Bin Laden 'still spends time in Afghanistan'

Washington: National security adviser James Jones said on Sunday that Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden still spends some time inside Afghanistan.

Most recent US estimates have placed bin Laden inside Pakistan. But Jones, a retired general, said the best estimate is that Bin Laden "is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border."

Jones described it as a "very, very rough, mountainous area. Generally ungoverned and we're going to have to get after that to make sure that this very, very important symbol of what Al Qaida stands for is either, once again, on the run or captured or killed."

Earlier, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the US hasn't had any good intelligence for years on Bin Laden's whereabouts. He said he couldn't confirm reports that bin Laden had been seen recently in Afghanistan.

"If, as we suspect, he is in North Waziristan, it is an area that the Pakistani government has not had a presence in, in quite some time," Gates said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said it was important to kill or capture Bin Laden and other Al Qaida leaders, "but certainly you can make enormous progress absent that."

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said people in the region have told him bin Laden "moves back and forth." He said the hunt for Bin Laden has prevented the Al Qaida leader from establishing bases for training and equipping terrorists, adding, "Don't think Al Qaida could not flourish without him if we give them a safe haven."

Jones appeared on CNN's "State of the Union," Gates and Clinton were on ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBs' "Face the Nation." McCain was on NBC.

Osama Bin Laden: Some uneasy questions

The last credible information about Osama Bin Laden was that he was seen in North Waziristan in December 2004. And the latest one is the statement from US National Security Adviser James Jones that Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden still spends some time inside Afghanistan. Here’s our Islamabad correspondent Mohsin Ali’s take on the world’s most elusive terror leader.

Where is Osama Bin Laden?

Since his miraculous escape from Tora Bora mountain complex south of eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad in December 2001 amid ferocious bombing by US aircraft, Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts are wrapped in mystery. The Al Qaida leader has eluded America’s dragnet. Offer of huge reward for information leading to his capture, dead or alive, have failed and the tall, bearded scion of the wealthy Saudi Bin Laden family is now like a phantom, ever more elusive and inaccessible. The CIA, the world’s best and most sophisticated secret service, has relentlessly carried on a hunt for the most wanted fugitive. But it too appears to be bogged down in a guessing game.

The agency’s last claim in recent months was that Bin Laden is holed up at some place in the rugged mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border. American officials and lawmakers have also made similar observation from time to time.

The last credible information about the elusive terror leader was that he was seen in North Waziristan in December 2004. The Pakistani forces scrambled quickly and mounted a raid but did not find him in the given place. Pakistan has however all along doubted recurring American claims, insisting the Al Qaida leadership had no safe haven on its territory.

Is Bin Laden dead?

Many in Pakistan believe Bin Laden may already be dead but is being kept alive to justify continued foreign troops presence in Afghanistan. No less than Pakistan’s current President, Asif Ali Zardari, made such a statement earlier this year. Intelligence sources in Pakistan say he was already a kidney patient on dialysis before the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. According to them he even remained under treatment in Pakistan. They point out that it was inconceivable a dialysis patient could survive the rigors of constant run in the rugged mountains and for over a decade that has passed since then.

Does Osama still enjoy sympathies of Pakistan conservatives?

Before and even after 2001 events bin Laden commanded wide respect in Pakistan among religious circles. The sentiment in his favour was particularly high among Pashtu-speaking population straddling both sides of the Pak-Afghan border. The situation appears to have changed over the years with discernable slump in number of his sympathizers, the main reason being the unending spiral of bloodshed with the transformation of Pakistani tribal areas into a vast battlefield, and the dangerous fallout in other parts of the country in the shape of deadly suicide attacks. But sill one comes across people who do not hesitate to praise Bin Laden and his ideology.

If alive, can Bin Laden be caught?

Notwithstanding the denials of his presence in Pakistan’s wild northwest, authorities privately concede possibility of OBL and his deputy Aiman al Zawahiri lurking somewhere on the 1,500 kilometre mountainous border. Pakistani leaders have regularly shrugged off American claims Bin Laden whereabouts were known to them and that Islamabad must act. They have publicly challenged the ally in the war on terror to share specific intelligence about the whereabouts of the Al Qaida Leader. Sources say the American claims are most probably only a tactic to keep Pakistan under pressure and extend its military campaign against militants in tribal region to tackle groups like Haqqani band who help Afghan Taliban and help attacks inside Afghanistan. So far Pakistani forces have not gone after these groups based mostly in North Waziristan. Pakistan seems uncompromising as far as American demand to allow its troops to operate on Pakistani territory in a grand hunt for bin Laden. That prospect remains very, very distant.

First of all it needs to be credibly established that Bin Laden still exists. Once it is done, joint operation by American and Pakistani forces along the long border -- an unlikely development – may lead to capture of the “phantom.”

By Mohsin Ali, Correspondent, Islamabad