the world's most wanted man, Pakistani forces are trying to spot signs of his elaborate security entourage. Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, Pakistan's top commander in the tribal region near the Afghan border, says Mr. bin Laden is guarded by some 50 men, divided into concentric circles of security.

Despite President Pervez Musharraf's recent statement that bin Laden's trail had gone cold, the hunt goes on.

"I am desperately looking for the signature of his security; because it is then I can declare victory.... Finding the signature means either I will get hold of him or I will kill him," General Hussain told the Monitor in an interview at his headquarters in Peshawar.

Last month, the US launched advertisements on Pakistani TV and radio highlighting rewards for information leading to the arrest of any of 14 suspects, starting with Bin Laden. If top Al Qaeda leaders are along the Pakistani-Afghan border, they are believed to be at a place where they can go to tribal areas in both countries.

Captured militants and intelligence gathered through members of breakaway factions indicate that several layers of security surround bin Laden at all times.

"There is a ring of very close guards, there is an outer guard, and then there is an inner guard, and also various circles. Everybody has a code to enter from the outer circle to the inner circle, then another to move from the inner circle to meeting him," says Hussain.

At night, the rings of security are indicated by flashlight signals.

When bin Laden's group moves, says Hussain, they go in caravans and dress in women's clothing to avoid detection by satellite.

"Now I have also given orders that when every vehicle is checked, the women are asked to say something so that you can make out whether it is a male voice or a female voice," he says.

Last year, thousands of military and paramilitary troops battled Al Qaeda militants and tribal supporters in south Waziristan. The 48 military operations resulted in more than 500 deaths, including 304 foreign and local militants and around 200 troops.

Pakistani forces captured 620 militants as well. The number of foreign militants - mostly Uzbek, Chechen, and Tajiks - in Waziristan is now estimated at between 80 and 100, a steep decline from the 600- to 700-person estimate of last year.

"In these 48 operations which were in the length and breadth of the whole South Waziristan agency, the possibility of this fellow [bin Laden] being in one of the target areas cannot be ruled out," says Hussain. "But I have nothing of this indication [of his security entourage] in my area."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0325/p07s01-wosc.html

[The 801]

How a Lone Diplomat Compromised the Hunt for Bin Laden

BY RICHARD MINITER - Special to the Sun
March 28, 2005


WASHINGTON - A lone U.S. ambassador compromised America's hunt for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan for more than two years, The New York Sun has learned.

Ambassador Nancy Powell, America's representative in Pakistan, refused to allow the distribution in Pakistan of wanted posters, matchbooks, and other items advertising America's $25 million reward for information leading to the capture of Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders.

Instead, thousands of matchbooks, posters, and other material - printed at taxpayer expense and translated into Urdu, Pashto, and other local languages - remained "impounded" on American Embassy grounds from 2002 to 2004, according to Rep. Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois.

While the American government was engaged in a number of "black" or covert intelligence activities to locate Al Qaeda leaders, Mr. Kirk said, the "white" or public efforts - which have succeeded in the past in leading to the capture of wanted terrorists - were effectively shut down in the months following the September 11 attacks.

Mr. Kirk discovered Ms. Powell's unusual order in January 2004 and, over the past year, launched a series of behind-the-scenes moves that culminated in a blunt conversation with President Bush aboard Air Force One, the removal of the ambassador, and congressional approval for reinvigorating the hunt for Mr. bin Laden.

The full effect of Ms. Powell's impoundment order is difficult to measure. Pakistan is a key theater in the war on terror. Virtually every Al Qaeda leader captured to date has been apprehended in Pakistan, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the September 11 attacks. More than 600 Al Qaeda fighters have been killed or captured in Pakistan since 2001.

Mr. Kirk accidentally learned of Ms. Powell's impoundment policy as part of an official congressional delegation visiting Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in January 2004.

During the course of his visit, Mr. Kirk met with several intelligence officers to discuss the hunt for Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Kirk, a moderate Republican from the North Shore of Chicago, also serves as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserves.

Citing his experience in intelligence matters, Mr. Kirk asked embassy intelligence officials about the distribution of matchbooks in local languages. A single matchbook helped lead to the capture of Mir Amal Kansi, who gunned down several CIA employees at the front gates of the agency's Langley, Va., headquarters in 1993. Kansi was arrested in Pakistan in 1995 when a local fingered him for the $5 million reward. Mr. Kirk pointed out the similarities between the Kansi and bin Laden cases. "Both are cases gone cold in Pakistan," he said.

Embassy intelligence officials agreed with his assessment, Mr. Kirk said, but surprised the lawmaker by saying that the ambassador had ended the distribution of printed materials advertising the $25 million price on Mr. bin Laden's head.

Security personal were unhappy with the decision, according to the congressman. "There was a lot of discord among the staff," he said.

Mr. Kirk said that he raised the issue directly with the ambassador. According to the congressman, she replied that she had "six top priorities" and finding Mr. bin Laden was only one of them. She listed other priorities: securing supply lines for American and allied forces in Afghanistan, shutting down the network of nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan, preventing a nuclear war between Pakistan and India, and forestalling a radical Islamic takeover of the government of Pakistan, a key American ally.

Ms. Powell, now serving at the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters in Washington D.C., declined to comment directly.

A senior State Department official confirmed that the meeting between Mr. Kirk and Ms. Powell did occur and that the ambassador did review the embassy's top six priorities, but the official said that "counterterrorism was the no. 1 priority."

The senior State Department official denied that Ms. Powell had restricted the distribution of materials touting the reward for Mr. bin Laden and other "high value targets." That program - known as Rewards for Justice - was discontinued in Pakistan prior to Ms. Powell's 2002 arrival because it was "ineffective," the senior official said. At the time, the Rewards for Justice program was widely used by other American embassies farther from the center of America's operations to kill or capture key Al Qaeda leaders.

A career State Department functionary, Ms. Powell was sworn in as American ambassador to Pakistan on August 9, 2002. A fluent Urdu speaker, she had previously served in posts on the subcontinent and across sub-Saharan Africa. She joined the State Department in 1977, following a six-year stint teaching high-school social studies in Dayton, Iowa.

Returning to Washington, D.C., Mr. Kirk began working to overturn Ms. Powell's order. As member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the State Department, he was a force with which to be reckoned. He worked methodically, far from the public eye. He met with key congressional chairmen and then, gathering support, met with the speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. In February 2004, he met with then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Then, he began raising the issue with a growing array of White House officials.

When Mr. Bush asked the congressman to join him aboard Air Force One for a campaign stop in Mr. Kirk's suburban Chicago district in July 2004, the lawmaker saw his chance. He told the president about his ambassador impounding materials that could lead to the capture of Mr. bin Laden. "Bush was very cautious," Mr. Kirk recalled. The president did not betray an immediate response. "When one of his people is concerned, he likes to take his time and investigate."

Ms. Powell left her post as American ambassador in November 2004.

State Department spokesman Noel Clay declined to comment on the timing of ambassadorial rotations.

A senior State Department official disputed the notion that Ms. Powell was removed by the White House, adding, "if the president really wants an ambassador gone, the department can move a lot faster than three months."

The former schoolteacher was replaced by veteran diplomat Ryan Crocker in November 2004. The mood at the American Embassy lifted almost immediately. "He is a take-charge guy," said one official who knows the embassy's intelligence staff, "far more aggressive in pursuing the bin Laden account."

The American Embassy in Islamabad now boasts a 24-hour call center to receive tips. The center is manned by two locals, both of whom speak the three major languages of Pakistan, and supervised by a Diplomatic Security officer. Embassy staff recently launched a 12-week radio and television campaign alerting residents that, in the words of one 30-second Urdu-language radio spot, they "may be eligible for a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to the arrest of known international terrorists." About 25 calls were received in February 2005, the center's first full month of operation.

Congress recently passed legislation raising the reward for information on Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members to $50 million and revamping the Rewards for Justice Program. More than $57 million has been paid to 43 people who provided credible information about the whereabouts of known terrorists since the program's founding in 1984. But little has been paid since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Under legislation co-sponsored by Mr. Kirk and signed by Mr. Bush in December 2004, the top reward for information leading to the capture of Mr. bin Laden has been raised to $50 million from $25 million. The Rewards for Justice program has also been extensively retuned. Embassies are now required to conduct focus groups of locals to discover precisely which radio stations they tune in to and which newspapers they read. Based on those reports, the American Embassy in Pakistan is now broadcasting advertisements on the radio programs most closely followed by the residents of Waziristan, a mountainous region of Pakistan that is believed to be a haven for Al Qaeda.

The American Embassy in Islamabad's Rewards for Justice program is now in high gear. Yet, if Mr. Kirk and some intelligence officials are correct, valuable time was lost.

http://www.nysun.com/article/11208

[Casey]

Bin Laden 'bribed his way out'
12/04/2005 14:19 - (SA)

Berlin - Osama bin Laden bribed Afghan militias to give him free passage into hiding after the United States-led invasion in 2001, the head of Germany's spy agency was quoted on Tuesday as saying in remarks critical of the United States.

"The principal mistake was made already in 2001, when one wanted Bin Laden to be apprehended by the Afghan militias in Tora Bora," August Hanning told the Handelsblatt daily. "There, bin Laden could buy himself free with a lot of money."

