LAHORE: One of the reasons Osama Bin Laden has not been captured, experts believe, is that President General Pervez Musharraf struck a deal with the United States not to seize the Al Qaeda leader after the Afghan war for fear of inciting trouble in Pakistan, reports The Guardian. According to the British newspaper, Mr Bin Laden is most likely hiding in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), to where he fled from the caves of Tora Bora in the Spin Ghar mountains of eastern Afghanistan in December 2001, when the US was close to winning the war against the Taliban.
| That just about tallies with my suspicions, too. I'd have said he was in NWFP instead of FATA. I'd also add that he's under the protection of one of the Islamobigs â I used Fazl's guest house as shorthand, but it's more likely Samiul Haq. Had they actually displayed Binny's carcass at the time, the left would have pronounced the WoT over... |
Mansoor Ijaz, an Al Qaeda expert, told Guardian correspondent Rory McCarthy that Pakistani authorities feared that to capture or kill Mr Bin Laden so soon after the war in Afghanistan would incite civil unrest in Pakistan and trigger a spate of revenge Al Qaeda attacks on western targets across the world.
| Mansoor's a pretty smart fellow. He's usually close to the mark with his analysis, especially when it concerns Pakland... |
Mr Ijaz believes an agreement was reached between Gen Musharraf and the American authorities shortly after Mr Bin Ladenâs flight from Tora Bora. âThere was a judgment made that it would be more destabilising in the longer term,â he said. âThere would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate.â
| And then they lost him... |
The Americans, according to Mr Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of a shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq. So the months that followed were centred on taking down not Mr Bin Laden, but the âretaliation infrastructureâ of Al Qaeda. It meant that Gen Musharraf frequently put out conflicting accounts of the status of Mr Bin Laden, while the US administration barely mentioned his name. In January last year Gen Musharraf said he believed the Al Qaeda chief was probably dead. A year later he said he was alive and moving either in Afghanistan or perhaps in the Pakistani tribal areas. The report says another reasons for the failure to capture Mr Bin Laden is the difficult intelligence agencies have in infiltrating the rank and file of the organisation. Another problem was extensive security. Mr Ijaz believes Mr Bin Laden is protected by a security cordon of three concentric circles, in which he is guarded first by a ring around 120 miles 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 12 miles in diameter, made up of tribal elders who would warn if the outer ring were breached. At the centre of the circles is the man himself, protected by one or two of his closest relatives and advisers.
| Kinda like the security arrangements of the Council of Boskone... |
Pakistani officials say their intelligence on Mr Bin Laden is still remarkably limited. Many of the reports they receive of his movements, they insist, are simply wrong, and the terrain of the tribal regions makes it almost impossible to find a single man intent on hiding. Some argue that the Pakistani authorities saw the difficulties from the start and, although they publicly stressed their commitment to the hunt for Mr Bin Laden, in private they had a different strategy; hence, Gen Musharrafâs reported deal with the US. Yet western diplomats say they believe Islamabad is committed to the hunt for Mr Bin Laden.
| Islamabad is committed to its own ends, which may change hourly... |
However, the report concludes, Pakistan and the US must quickly tame the elders in the tribal areas who appear to have given Mr Bin Laden sanctuary. âWith so much of the retaliation infrastructure gone or unsustainable, Bin Ladenâs martyrdom does not pose nearly the threat it did a year ago,â Mr Ijaz said. |