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Binny and Ayman elusive post-Afghanistan
"Bush, do you know where I am?" With these words, Ayman al-Zawahri, al Qaeda's No. 2 after Osama bin Laden, taunted U.S. President George W. Bush last month after a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan failed to kill him.CIA Director Porter Goss said last year he had an excellent idea of where bin Laden was, but more than four years after the September 11 attacks and despite military operations and high-level arrests, bin Laden and Zawahri are still eluding capture. U.S. officials say only that they are thought to be somewhere in the rugged tribal areas that run for more than 500 miles (800 km) along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. "We think they're in the border region, but cannot disclose more than that for obvious reasons," a U.S. counterterrorism official said, adding the two men were probably always on the move. Bin Laden was last heard from on January 19 in an audio tape and Zawahri appeared in a video on January 30. Officials hope both messages may shed some light on their location. Several officials said Zawahri's use of a relative high quality video while bin Laden only made a mediocre-quality audio tape supported a belief that the two men had unequal access to hi-tech recording devices. Some experts have wondered whether bin Laden was ill and did not want a video to highlight any apparent weakness. "The fact that bin Laden did an audio tape would suggest he's in a more isolated remote environment and Zawahri's video would suggest that he's in closer contact with al Qaeda's propaganda apparatus," said a U.S. counterterrorism official, who declined to say whether this meant Zawahri was probably near or in an urban environment. Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence firm, questioned the theory of bin Laden's isolation, saying his taped references to detailed current events make it unlikely he is "stuck in a cave." "Unless there are platoons of couriers bringing reports to him ... it would appear that bin Laden is able to access satellite television and possibly the Internet. Wherever he is, there is electricity and some degree of connectivity to the world," the group said in a recent report. Pakistani intelligence officials say Zawahri, at least, is almost certainly still in the Pashtun tribal lands that straddle the long, porous border between the two countries. The terrain ranges from arid dust-blown plains marked by dry gullies and covered in low scrub, to jagged mountain ranges, some barren, others heavily forested. There are few proper roads, and militants can be alerted to any ground movement of security forces long before the troops arrive. While bin Laden and Zawahri have managed to get more than a dozen video and audiotapes to Arab television stations in the Gulf since the 2001 attacks, authorities have been unable to trace them back and locate the world's most wanted men. Several intelligence officials in the United States, Europe and Pakistan said bin Laden and his deputy were probably hiding in separate locations. All of the officials declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic. "It seems unlikely that they'd hide in the same place all the time, because then the two of them would be hit with one missile or with one raid," a European counterterrorism official said. He said bin Laden's choice of an audio tape could simply mean he is avoiding the additional risk of making and smuggling videotapes. It could also be part of a deliberate strategy to operate from the shadows where "you hear his voice but don't see his face." "I don't see the cave (as a hide-out for bin Laden). I rather see some backrooms in a large house in a densely populated suburb or something like that," he said. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-15 |
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