The head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service did not explicitly blame the United States, whose forces used Afghans as their eyes and ears in the hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban after the war, but the context was clear.

Shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan the US commander, General Tommy Franks, acknowledged that some Afghans were probably accepting bribes to free al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters whom the US wished to interrogate - although he did not name Osama bin Laden himself.

Military experts warned at the time that many Afghan tribal leaders were working first to consolidate their own power, viewing the American goals of capturing al-Qaeda figures as secondary.

The failure to catch bin Laden quickly allowed the terrorist leader - blamed by the United States for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington - to slip away and insulate himself, Hanning said.

"Since then, he has been able to create his own infrastructure in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and has won many friends from the tribal groups there," he said.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1688676,00.html

[1001]

Bin Laden's trail goes through Pakistan's autonomous border with Afghanistan


By S. AMJAD HUSSAIN
SPECIAL TO THE BLADE

On Wednesday, Pakistan announced it had captured Abu Farraj al-Libbi in the tribal town of Mardan in its North-West Frontier Province. The United States says al-Libbi is the No. 3 man in al-Qaeda and that he may have information on the whereabouts of its leader, Osama bin Laden. But where is bin Laden?



PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Where in the world is Osama bin Laden hiding? This is the $25 million question that has baffled everyone since the man America sees as Public Enemy No. 1 went underground after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Neither the coalition forces in Afghanistan nor the Pakistani army on their side of the border know for sure. Despite the $25 million the United States has offered as a reward, even the best international bounty hunters have not been able to get a handle on his whereabouts.

One thing that seems sure, however, that is he is alive.

At one time, he was presumed to have died in
the relentless bombardment of the caves of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. Later, when bin Laden had not been heard from, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan speculated that he had died from kidney disease for which he had been receiving dialysis treatment.

Since then, however, he has been heard from, via video and audiotape, several times, most notably days before the U.S. presidential election in November. Yet the authorities never seem close to seizing him.

That is nothing new. Even before the occupation of Afghanistan, bin Laden was on the CIA radar screen, and attempts to nab him had been made for years before Sept. 11.

Now, bin Laden has become a legend in the Islamic world, though less for his terrorist activities than for his ability to elude his pursuers.

Bin Laden has, since his arrival in Afghanistan from Sudan in the summer of 1996, lived behind a ring of security provided by his loyal followers. Journalists who were allowed to meet him in those years before he became a household word were taken through circuitous routs to his mountain hideouts, traveling blindfolded much of the time.

One such person is veteran Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusafzai, invited by bin Laden after the U.S. missile attack on Osama's Afghan camp on Aug. 20, 1998, an attack which came when bin laden was not there.

Since the toppling of Taliban he has not given any interviews. He keeps surfacing, however, on video and cassette tapes that somehow make it to the Al-Jazeera TV network in the United Arab Emirates. Just the logistics of smuggling the tapes out of his hiding place must be daunting. But he has done it many times.

His current whereabouts are a matter of speculation. According to Gen. Safdar Hussain, the Pakistani general in charge of the frontier with Afghanistan, bin Laden is most likely deep in Afghanistan. Thanks to American pressure, the border areas of Pakistan can no longer offer a safe heaven for the founder of al-Qaeda and his retinue.

During my visit to Afghanistan in December, 2000, when the Taliban was still firmly in power, I asked if I could see bin Laden. The Taliban said permission for such a meeting would have to first come from Mullah Omar, the one-eyed head of the Taliban government who lived, not in the capital of Kabul, but in the southern city of Kandahar.

That permission never came.

Despite occasional differences between bin Laden and the Taliban leadership, the Taliban leadership was adamant in protecting the man they referred to as its honored guest.

When asked why, they invariably invoked Pushtunwali - the age-old ethical code that commits all members of that ethnic group to extend hospitality and asylum to strangers, to avenge insults, and to defend one's honor at all cost.

That alone would have been enough, since bin Laden was not only a guest in the true Pushtun sense, he was also Afghanistan's benefactor, having committed his vast assets to fight the Soviets.

Recent news from Afghanistan indicates that the remnants of the Taliban are forging alliances with their onetime enemies, the mujahedin, for a coordinated effort to resist the U.S. occupation. A Taliban commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani, has joined forces with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - the one-time darling of the Pakistani establishment during the Soviet occupation and an avowed enemy of the Taliban - to carry out missions against the coalition forces. According to Gen. Safdar Hussain, the man in charge of Pakistani forces in the tribal area, Mullah Omar is heavily involved in such efforts.

Bin Laden's close associate, Shaikh Khalid Muhammad, talked to investigators after he was arrested in Pakistan in March, 2003. He said he met bin Laden in December, 2000, through a complicated network involving telephone calls, runners, and intermediaries. He could not or would not divulge the exact location of their meeting.

Six other top al-Qaeda operatives arrested in different parts of the world have not divulged any useful clues to his location. Neither did one of his wives, Amal al-Saddah, who was arrested at her family home in Yemen.

Ilyas Khan, a respected investigative reporter working for Pakistan's Herald Magazine believes all leads to bin Laden have gone cold.



But bin Laden's success at eluding capture is no surprise to those familiar with the history of this region. In the 1930s, a village mullah, Mirza Ali Khan, popularly known as the Fakir of Ipi, got on the wrong side of the British. He eluded many efforts to catch him, and emerged to attack the garrisons of the occupiers almost at will.

Sometimes his enemies would arrive at a mountain hideout to find ashes of his fire still warm but the fugitive gone. The British also bombed the caves in the mountains of South Wazirstan but to no avail.

This made him a folk hero, and people chanted:

They sought him here, they sought him there

Those columns sought him everywhere.…

After the British left, the Fakir continued his opposition, now fighting Pakistani control of the tribal areas. He lived into his 70s and died in 1960 - of natural causes.

Will history repeat itself?


http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050508/NEWS08/505080302/-1/NEWS

[Petronas]

Ya'alon: Bin Laden's location known
May. 13, 2005 1:31

The IDF's chief of General Staff said in an interview published Wednesday that the location of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden is known, and he is in hiding on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. "I don't think that they don't known where he is. There are operational difficulties in putting your hands on him, for all sorts of reasons. But it is not true that they don't know where he is located," Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon told Maariv. Ya'alon, a former head of IDF Intelligence, said, "Ultimately, in order to get your hands on him you will need what we perfected and that is what we call 'targeted assassination.'"

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1115867641034&p=1078397702269

[Petronas]

Mr Osama, are you OK?
May 11, 2005

... I was inclined to feel that the posting regarding your death might have been made by the US intelligence as part of its psychological warfare to create confusion and demoralization in the ranks of your followers. The rumors died down.

But doubts have again arisen after one received reports on the sermons delivered in some madrassas (seminaries) of the tribal region in Pakistan and Afghanistan during the last two Fridays. In the sermons, the mullahs have prayed to God for your good health and success against the US and Israel. There is nothing unusual in that. They were doing so even in the past.

But what is intriguing now is that their sermons also included prayers to God for the good health and success of your sons in the jihad against the US and Israel. Why suddenly these prayers for your sons? Are you dying, if not already dead? Is something seriously wrong with your health? ...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GE11Aa01.html

[Petronas]

Back on Osama's trail
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
May 14, 2005

ISLAMABAD - Both Pakistani and US intelligence believe that they are hot on the heels of Osama bin Laden, after his trail went cold months ago. "Both the US and concerned Pakistani authorities are positive that in the coming days we shall be around Osama bin Laden," a senior Pakistani official told Asia Times Online in an exclusive interview, speaking on condition of anonymity. The potential breakthrough in the hunt for bin Laden follows the arrest of al-Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al-Libbi in Pakistan last week, and an important lead he divulged during interrogation. Abu Faraj was interrogated by various agencies, including Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, Britain's MI6 and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

This is according to the Pakistani official, who was assigned by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf - the target of two assassination attempts allegedly masterminded by Abu Faraj - to coordinate and oversee investigations involving recent al-Qaeda detainees in Pakistan. "The arrest of al-Libbi has only one significance for Pakistan, and that is that he was involved in assassination plots on Musharraf. Apparently there is no way that we will get Osama bin Laden through al-Libbi. MI6 also interrogated al-Libbi separately, and they are also of this opinion, that al-Libbi is little more than a foot soldier and no way eligible to be named as an operational chief. However, US interrogators have a different opinion and they call al-Libbi the catch of the year," the official said. "Nevertheless," said the official, "the arrest cannot be down-played as insignificant. During interrogation, al-Libbi pointed [out] Bajur Agency, a tribal area situated in North West Frontier Province, where we found an al-Qaeda sanctuary and arrested many important operatives, including an Uzbek."

Despite repeated questioning from Asia Times Online, the official refused to say whether the Uzbek was the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yaldevish, who has been widely reported to have been seen in Pakistan's tribal areas. "This is a state secret," the official said. "Neither will I tell you his name nor give you any hint, but it is true that there is big 'head money' on him, and as a result of interrogations so far we are quite sure that through him we will be getting Osama bin Laden, or at least we will be around his sanctuary and be able to track his area of rotation. At present, we are completely in the dark."

