Saturday, August 23, 2003

Ben Laden remains elusive

AMERICAN intelligence agents and their cronies
scouting the Afghan countryside have grown wary of
false tip-offs about the whereabouts of Osama Bin
Laden coming up almost every day and have got nowhere
near the elusive Al Qaeda leader, who gave the slip of
tens of thousands of American soldiers and their
allies at the end of the Afghan war last year.
It is more of a matter of luck than anything else that
the Americans agents believe would be decisive in
capturing Bin Laden alive or dead. The leads they
have received so far are so flimsy that they are they
not even sure that the man is alive or dead. This is
the finding of Western intelligence sources who keep
track of American operations in the Afghan war
theatre, which covers Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and
some of the former Soviet republics which border
Afghanistan.
At the same time, as every day passes by without any
success in locating Bin Laden and his ally Taliban
leader Mullah Omar, the Bin Laden legend continues to
grow among his faithful similar to that of the
Phantom, the "ghost who walks" immortalised in comic
books.
Frustrating the Americans are the occasional tapes
released through Qatar's Al Jazeera television station
carrying a voice that sounds like Bin Laden and
confirmed as that of the Al Qaeda chief.
Instead leading the hunters closer to the quarry,
every wasted day makes it more difficult for the
American military to get their hands on information
about him let alone capturing him, according to the
intelligence sources.
"They have been working overtime to get Bin Laden,"
said the source. "But the operations are all messed up
and the hunters are non-plussed to explain how some of
the best equipped intelligence agencies backed up the
best resources in the world could not come up with one
man -- Bin Laden.
"They would never admit that they have run aground
without leads and hence the high secrecy and media
blackout imposed on the actual state of the hunt for
Bin Laden."
Intelligence agents were led dozens of times this year
to believe that they are hours close to capturing Bin
Laden in the western deserts of Pakistan and the
mountain ranges on the Pak-Afghan border. Invariably,
all of them turned out to be false alarms, and most of
them produced by people overenthusiastic about the $25
million bounty offered for information leading to the
capture or death of Bin Laden.
"Surprisingly, however, even those bounty-seekers
coming forward with 'information' on Bin Laden have
been limited in numbers, " said a highly informed
source.
"The Bin Laden situation is not like Iraq and Saddam
Hussein where there was little love lost for the
dictator and there could be hundreds of thousands
ready to try their hand at getting the $25 million
bounty on his head," said the source. "What the
American and British intelligence agents have come
across among Afghans as well as Pakistanis in the
border areas is devotion to Bin Laden and
determination to defend him at whatever cost."
The communities along the Pak-Afghan border live by
their own laws and are bound by codes of honour
handed down over centuries that could not broken by
any external consideration. Those who dare to violate
the code of conduct -- particularly a commitment to
protect a "guest" who has sought protection -- might
not live another day to recount the tale.
American efforts to locate turncoat Al Qaeda agents
also have had little success.
What the US agents have failed to realise and respect
is the high motivation among Al Qaeda that makes it
almost impossible to break into the rank and file of
the organisation.
It might sound strange, given that $25 million would
represent the income of several generations of
hundreds of communities in an Afghan or Pakistan town,
but that is the way the Bin Laden culture has taken
root among devout Muslims in the region.
"For the bulk of them Bin Laden is their leader in the
fight against the Western evil as represented by the
Americans and they have surprisingly unwavering
commitment to their beliefs and convictions," said the
source. "They understand his language and words more
than American assurances about their well-being,
including democracy and everything else connected to
that."
"No amount of bounty is going to undermine their stand
since they believe that they will be held accountable
to God in their afterlife if they betray someone like
Bin Laden."
However, that has not stopped some of them from
collecting "easy money" in return for false
information to the point that the American-British
combine is no longer generous with cash to informants,
said the source.
"Tens of thousands of dollars and gifts like mobile
phones used to change hands every day in the hunt for
Bin Laden and Mullah Omar in the initial days after
the Afghan war," said the source. "It is no longer the
case since the agents now feel that they had been
taken for a ride by the so-called informants and
bounty hunters."
An 11,000-strong American task force backed by Afghan
allies is combing the area for what they call remnants
of the Taliban and Al Qaeda — including of course
Mullah Omar and Bin Laden — in the Afghan-Pakistan
border.
American agents and Pakistani security forces are
searching the Pakistani side of the border, but apart
an intensification of mortar and rocket attacks, the
Americans have found little success.
Iran is no help either.
Given the Iranian theocratic hostility towards the US
and Tehran's tight-knit and merciless approach to
people suspected of spying for foreign elements, the
American intelligence community has run into a blank
wall in trying to get information from within Iran.
They know that a handful of Al Qaeda activists are in
Iranian hands but they don't even know the identity of
the detainees.
According to Mansoor Ijaz, who is described by
London's Guardian newspaper as a financier who has
spent years tracking Bin Laden's movements and
operations, the Al Qaeda leader is is hiding in the
"northern tribal areas" -- the long belt of seven
deeply conservative tribal agencies which stretches
down the length of the mountain ranges that mark
Pakistan's 2,400-kilometre border with Afghanistan.
Ijaz should know, says the Guardian, since Manoor Ijaz
has "close contacts in Pakistan's intelligence
agencies and has worked, behind the scenes, as
negotiator over Bin Laden in the past."
According to the paper, Mansoor Ijaz was involved in
negotiating attempts by Sudan to provide crucial
information on Bin Laden in 1997 and worked on an
attempt to have him extradited from Afghanistan
through the United Arab Emirates in 2000.
Mansoor Ijaz told the paper that he believes Bin Laden
is protected by an "elaborate security cordon of three
concentric circles, in which he is guarded first by a
ring around 200 kilometres in diameter of tribesmen,
whose duty is to report any approach by Pakistani
troops or US special forces."
"Inside them is a tighter ring, around (20
kilometres) in diameter, made up of tribal elders who
would warn if the outer ring were breached," it says.
"At the centre of the circles is Bin Laden himself,
protected by one or two of his closest relatives and
advisers. Bin Laden has agreed with the elders that he
will use no electronic communications and will move
only at night and between specified places within a
limited radius."
No wonder the US has made little headway in its
unprecedentedly intense hunt for Bin Laden, and it is
highly unlikely that its approach would come to
fruition any soon.