The official believes that a breakthrough will come soon, but this carries problems. "After that [bin Laden's apprehension] a new debate will start on whether Osama should be arrested in Pakistan's tribal areas or not," said the official. "I am not part of any strategic community, but my political acumen suggests that in the present drive we will find Osama bin Laden in our tribal areas, and I am sure we will soon ... we should try to push him to the other side of the border and then let US troops arrest him. He should not be arrested by or in Pakistan. Because if that happens, I tell you that the Pakistan army will lose its honor among the masses forever, and at the same time there would be retaliation against the government beyond our comprehension, and in that process anything is possible, real terrorism, bloodshed and even revolution," he continued.

Recalling his experience in dealing with the interrogation of the Uzbek, the official maintained that it had been "truly incredible". "You can differ in ideologies, but it is difficult not to be impressed by conviction. We are politicians - compromise, retreat and lies are part of our business, but believe me, I passed one hour with that Uzbek and I admitted to myself some guilt - his unbreakable conviction for his cause was the reason. He was blindfolded, and when an interrogator served him a glass of water, he said, 'Make sure that it is [served] with the right hand, and not the left hand.' [as per Muslim custom] He gave a full lecture on their cause, and said that he had no regrets that he had joined al-Qaeda. He even recognized me from my voice, as he said that he had often heard me on television, and advised that I should take care as soon everybody 'would be accountable before Allah'. I am the person who is monitoring things very closely, and I see the arrest of bin Laden not very far away, this is the same opinion of the US authorities following al-Libbi's arrest. But whether it will bury extremism once and for all, or spark it, is a different debate," the Pakistani functionary commented.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GE14Df04.html

[Casey]

Bin Laden planning caliphate
23/05/2005 20:23 - (SA)

Amman - An alleged militant on trial for a terror conspiracy targeting the US and Israeli embassies claimed on Monday that terror masterminds Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would soon set up a Muslim caliphate state.

Abed al-Tahawi's made the statement in brief remarks to reporters before the military court convened to hear the prosecution sum up its case in his trial.

"Although they accuse them of being terrorists, the heroes Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi will come back to the scene soon to set up an Islamic caliphate state," he said.

Al-Tahawi, 50, and 15 other men - including one at large who being tried in absentia - are charged with conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks and possessing automatic rifles.

If convicted on both counts, the defendants could face the death penalty.

Saudi-born bin Laden has long advocated the creation of a caliphate, where Islam would be the source of the law and the state ruled by a religious leader, known as the caliph - a title taken by the successors of the prophet Muhammad.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is al-Qaeda's top man in Iraq.

He is believed to be directing anti-US attacks and kidnappings in Iraq, and his group has beheaded several hostages.

He has been sentenced to death in Jordan for the 2002 killing of a US aid worker.

Edited by Elmarie Jack

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1709608,00.html

[al-Canine]

Bin Laden's safe haven?

Ex-CIA officer: Bin Laden hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas

By Henry Schuster | CNN

Editor's Note: Henry Schuster, a senior producer in CNN's Investigative Unit and author of "Hunting Eric Rudolph," has been covering terrorism for more than a decade. Each week in "Tracking Terror," he reports on people and organizations driving international and domestic terrorism and efforts to combat those.

RENO, Nevada (CNN) -- Gary Schroen doesn't know exactly where Osama bin Laden is. But he thinks he knows who does.

He doesn't think Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, knows, even though Schroen believes bin Laden is somewhere inside Pakistan. Instead, he believes, someone at a more operational level inside Pakistan's army or its intelligence service, the ISI, knows.

"I can only speculate, but it is based on almost 20 years of dealing with the Pakistani military and ISI officers. I think at some level, probably the colonel level, there are officers probably in ISI who know where bin Laden is at."

Here's why it matters what Gary Schroen thinks.

A long-time Central Intelligence Agency operative, Schroen was dispatched to Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, to find bin Laden and to help overthrow the Taliban.

That mission marked the culmination of an extensive career that included some 35 years working in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

Now, after decades of avoiding the press, Schroen is talking.

Targeting bin Laden

Mostly, it's about his riveting new book, "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan." In it, he recounts how his boss, then-CIA director of counterterrorism Cofer Black, told him that he wanted "bin Laden's head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice."

That marked the first time in Schroen's career as an intelligence officer, he says, that he was ever told to kill someone, if necessary. And his team was ready to do so.

What made him especially qualified for that mission was that he had developed two plans to capture or kill bin Laden, once in 1998 and then again a year later. Both were turned down by higher-ups in the CIA and the White House.

"Everybody in the agency felt a sense of frustration that we hadn't taken a shot [in 1998 and 1999] -- especially the second time, which was after the bombings that al Qaeda conducted in Africa," he said. "But the decision was made based on policy considerations back in Washington, so we [soldiered] on."

The morning of September 11, the veteran CIA officer was on the glide path to retirement. He came in that day to work on his resume, knowing he had only a few weeks left at the agency.

Schroen soon found himself being evacuated from the CIA's headquarters in northern Virginia, as fear spread that the building was the hijackers' next target.

Days later, Black hand-picked him to lead a team inside Afghanistan, where he had close ties to many in the Northern Alliance -- the main opposition at the time to the ruling Taliban.

Schroen's team, code-named JAWBREAKER, had rapid success in helping to topple the Taliban using cash, contacts and air strikes coordinated by the CIA and U.S. Special Forces.

Finding bin Laden was another story. Schroen says the closest U.S. forces came was at the battle of Tora Bora in late November 2001. But bin Laden escaped across the border to Pakistan, aided, according to Schroen and others, by some of the same Afghans who promised the United States they were going to capture al Qaeda's leader.

Does Pakistan want to find bin Laden?

So where's bin Laden now?

"He's hiding in Pakistan in the northern tribal areas above Peshawar -- an area that is rugged, hilly, heavily forested," Schroen says. "The U.S. government and the U.S. military are not authorized by the Musharraf government to enter there unilaterally."

With much fanfare, the Pakistani army went into part of the tribal area last year, ostensibly hunting for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. (The move was significant because, from the time of Pakistan's independence in 1947 until that point, the area was autonomous, with local leaders governing its affairs.)

Schroen says Pakistani forces went into the wrong area. Instead of going into the area north of Peshawar, they went south of that city, into southern Waziristan.

The campaign was a failure.

"They did get clobbered heavily," Schroen said of the Pakistani forces. "I think they knew that bin Laden wasn't there, and therefore they would be able to arrest a few al Qaeda operatives and make us happy."

Schroen believes Musharraf not only doesn't know where bin Laden is, but he doesn't want to know, afraid of the internal political consequences of finding him. That's because, Schroen thinks, Pakistan's northern tribal areas would explode upon news of the death or capture of bin Laden.

"I think the philosophy of the Taliban, this fundamentalist view, is popular there. So bin Laden, I think, strikes them as heroic. He fought a jihad against the Russians, and he's bloodied America's nose time and again."

That strong sense of loyalty to bin Laden and al Qaeda is one reason reward money, be it $25 million or $50 million, won't work. The trick is to get bin Laden or al-Zawahiri to break cover and move from this heavily protected area, Schroen says.

"As long as he stays in place, it is going to be almost impossible to find him."

Another key job for the United States, Schroen says, is to figure out a way to find the right incentive for Musharraf to hunt harder for al Qaeda's leaders. One major step, in that regard, is for the Pakistani president to get more answers from inside his own military and intelligence establishment.

"A man of that caliber [bin Laden] could not be hidden out for that many years without word getting out in the community. So, I think some people probably know within ISI and the military."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/31/schuster.column

[Casey]

June 05, 2005

Bin Laden ‘gave me licence to shoot him’
Nick Fielding
http://images.thetimes.co.uk/images/trans.gifNI_MPU('middle');

A FORMER personal bodyguard to Osama Bin Laden has revealed how the Al-Qaeda leader survived at least three assassination attempts during his time in Afghanistan and rejected several requests to return to his native Saudi Arabia — including one delivered in person by his mother.

Abu Jindal, 35, a Yemeni who claims to have worked for Bin Laden from 1995- 2000, said he was given the authority to kill the terrorist chief if he seemed about to be taken by his enemies.

“I was the only member of his bodyguard who was given this authority,” he said when interviewed in Yemen by al-Quds al-Arabi, the London-based Arabic newspaper.

“I took care to keep the two bullets in good condition and cleaned them every night ... If enemy forces surrounded Sheikh Osama and there was no possibility that he would escape, I was to kill him before they could catch him alive.”

Abu Jindal said there were at least three assassination attempts during his time with Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

The first was in 1998 by a young Uzbek, allegedly sent by the Saudis and offered a reward of 2m Saudi riyals — £300,000 at today’s rates — and Saudi nationality.

“He was only 18 and had been deceived. He was crying in a very pathetic manner and said, ‘I made a mistake’. Finally, Sheikh Osama said to release him.”

Following another failed assassination attempt in Jalalabad, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, convinced Bin Laden to move to the comparative safety of Kandahar in the south. Abu Jindal said Bin Laden and his family were guarded by 14-16 bodyguards who travelled with them at all times.

The Saudis tried many times to coax Bin Laden back to Saudi Arabia. “At one time the Saudi government sent his mother and his half-brother by a special Saudi plane that landed at Kandahar airport,” said Abu Jindal.

On another occasion, Prince Turki al-Faisal, now Saudi ambassador in London, arrived in a large aircraft intending to return with Bin Laden and his retinue. “The delegation left without him,” said Abu Jindal. The former bodyguard, whose real name is Nasir Ahmad Nasir al-Bahri, served a short prison term after returning home. He is now free, although closely watched by the intelligence services.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1641311,00.html

[Casey]

I know bin Laden is still alive: Musharraf
(AFP)
14 June 2005


CANBERRA – Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is alive and probably living in the rugged mountains bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday.

Speaking during a three-day visit to Australia to promote counter-terrorism cooperation and increased trade, Musharraf said Pakistan had suffered 250 casualties in fighting bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and other militant groups in its western tribal regions.

It had also destroyed the logistics and communications hubs of the terror networks so that they no longer functioned coherently, he said.

However, the Saudi behind the September 11 attacks on the United States was proving elusive because of the difficulty of the terrain, Musharraf said.

“It’s very easy for a person to hide,” Musharraf told an Australian Press Club lunch in Canberra.

“I know that he is alive. Most likely he is alive, yes, because of our information and interrogation of various Al Qaeda operatives that we have apprehended.

“Maybe he is in the border region in hiding wherever he sees a vacuum.”

Musharraf said while his government had deployed around 70,000 troops to fight insurgents hiding in the tribal areas separating Afghanistan from Pakistan, the soldiers could not cover the entire region.

“It is not easy to get a person there,” the president said.

Musharraf is expected to sign an agreement on counter-terrorism cooperation during a meeting with Prime Minister John Howard on Wednesday. He leaves Australia on Thursday to visit New Zealand.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2005/June/theworld_June374.xml&section=theworld

[Casey]

Wednesday, June 15, 2005. 8:12am (AEST)
Bin Laden, Mullah Omar alive and healthy

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar are safe and healthy, a former Taliban commander said.

Three-and-half years after a US-led military offensive toppled the fundamentalist Taliban regime for sheltering bin Laden, the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks remains free as does Mullah Omar.

Commander Mullah Akhtar Usmani told private Geo TV in an interview at an undisclosed site that he cannot disclose their whereabouts.

"We hear his voice. I can vouch that Mullah Omar is alive and commanding the Taliban," he said.

As for bin Laden, the most wanted suspect in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the former Taliban commander said, "by the grace of God, he is in good health".

Mullah Omar in 2001 named Mullah Usmani as his successor in the event of his death.

Mullah Usmani taught in the same religious school as Mullah Omar and previously led the Taliban forces in five southern Afghan provinces.

Reports on his whereabouts vary but he is believed to be leading a faction that is fighting coalition forces.

Disappointed

Outgoing US ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said he was "disappointed" that bin Laden remained at large but pledged the Al Qaeda leader would be captured.

The Afghan-born US diplomat who is preparing to leave Afghanistan as President George W Bush's special envoy and ambassador for a similar job in Iraq said the hunt for bin Laden continued.

"I'm disappointed that he has not been captured," he told reporters in Kabul at a ceremony where he handed over books to the Afghan Foreign Ministry as part of a drive to promote American culture.

"But our military and intelligence are working very hard on this issue - sooner or later he will be caught or he will be found dead," he said, without giving any dateline.

"You know looking for one person in a vast area is not easy but eventually he will be found," he said.

US ally

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally in the war on terror, said during a visit to Australia that bin Laden was alive and probably hiding somewhere in the rugged border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

US military officials suspect that both men could be hiding along the rugged Afghan-Pakistan border, using territory on both sides of the border to elude arrest.

Over 18,000 US-led soldiers are hunting militants from both groups in the restive south and east of Afghanistan.

Despite an arms-for-amnesty program offered by the Afghan Government to the remnants of the Taliban, an insurgency by the ousted militia still ongoing and hampered the reconstruction efforts in many parts of the war-torn country.

Mr Khalilzad renewed his calls for rank and file Taliban guerrillas to lay down their arms and join the peace process.

"The time has come for young Taliban to lay down their arms. Afghanistan needs reconciliation. Afghans should not let themselves be cannon fodder in the hands of the enemies," Mr Khalilzad said.

- AFP/Kyodo


http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200506/s1392246.htm

[Petronas]

I am not posting the whole article as it is long (14 printed pages). I recommend, however, that anyone intested in OBL read both parts, which can be found at the link below.

Osama's Road to Riches and Terror
June 6, 2005

The Bin Laden family disowned black sheep Osama in 1994. But have they really broken with the mega-terrorist? Recently revealed classified documents seem to suggest otherwise. Osama's violent career has been made possible in part by the generosity of his family -- and by his contacts with the Saudi royals.

In early spring 2002, American intelligence agents tipped off authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina that something wasn't quite right with the "Benevolence International Foundation." Their reaction was swift; special forces stormed eight offices of the Islamic foundation in Sarajevo and in Zenica. They found weapons and explosives, videos and flyers calling for holy war. More importantly, however, they discovered a computer with a mysterious file entitled "Tarich Osama" -- Arabic for "Osama's Story."

After printing out the file -- close to 10,000 pages worth -- the intelligence experts quickly realized they had stumbled upon a true goldmine. They were looking at nothing less than the carefully documented story of al-Qaida, complete with scanned letters, minutes of secret meetings, photos and notes -- some even written in Osama Bin Laden's handwriting. CIA experts secured the highly sensitive material, dubbed "Golden Chain," and took everything back to the United States. To this day, only fragments of the material have been published. Now, however, SPIEGEL magazine has been given complete access to the entire series of explosive documents dating from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.

During that time, Osama bin Laden, known as "OBL" in CIA parlance, was primarily interested in "preserving the spirit of jihad" that had developed during the successful Afghanistan campaign -- a fight which saw an international group of Muslim fighters stand up to the mighty Soviet army. Bin Laden wanted to expand the group's activities to battle "the infidels" in the West. A full decade before the attacks on the Twin Towers, the documents make horrifyingly clear, bin Laden was already dreaming of "staging a major event for the mass media, to generate donations."

Finances are the focal point in these early al-Qaida documents. OBL, as one of the heirs of a large construction company, had a substantial fortune at his disposal, but it was still not enough to finance global jihad. The Saudi elite -- and his own family -- came to his assistance.

The evidence lies in the most valuable document investigators managed to acquire: a list of al-Qaida's key financial backers. The list, titled with a verse from the Koran, "Let us be generous when doing God's work," is a veritable who's who of the Middle Eastern monarchy, including the signatures of two former cabinet ministers, six bankers and twelve prominent businessmen. The list also mentions "the bin Laden brothers." Were these generous backers aware, at the time, that were not just donating money to support the aggressive expansion of the teaching of the Islamic faith, but were also financing acts of terror against non-believers? Did "the bin Laden brothers," who first pledged money to Al-Qaida and then, in 1994, issued a joint press statement declaring that they were ejecting Osama from the family as a "black sheep," truly break ties with their blood relatives -- or were they simply pulling the wool over the eyes of the world?

Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism for the CIA, says, "I tracked the bin Ladens for years. Many family members claimed that Osama was no longer one of them. It's an easy thing to say, but blood is usually thicker than water."

Carmen bin Laden, a sister-in-law of the terrorist, who lived with the extended family in Jeddah for years, says, "I absolutely do not believe that the bin Ladens disowned Osama. In this family, a brother is always a brother, no matter what he has done. I am convinced that the complex and tightly woven network between the bin Laden clan and the Saudi royal family is still in operation." ...

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,359690,00.html

[Casey]

Where is bin Laden?


Pakistan president: If you know where Bin Laden is, tell us
Munir Ahmad, Associated Press
June 25, 2005 BINLADEN0626
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-11/1119705840273660.xml&storylist=international
[/url]

Cheney knows where bin Laden is hiding, but not exact 'address'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-25 17:16
[url="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-06/25/content_454570.htm"]http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-06/25/content_454570.htm (http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5475987.html)

[1001]

Cheney on Osama and Gitmo

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/24/cheney/index.html?section=cnn_latest


Cheney: "We've got a pretty good idea of the general area that he's in, but I -- you know, I don't have the street address."
:add09:

[Casey]

Musharraf Skeptical of Suggestions That Bin Laden Is in Pakistan
Patrick Goodenough
International Editor

(CNSNews.com) - Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf at the weekend expressed irritation with reports that senior U.S. officials know the whereabouts of fugitive al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden -- and with the implication that he is hiding out in Pakistan.

"Any talk about his whereabouts is mere speculation," Musharraf told reporters at a Pakistani airbase before leaving on a trip to Saudi Arabia.

"There are a lot of people who say that Osama bin Laden is here in Pakistan. All that I would like to tell them is 'please come and show us where he is or tell us where he is.'

"We will act on such information," he added.

Immediately after al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and under pressure from Washington, Musharraf announced he was ending Pakistan's support for the Taliban, al-Qaeda's sponsors in Afghanistan, and would cooperate in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamist terrorism.

The U.S. considers Pakistan a crucial ally in the war, but although Pakistani forces have helped to capture hundreds of terror suspects, Islamabad's level of cooperation has been called into question.

India has long accused rival Pakistan of continued support for Taliban- and al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups fighting against Indian rule in divided Kashmir.

Violence has been building in south and east Afghanistan since March, and last week, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman told a press conference that Pakistan was not doing enough to fight terrorists.

Spokesman Jawed Ludin was speaking a day after three Pakistanis were arrested in Afghanistan, accused of plotting to assassinate the American ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The arrests prompted the U.S.-backed Karzai government's official media to allege that Pakistan's ISI intelligence service was behind the plot.

"Our people have now realized that the Pakistani intelligence agency is behind all the security problems in Afghanistan," said the state-run daily, Anis, in comments translated by the BBC.

The paper claimed that the suspects had admitted to the role of both the ISI and Pakistani terrorist groups in violence in Afghanistan.

U.S. envoy Khalilzad, too, has been critical of Pakistan.

After a Pakistani television network, Geo TV, earlier this month interviewed a Taliban commander who claimed he was in touch with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and bin Laden, the ambassador questioned how a television station could find men whom Pakistani intelligence services claimed to be unable to track down.

Pakistan's Foreign Office called Khalilzad's remarks irresponsible.

Khalilzad also stated that bin Laden was not in Afghanistan, an apparent shift from the position long voiced by U.S. officials that the al-Qaeda chief was thought to be hiding out somewhere in the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

Other senior U.S. officials have also suggested knowledge of bin Laden's whereabouts.

Vice President Cheney said last Thursday the U.S. government had "a pretty good idea" where bin Laden was hiding, but added: "I don't have the street address."

CIA director Porter Goss said in a recent interview with Time magazine that he had "an excellent idea" where bin Laden was located.

Goss sparked considerable speculation with his comment to the newsweekly that there were "some weak links" in the anti-terror campaign, and his reference to "the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states."

Regional security analysts said Goss was likely referring to Pakistan rather than Afghanistan, or other possible countries such as Iran.

"He did not mention Pakistan by name, but it was apparent that he was talking of Pakistan," said Bahukutumbi Raman, director of the Institute For Topical Studies in Chennai, India.

"On the Afghan side of the border, it is the 16,000-strong U.S. troops which have the responsibility for the hunt for bin Laden," Raman said. "If he was in Afghan territory, there was no reason why Goss should have talked of sanctuaries in sovereign states, weak links etc."

"If bin Laden was in Iranian territory, there was no reason why he should have refrained from naming Iran since the U.S. relations with Iran are already at the rock-bottom," he added.

In recent interviews, recently retired CIA officer Gary Schroen has said that he doesn't believe Musharraf himself knows where bin Laden is, but speculated that some ISI officers do.

Musharraf told reporters at the weekend that his government was working closely with Afghanistan in the fight against terrorism and had taken steps to secure their shared border.

"There is a total and complete understanding between us," he said.

Last week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Washington appreciated Pakistan's anti-terror contribution.

"We have good cooperation with Pakistan in the global war on terrorism," he said. "We appreciate all that they're doing to help us track down al-Qaeda leaders and Taliban remnants, particularly along that border region with Afghanistan."

http://www.crosswalk.com/news/1337350.html

[The 801]

Jun 7, 2005

Hot on the trail of al-Qaeda
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - The high-profile arrests of al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, the most recent being Abu Faraj al-Libbi, have led to intense speculation that the really big names could be next: Tahir Yuldash of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the biggest catch of them all, Osama bin Laden.

But Asia Times Online investigations reveal that these top figures in the international struggle against the US are not together in one place, and remain a step ahead of their pursuers.

Pakistani intelligence agencies indicate that Shabkadar (a town near Peshawar in Pakistan's North West Frontier province), and Bajur and Mohmand agencies (two federally administered tribal areas) have been under close surveillance for more than a month as strong information emerged about bin Laden being in the vicinity, or in adjoining areas - Nanghar and Nooristan - across the border in Afghanistan.

In Shabkadar and Bajur especially, the Pakistani military increased its presence and conducted exhaustive search operations. These activities did not meet with any resistance as the local tribals, though sympathetic to Arab fighters, would not put themselves in a conflict situation with the Pakistani army. (This in stark contrast with the South and North Waziristan tribal areas, where similar military intervention has met with fierce and bloody resistance.) Al-Qaeda sympathizers, nevertheless, might have spread the word in advance of the operations.

According to analysis based on information extracted from detainees and ground checks in the Pakistani tribal areas, bin Laden was likely recently in Nooristan in Afghanistan for meetings with close aides. Nooristan is a rugged, remote mountainous region where the population is Salafi. The area was previously the stronghold of a famous commander of the anti-Soviet resistance of the 1980s, Abdul Aziz Nooristani, who later also fought in Bosnia. Veteran Afghan mujahideen leader and former Afghan premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar also dwelled in Nooristan for some time after returning from exile in Iran in 2002.

Ever elusive
That al-Qaeda's top members remain on the loose can in some ways be attributed to the training cadres receive. They are well versed in withstanding interrogation and in engaging their interrogators by appealing to their religious sentiments - at least in the short term. This buys other members vital time to change their positions, an intelligence operator told Asia Times Online.

Meanwhile, there have been reports that Yuldash was sighted in the Afghan region of Birmal, where he is believed to have grouped dozens of guerrilla fighters of Chinese, Pakistani, Afghan, Uzbek, Chechen and Arab origin. They have been engaged in acts of sabotage in Paktika province, notably a recent attack on Argon in which two US soldiers were killed. US convoys and their military bases are constant targets.

Some of the world's most difficult terrain starts at Argon and continues to Birmal and then Shawal (part of which is in Afghanistan and part in Pakistan). It is wholly pro-Taliban. Guerrillas carry out attacks and then melt into the local population, either in Birmal or in the thick forests of North Waziristan across the border. Recent US bombing in North Waziristan followed guerrillas being chased by US gunships and fighter aircraft - some stray bombs and missiles landed in Pakistani territory.

Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, has also reportedly been seen in different places in the past few weeks, from Zabul (Afghanistan) to South Waziristan. Both foreign and Pakistani intelligence agencies conclude that the frequent sightings indicate that Zawahiri is acting as the main go-between among Arab, Uzbek, Chechen, Pakistani and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

These intelligence agencies believe that Khost, Paktika, Paktia and Zabul will emerge as the key hotbeds of the Afghan resistance. About a dozen murders in and around South Waziristan of pro-government tribal leaders indicate that the nerve center is again near South Waziristan.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan, Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GF07Df01.html

Gotta love Shahzad.....801

[The 801]

Adelaide equipment 'saved bin Laden'
By Penelope Debelle
Adelaide
August 31, 2005

( Adelaide is in Australia, mate)
CODAN, an Adelaide company that supplies remote-area long-distance communications to Afghanistan, may inadvertently have helped al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden escape a US missile strike.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a news agency that works closely with local people in war situations, reported in late 2001 that the al-Qaeda leader escaped from a house in Kabul three hours before it was hit. Quoting an al-Qaeda source, the report said terrorist spotters across Afghanistan had used the sophisticated Codan radio network to warn bin Laden of the approaching missile attack.

"Bin Laden's foreign legion is equipped with a sophisticated Codan radio network of the type used by the UN and aid workers in places such as Afghanistan," the report said.

The ABC reported yesterday that an al-Qaeda operative, Mohamedou Slahi, had ordered radio communications equipment from Codan earlier that year. Operating under the trading name BITS, Slahi paid Codan in May 2001 for unspecified goods and a detailed quote was prepared for more than $32,000 worth of equipment, according to the ABC.

Advertisement
AdvertisementIn Adelaide, Codan's chief finance and information officer, David Hughes, said the company would never knowingly sell its products for use in terrorist or criminal activity. Since September 11, it regularly checked US State Department and Australian Government websites that carried lists of known terrorist organisations.

"We take this pretty seriously," Mr Hughes said. "We do the best we reasonably can to make sure our products don't fall into the wrong hands.

"We sell through an extensive distribution network around the world and we routinely visit these customers and do what we can to ensure their bona fides are correct. Beyond that, without being a specialist security organisation it is difficult to do much more."

He said the company had no first-hand knowledge of its equipment being sold to or used by al-Qaeda. Following the ABC's disclosures, he said the company would work with Government security agencies to keep its equipment out of terrorists' hands.

Codan is a local success story that began in the 1950s and developed long-range communications equipment for use in the bush. Its products have become increasingly sophisticated and its communications and TV broadcast equipment — favoured by the UN and aid agencies — is sold in 150 countries.

It specialises in remote, high-frequency and microwave communications and its voice-encrypted transmitters can transfer signals over thousands of kilometres by bouncing off the ionosphere.

Two years ago, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Dr Robert Finn, announced that the US would pay for a Codan communications network across Afghanistan, linking Kabul with its 32 provincial governments.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/adelaide-equipment-saved-bin-laden/2005/08/30/1125302570157.html

[The 801]

The Bin Laden Panama Connection

29 08 2005, by Okke Ornstein

While a US-led armada was playing games on the high seas and drowning three Panamanian navy seals during excercise "Panamax 2005" which purported to safeguard the Canal from terrorist attacks, the real connection between international terrorism and Panama can be found in the file cabinets of the local law firms.

Panama has a reputation in this area. Three years ago it was revealed that Syrian arms trafficker, drug smuggler and terrorist supplier Monzer Al Kassar (involved in such bloody events as the hijacking of the Achille Lauro) was a client of law firm Morgan & Morgan which handled incorporation for him. Arias Fabrega & Fabrega, another Panamanian powerhouse, turned out to have incorporated the corporate vehicle that served as a conduit for stolen funds in the UN oil for food scandal, and in the sixties the same law firm served another illustrious client: the Israeli Mossad.

Yet, as it turns out, the Bin Laden family's financial empire uses Panama as well for its corporate needs. In the public registry - miles away from the high seas and the Canal - we found the Saudi Investment Company Panama, registered by law firm Shirley & Diaz. On the board of directors we find Baudoin Dunand, a Swiss attorney who specializes in international financial structures and Swedish Kjell Carlsson.

The president of the Saudi Investment Company Panama is Sheik Yeslam M. Binladin. He is Osama Bin Laden's half-brother.

The company is part of a vast international network of corporate entities active in finance, construction and real estate in, among others, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Cayman Islands, the United States, Curaçao and Panama. The Bin Laden family claims to have disowned Osama Bin Laden in 1994, yet, in 2004, Osama Bin Laden's half brother Yeslam Binladin admitted that he and other Bin Laden family members shared a Swiss bank account with Osama bin Laden from 1990 until 1997. Yeslam had previously denied any financial dealings with Osama at this late date until evidence of this bank account was uncovered by French private investigator Jean-Charles Brisard, who was hired by families of victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

In December 2001, French authorities opened an investigation into the financial dealings of the Saudi Investment Company (SICO) run by Yeslam Binladin and in 2002 his house on the Cote d'Azur was raided by the French police. The French are investigating the Bin Laden empire for links with the financing of terrorism, i.e. Osama's group, and money laundering. French newspaper Le Monde and Reuters published that the investigators noted a 241 million euro transfer made to Pakistan in 2000 from an account belonging to a company called Cambridge, a SBG subsidiary, that was opened at Deutsche Bank in Geneva. According to Le Monde, U.S. authorities are aware of the existence of those funds, which they believe were transferred into an account belonging jointly to Osama Bin Laden and someone of Pakistani nationality.

Already in September 2001, the Spanish police started an investigation into Palwa Iberica S.A., another company of the Bin Laden family.

Yeslam Binladin - who deliberately spells his name differently from that of his half-brother - claims he's had no contact with Osama in 20 years. Yet, in 2004, when asked if he would turn in Osama if given the chance in an interview with MSNBC, he replies, “What do you think? Would you turn in your brother?” Interviewed on the Al-Arabiya TV network in July 2005 he added that he would happily pay for Osama's defense should he ever be caught.

Yeslam's ex-wife, in her book "Inside the Kingdom", writes about Osama: "He was admired. He was involved in a noble cause. Osama was a warrior -- a Saudi hero. (...) He was not strikingly different from the other brothers -- just younger, and more reserved."

And: "I simply can't see them depriving a brother of his annual dividend from their father's company, and sharing it among themselves. That would be unthinkable -- among the Bin Ladens, no matter what a brother does, he remains a brother."

The Panamanian company headed by Yeslam owns the Saudi Investment Company UK, which is a financial company according to information we found on the website of Wayne Madsen, formerly of the NSA.

From that same Wayne Madsen we learned that another company in the same Bin Laden corporate web, the U.S. construction and engineering firm Fluor Corp. has been awarded reconstruction contracts by the Pentagon in Iraq. "Fluor, which received the lucrative contracts because it was included by the Pentagon on an "invitation only" short list of eligible contractors, has contributed over $500,000 to Republican candidates since 2000. Kenneth Oscar, a Fluor Vice President, was the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement and was conveniently in charge of a $60 billion budget. One of Fluor's board members is retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a former deputy director of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) director."

It is not clear if the Panamanian authorities are aware of the existence of the Bin Laden company or if it is being investigated.

http://www.noriegaville.com/view.php?subaction=showfull&id=1125329872&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2

[1001]

Photographer Sues ABC Over Bin Laden Pics


DENVER — Rare photographs of Osama Bin Laden, including exclusive shots of the Al-Qaida leader on a battlefield, wer


e broadcast by ABC News without the Egyptian photographers' permission, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court Thursday.


Essam Mohamed Aly Deraz is seeking $10 million in damages, alleging copyright infringement, and is asking a judge to prohibit the network or any of its affiliates from using the photographs.


ABC News Vice President Jeffrey Schneider said: "We have not been served with a lawsuit and don't have any comment."


In 1998, Deraz twice agreed to allow the network to use his photographs on a one-time only basis for which he was paid $7,000 and $8,000 respectively, the lawsuit states. But the lawsuit says the network continued to use the photographs without Deraz's authorization.


Deraz says the photos were taken between 1986 and 1992 when he was given "unprecedented access to photograph and film" the Al-Qaida leader.


Deraz's lawyer, David Weinstein, did not return a phone message Thursday. It was unclear why the lawsuit was filed in Denver.




___


September 2, 2005 - 4:41 a.m. Copyright 2005, The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP Online news report may not be published, broadcast or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


http://www.gjsentinel.com/enter/content/shared-gen/ap/TV/Bin_Laden_Photos.html

[The 801]

September 11, 2005
Lost at Tora Bora
By MARY ANNE WEAVER
Well past midnight one morning in early December 2001, according to American intelligence officials, Osama bin Laden sat with a group of top aides - including members of his elite international 055 Brigade - in the mountainous redoubt of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. Outside, it was blustery and bitterly cold; many of the passes of the White Mountains, of which Tora Bora forms a part, were already blocked by snow. But inside the cave complex, where bin Laden had sought his final refuge from the American war in Afghanistan - a war in which Washington, that October, had struck back for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - bin Laden munched on olives and sipped sugary mint tea. He was dressed in his signature camouflage jacket, and a Kalashnikov rested by his side. Captured Qaeda fighters, interviewed separately, told American interrogators that they recalled an address that bin Laden had made to his followers shortly before dawn. It concerned martyrdom. American bombs, including a 15,000-pound "daisy cutter," were raining from the sky and pulverizing a number of the Tora Bora caves. And yet, one American intelligence official told me recently, if any one thing distinguished Osama bin Laden on that cold December day, it was the fact that the 44-year-old Saudi multimillionaire appeared to be supremely confident.

The first time bin Laden had seen the Tora Bora caves, he had been a young mujahedeen fighter and a recent university graduate with a degree in civil engineering. It had been some 20 years before, during Washington's first Afghan war, the decade-long, C.I.A.-financed jihad of the 1980's against the Soviet occupation. Rising to more than 13,000 feet, 35 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Jalalabad, Tora Bora was a fortress of snow-capped peaks, steep valleys and fortified caves. Its miles of tunnels, bunkers and base camps, dug deeply into the steep rock walls, had been part of a C.I.A.-financed complex built for the mujahedeen. Bin Laden had flown in dozens of bulldozers and other pieces of heavy equipment from his father's construction empire, the Saudi Binladin Group, one of the most prosperous construction companies in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Persian Gulf. According to one frequently told story, bin Laden would drive one of the bulldozers himself across the precipitous mountain peaks, constructing defensive tunnels and storage depots.

Indeed, by December 2001, when the final battle of Tora Bora took place, the cave complex had been so refined that it was said to have its own ventilation system and a power system created by a series of hydroelectric generators; bin Laden is believed to have designed the latter. Tora Bora's walls and the floors of its hundreds of rooms were finished and smooth and extended some 350 yards into the granite mountain that enveloped them.

Now, as the last major battle of the war in Afghanistan began, hidden from view inside the caves were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 well-trained, well-armed men. A mile below, at the base of the caves, some three dozen U.S. Special Forces troops fanned out. They were the only ground forces that senior American military leaders had committed to the Tora Bora campaign.


Yunis Khalis long worried that such a moment would arrive. A theologian and warrior of considerable repute, Khalis knew the Americans well: he had fought for them two decades before. And if there was one thing that the octogenarian leader knew, it was that he really didn't like the Americans much at all. Nevertheless, as one head of the fratricidal alliance of Afghan resistance groups, he had accepted Washington's largess, and over the years, as the war against the Soviet occupiers progressed, Khalis, among the seven resistance leaders, would receive the third-largest share of the more than $3 billion of weapons and funds that the C.I.A. invested in the jihad. As the godfather of Jalalabad, the capital of the province of Nangarhar, Khalis controlled a vast territory, including Tora Bora. It had been a key operational center for his fighters during the anti-Soviet war. And it was a key operational center for Osama bin Laden now. The caves were so close that Khalis could see them from the verandah of his sprawling stucco home.

One evening earlier this summer, I asked Masood Farivar, a former Khalis officer who had fought in Tora Bora during the jihad, to tell me why the caves were so important. "They're rugged, formidable and isolated," he said. "If you know them, you can come and go with ease. But if you don't, they're a labyrinth that you can't penetrate. They rise in some places to 14,000 feet, and for 10 years the Soviets pummeled them with everything they had, but to absolutely no avail. Another reason they're so important is their proximity to the border and to Pakistan" - less than 20 miles away.

Bin Laden knew the caves as well as Farivar and Khalis did. He had fought in nearby Jaji and Ali Khel and in the 1989 battle of Jalalabad. He knew every ridge and mountain pass, every C.I.A. trail. For this was the area where bin Laden had spent more than a decade of his life.

It was also during the war years that bin Laden first met Khalis; the two men became very close friends. Indeed, when bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in May 1996 from his base in the Sudan (after the United States insisted that the Sudanese government expel him), it was Khalis, along with two of his key commanders - Hajji Abdul Qadir and Engineer Mahmoud - who first invited him. And it was also Khalis who, later that year, would introduce bin Laden to the one-eyed leader of the Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar, who had fought with Khalis - and would later become his protégé - during the jihad.

"Khalis had an avuncular interest in bin Laden," Michael Scheuer, the former head of the C.I.A.'s bin Laden unit and the author of "Imperial Hubris," told me recently when we met at a Washington coffeehouse. "Osama lost his father when he was young, and Khalis became a substitute father figure to him. As far as Khalis was concerned, he considered Osama the perfect Islamic youth."

Bin Laden, along with his four wives and 20-some children, moved into the well-fortified Khalis family compound nine years ago and then to a farm on the outskirts of Jalalabad. But shortly thereafter, Engineer Mahmoud was assassinated, and there were two assassination attempts against bin Laden, too. "They were both very crude," Scheuer said, "and they smacked of the Saudis" - who had earlier tried to assassinate bin Laden in Khartoum. "As a result, bin Laden wanted to move away from the main road. So Khalis gave him two of his fighting positions in the mountains - Tora Bora and Milawa. Bin Laden immediately began to customize and rebuild the two: Tora Bora for his family and his key aides; Milawa for his fighters and as a command center and logistics hub. By the time bin Laden moved to Kandahar" - then a Taliban stronghold - "in May of 1997, the two mountain redoubts had been completely refurbished and modernized: they were there, just waiting for him in 2001."

Some six weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and nearly two weeks after the bombing of Afghanistan began on Oct. 7, American military leaders - who had no off-the-shelf invasion plans, not even an outline, for Afghanistan - finally succeeded in getting the first forces in: a 12-man Special Forces A-team helicoptered in from Uzbekistan to the Panjshir Valley. There they joined forces with the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban militia that controlled only 10 percent of Afghanistan but to whom Washington delegated the ground war. The view prevailing among senior American military leaders was that overwhelming air power, suitcases full of cash and surrogate militias could win the war. The intricacies of Afghan tribal life appeared to elude everyone.

n late October or early November, according to Scheuer, American operatives went to see Khalis to seek his support. "Khalis said that he was retired and doing nothing now," Scheuer told me. "It was the last time" American intelligence officials saw him. "It was so bizarre! Didn't anybody know about Khalis's friendship with bin Laden? Or that Khalis was the only one of the seven mujahedeen leaders who remained neutral about, and sometimes even supported, the Taliban?" He shook his head and then went on: "And even after Sept. 11, indeed in spite of it, as soon as our bombing of Afghanistan began, Khalis issued a well-publicized call for jihad against U.S. forces in Afghanistan."

When Khalis turned the Americans down, Special Forces troops recruited two of his former commanders. They made an unlikely couple: Hazarat Ali and Hajji Zaman. The former, with just a fourth-grade education, was barely literate, a bully and unrefined; the other was a wealthy drug smuggler, fluent in English and French, and a polished raconteur who was lured back to Afghanistan from his exile in France by the United States. Both were schemers who had come of age on the battlefields of the anti-Soviet war, Ali as a teenager in Tora Bora and Zaman in Jalalabad. Ali had joined the Taliban for a time, then moved north and embraced the Northern Alliance; Zaman had supported neither, and when the Taliban came to power, he chose exile. Ali owed his rise largely to the Pentagon, which ultimately enlisted him to lead the ground battle in the Tora Bora caves; Zaman, a Pashtun leader and member of the Khugyani Tribe, had his own base of support, something that Ali, a member of a minor, non-Pashtun tribal grouping, lacked.

A third militia leader - less experienced but of more distinguished pedigree - who would bring his forces to Tora Bora was Hajji Zahir, the 27-year-old somewhat skittish son of Hajji Abdul Qadir, Yunis Khalis's former military commander and one of the three men who had welcomed bin Laden when he returned to Afghanistan. Indeed, as the Americans were recruiting his son, Hajji Abdul Qadir was about to reclaim the governorship of Nangarhar Province, a post he had relinquished when the Taliban arrived, in a power transfer Khalis and bin Laden would help to consummate.

Bin Laden had returned to Jalalabad on or about Nov. 10, a U.S. intelligence official told me recently, and that same afternoon, according to a March 4, 2002, report in The Christian Science Monitor, he gave a fiery speech at the Jalalabad Islamic studies center - as American bombs exploded nearby - to a thousand or so regional tribal leaders, vowing that if united they could teach the Americans "a lesson, the same one we taught the Russians" when many of the chieftains had fought in America's first Afghan war. Dressed in a gray shalwar kameez, the long shirt and bloused trousers favored in Afghanistan, and his camouflage jacket, bin Laden held a small Kalakov, a shorter version of the Kalashnikov, in his hand. As the crowd began to shout "Zindibad [Long live] Osama," the leader of Al Qaeda moved through the banquet hall dispensing white envelopes, some bulky, some thin, the thickness proportionate to the number of extended families under each leader's command. Lesser chieftains, according to those present, received the equivalent of $300 in Pakistani rupees; leaders of larger clans, up to $10,000.

Bin Laden really didn't have to buy the loyalty of the Pashtun tribal chiefs; they were already devoted to him. He was, after all, the only non-Afghan Muslim of any consequence in the past half-century who had stood with the Afghans. But on that November afternoon, and on the nights that followed it, as bin Laden began to lay the groundwork for his escape from the Tora Bora caves, the elusive Qaeda leader was determined to be absolutely sure.

The following evening, or the evening after, bin Laden, according to an Afghan intelligence official, dined in Jalalabad with other Pashtun tribal chiefs from Parachinar, Pakistan, an old military outpost I first visited nearly 20 years before. Parachinar had been a key staging area for the C.I.A. during the jihad, and its tribal leaders had profited immensely. A picturesque town in the Kurram Valley, Parachinar was also Pakistan's first line of defense against any Afghan incursion. Beyond it lie only the White Mountains - and the caves of Tora Bora - and desolate stretches of no man's land.

The last time bin Laden was seen in Jalalabad was the evening of Nov. 13, when he, along with Khalis's son, Mujahid Ullah, and other tribal leaders negotiated a peaceful hand-over of power from the Taliban to a caretaker government. Under its terms, Khalis would take temporary control of the city until the formation of a newly appointed U.S.-backed government. He, of course, made certain that the Eastern Shura, as the government is called, was stacked with men who owed their loyalty to him. Hajji Abdul Qadir, his former military commander, became Nangarhar Province's governor again.

Bin Laden's Arab fighters had used Jalalabad as a base and as a command center for a number of years, and now they dispersed, loading their weapons and their clothing, their children and their wives into the backs of several hundred lorries, armored vehicles and four-wheel-drive trucks. Some Taliban fighters followed suit. Others disappeared, removing their signature black turbans and returning to their villages and towns.

As the convoy was being readied, bin Laden said his goodbyes: to the Taliban governor; to Mujahid Ullah, Khalis's son; and to scores of the tribal leaders who had received his white envelopes three days before. He was dressed now as he had been dressed then and cradled his Kalakov, even though he was surrounded by some 60 armed guards.

Then he entered a custom-designed white Toyota Corolla, and the convoy sped away toward the mountains of Tora Bora, where he waited for the Americans to arrive.

y late November, Hazarat Ali, Hajji Zaman and Hajji Zahir had assembled a motley force of some 2,500 men - supplemented by a fleet of battered Russian tanks - at the base of Tora Bora. The Afghans were ill equipped and poorly trained. They also lacked the commitment that bin Laden's fighters had. Hidden from view at 5,000 feet and above in the scores of valleys, forests and caves, the Qaeda fighters not only had the tremendous advantage of the terrain; their redoubts were replete with generators, electricity and heat and copious stocks of provisions. Snow covered the mountain, and it was bitterly cold. The Afghan fighters at its base grumbled and quarreled endlessly. It was also the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, and some of the Afghans had the irritating tendency to leave their posts and return home to celebrate iftar, the evening meal that breaks the fast.

Perhaps more ominous was the growing antipathy between Hazarat Ali and Hajji Zaman: both ruthless, both greedy, both corrupt, both flashing fistfuls of new $100 bills - one a Pashtun, the other not. Their mutual loathing became so intense that on more than one occasion they and their fighters, instead of fighting Al Qaeda, shot each other's men.

The American bombardment of Tora Bora, which had been going on for a month, yielded to saturation airstrikes on Nov. 30 in anticipation of the ground war. Hundreds of civilians died that weekend, along with a number of Afghan fighters, according to Hajji Zaman, who had already dispatched tribal elders from the region to plead with bin Laden's commanders to abandon Tora Bora. Three days later, on Dec. 3, in one of the war's more shambolic moments, Hazarat Ali announced that the ground offensive would begin. Word quickly spread through the villages and towns, and hundreds of ill-prepared men rushed to the mountain's base. The timing of the call to war was so unexpected that Hajji Zahir, one of its three lead commanders, told journalists at the time that he nearly slept through it.

On a map, it was little more than a mile from the bottom of the White Mountains to the first tier of the Qaeda caves, but the snow was thick and the slopes were steep and, for the Afghan fighters, it was a three-hour climb. They were ambushed nearly as soon as they arrived. The battle lasted for only 10 minutes before bin Laden's fighters disappeared up the slope and the Afghans limped away. Over the coming days, a pattern would emerge: the Afghans would strike, then retreat. On some occasions, a cave would change hands twice in one day. It was only on the third day of the battle that the three dozen Special Forces troops arrived. But their mission was strictly limited to assisting and advising and calling in air strikes, according to the orders of Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of U.S. Central Command, who was running the war from his headquarters in Tampa, Fla.

Even after the arrival of the Special Forces, the Afghan militias were making little headway in their efforts to assault the Qaeda caves - largely as a result of heavier resistance than they had expected - despite having launched simultaneous attacks from the east, west and north. They had sent none of their forces to the south, where the highest peaks of the White Mountains are bisected by the border with Pakistan. The commanders, according to news reports, argued vehemently among themselves on what the conditions on the southern side of the mountain were: some insisted it was uncrossable, closed in by snow; other commanders were far less sure.

By now, the Taliban's stronghold in Kandahar had fallen or, more correctly, had been abandoned by the soldiers of the regime. The Taliban retreat from Kandahar was emblematic of the war. None of Afghanistan's cities had been won by force alone. Taliban fighters, after intense bombing, had simply made strategic withdrawals. A number of American officers were now convinced that this was about to happen at Tora Bora, too.

One of them was Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis, the commander of some 4,000 marines who had arrived in the Afghan theater by now. Mattis, along with another officer with whom I spoke, was convinced that with these numbers he could have surrounded and sealed off bin Laden's lair, as well as deployed troops to the most sensitive portions of the largely unpatrolled border with Pakistan. He argued strongly that he should be permitted to proceed to the Tora Bora caves. The general was turned down. An American intelligence official told me that the Bush administration later concluded that the refusal of Centcom to dispatch the marines - along with their failure to commit U.S. ground forces to Afghanistan generally - was the gravest error of the war.

A week or so after General Mattis's request was denied, the turning point in the battle of Tora Bora came. It was Dec. 12. Hajji Zaman had by now realized that the Qaeda fighters were better armed than his men and that they were also prepared to die rather than surrender to him. He was also becoming increasingly irritated with Hazarat Ali and with the snow. And in a few days the feast of Eid al-Fitr, which ends Ramadan, would begin. The stalemate, the Americans' surrogate commander decided, simply had to end. So, through a series of intermediaries and then directly, Hajji Zaman made radio contact with some of bin Laden's commanders and offered a cease-fire. The Americans were furious. The negotiations - to which Hazarat Ali acquiesced since he, too, was now holding secret talks with Al Qaeda - continued for hours. By the time they came to an end, Hajji Zaman's interlocutor, hidden somewhere in the caves above, was probably bin Laden's son Salah Uddin. If the Qaeda forces surrendered, Hajji Zaman's contact said, it would be only to the United Nations. Then he requested additional time to meet with other commanders. He would be back in touch by 8 the following morning, the younger bin Laden said.

American intelligence officials now believe that some 800 Qaeda fighters escaped Tora Bora that night. Others had already left; still others stayed behind, including bin Laden. "You've got to give him credit," Gary Schroen, a former C.I.A. officer who led the first American paramilitary team into Afghanistan in 2001, told me. "He stayed in Tora Bora until the bitter end." By the time the Afghan militias advanced to the last of the Tora Bora caves, no one of any significance remained: about 20 bedraggled young men were taken prisoner that day, Dec. 17.

On or about Dec. 16, 2001, according to American intelligence estimates, bin Laden left Tora Bora for the last time, accompanied by bodyguards and aides. Other Qaeda leaders dispersed by different routes, but bin Laden and his men are believed to have journeyed on horseback directly south toward Pakistan, crossing through the same mountain passes and over the same little-known smugglers' trails through which the C.I.A.'s convoys passed during the jihad years. And all along the route, in the dozens of villages and towns on both sides of the frontier, the Pashtun tribes would have lighted campfires along the way to guide the horsemen as they slowly continued through the snow and on toward the old Pakistani military outpost of Parachinar.

Tora Bora was the one time after the 9/11 attacks when United States operatives were confident they knew precisely where Osama bin Laden was and could have captured or killed him. Some have argued that it was Washington's last chance; others say that although it will be considerably more difficult now, bin Laden is not beyond our reach. But the stakes are considerably higher than they were nearly four years ago, and terrain and political sensibilities are far more our natural enemies now.

There is no indication that bin Laden ever left Pakistan after he crossed the border that snowy December night; nor is there any indication that he ever left the country's Pashtun tribal lands, moving from Parachinar to Waziristan, then north into Mohmand and Bajaur, one American intelligence official told me. The areas are among the most remote and rugged on earth, and they are vast. Had bin Laden been surrounded at Tora Bora, he would have been confined to an area of several dozen square miles; now he could well be in an area that snakes across some 40,000 square miles.

Defending its decision not to commit forces to the Tora Bora campaign, members of the Bush administration - including the president, the vice president and Gen. Tommy Franks - have continued to insist, as recently as the last presidential campaign, that there was no definitive information that bin Laden was even in Tora Bora in December 2001. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19, 2004, Op-Ed article in The New York Times. Intelligence assessments on the Qaeda leader's location varied, Franks continued, and bin Laden was "never within our grasp." It was not until this spring that the Pentagon, after a Freedom of Information Act request, released a document to The Associated Press that says Pentagon investigators believed that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and that he escaped.

The document's release came at a particularly delicate time for the United States. A newly resurgent Taliban was on the rise. Its attacks on American forces - launched from Pakistan, according to Afghan officials - were more lethal, better organized and more widespread than at any time since the war against terror began. And President Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler of Pakistan who is ostensibly our key ally in that war, had, to a growing extent, become an ally on his own terms. It was only in the last days of July that he once again committed himself to embark on a campaign against his country's Islamic militants. And this was only as a result of suggestions that there were Pakistani links to the bombings that month in London and the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

At the same time, to Musharraf's irritation, reports surfaced again - from Indian and Afghan officials, Taliban prisoners and opposition politicians in Pakistan - of terrorist training camps in the Mansehra district of northern Pakistan and the restive southern province of Baluchistan. There, the provincial capital of Quetta had, for all intents and purposes, become a Taliban town. Black-turbaned Talibs swaggered through its bazaars, photographs of bin Laden and Taliban banners adorned its muddy lanes and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar was believed to be in residence.

I puzzled over whether Musharraf's new determination would include finally becoming serious about the hunt for bin Laden. No one to whom I spoke was at all convinced. A few weeks earlier, I had asked George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an expert on South Asian security issues, what he thought about Musharraf's commitment to the search generally. "For me, the outstanding question is, At the highest levels in Islamabad is there a conviction that capturing or killing bin Laden would be good for the leadership of Pakistan?" Perkovich replied. "And given the answer to that question, how hard are they willing to try? And can they afford to be seen as being solidly on America's side? I think Musharraf also worries about whether or not Washington will stay the course. Therefore, he's got to keep the Americans online: hold back something that they want. And, in that respect, Osama could be seen as an insurance policy for them."

According to Gary Schroen, the former C.I.A. officer, "We're never going to get bin Laden without the total cooperation of Pakistan, and there's a lot more they could do."

"Such as?" I asked.

"Winning over their military is imperative," he said. "We've got to convince them that it's in their interest to bring bin Laden in. And that means allowing us to send Special Forces and C.I.A. teams, in sufficient numbers, into the northern areas with the ability to move around, to establish networks on the ground. We've also got to refocus U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan in order to have coordinated military operations between the two sides of the frontier." He paused and said, "It's all up to the Pakistanis now."

"How would this affect Musharraf if he agreed?" I asked.

He thought for a moment, and then he replied, "If his hand was ever seen as the one that turned bin Laden over, he wouldn't be able to survive."

Dec. 16, 2001: Despite the Afghan and American assault on Tora Bora, Osama bin Laden escaped.

#photograph by erik de castro/reuters/corbis

Mary Anne Weaver, who has been a Guggenheim fellow and a Council on Foreign Relations fellow this year, is the author of "Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11TORABORA.html?ei=5088&en=b2be68c2558e1937&ex=1284091200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print


801 not happy....

[The 801]

September 13, 2005
Prof publishes bin Laden’s words
by Orcun Unlu

PETER GEBHARD/THE CHRONICLE

Only days after the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a Duke professor is trying to explain the motivations of the tragedy’s organizer—jihadist Osama bin Laden.

Bruce Lawrence, professor of religion, edited and wrote the forward to the book Messages to the World—The Statements of Osama bin Laden. The text, which goes into print today and will arrive in bookstores in the fall, is the first to include the translations of the Arabic writings of bin Laden.

The book features a collection of 22 speeches and interviews given by the leader of the terrorist organization al Qaeda between 1994 and 2004.

Verso Books, a British publishing company, approached Lawrence in March, asking him to write