Posted on 11/02/2001 11:17:29 PM PST by Ymani Cricket
Deadly chase for bin Laden
By Tony Allen-Mills, Washington
November 03, 2001
LIKE many Afghan refugees arriving at Pakistan's border, Gul Alam had a story to tell. Months before the suicide hijackings in the US on September 11, he had joined a work crew that was sent by Taliban militiamen into the mountains near Bamian, 160km west of Kabul. He spent a week building hardened mud walls inside a network of caves.
His story reached the ears of an agent for Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency and eventually arrived, in compressed form, on a list of dozens of similar reports at the Virginia headquarters of the CIA. Agency analysts studied satellite photographs of the barren mountainside, seeking the faintest trace of human activity that might lead US military forces to the hiding place of Osama bin Laden. If they spotted something, nobody yet knows.
There was another report last week about a convoy of luxury Toyota Land Cruisers seen driving east out of Kandahar a few days after September 11. The drivers were not Afghans but Arabs, a possible indication that bin Laden or his al-Qa'ida terrorist associates were behind the heavily tinted windows. Where they went was unknown.
Earlier this year an unmanned US reconnaissance drone took high-quality video of bin Laden, with his distinctive beard and white robes, surrounded by a large entourage at one of his bases in Afghanistan. When the drone returned later, he was gone. It has been like this for at least six years, since the CIA established a special unit to monitor bin Laden's movements. Reports arrive, but invariably too late. Targets are identified, but the quarry has always "just left" before the bombs and missiles strike.
For the past six weeks, the most formidable manhunt assembled has been reduced to chasing shadows. Arrayed against bin Laden and his henchmen are the combined forces of the CIA, the ISI, the US Air Force, the British Special Air Service, satellite surveillance, Afghan opposition fighters, a smattering of Taliban defectors and floods of talkative refugees keen to bargain their way to safety.
They all say something different. Bin Laden is hiding in a cave. He has built a dozen fortified redoubts across the mountains. He moves every night. He has fled to Pakistan, where he is protected by a local Pashtun warlord. Or perhaps he never left the Taliban's headquarters at Kandahar, where he may be right now, with his feet up in the cellar of a mosque.
The monster has become a ghost and he is beginning to scare American planners who thought they could find him. Not for the first time in Afghanistan's tortured history, a carefully devised military strategy is in trouble.
One charitable group in Florida last week opened a Halloween haunted house display with a mock execution. An actor dressed as bin Laden was grabbed by "FBI agents" and dragged, kicking and screaming, to a fake electric chair. Sparks flew and the floor shook as "bin Laden" died theatrically. The audience cheered for more. It is a scene many Americans would like to become reality, but senior US officials have begun to express public doubts.
Even Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, normally stirringly resolute, wobbled a little last week when he suggested bin Laden might never be found. He later qualified this, but other Pentagon officials confirmed their surprise at the absence of a breakthrough in toppling the Taliban or in significantly damaging al-Qa'ida.
The plan looked sound. CIA agents, with Pakistani intelligence and exiled Afghan opposition leaders, would spearhead attempts to divide the Taliban by encouraging defections, through bribery if necessary. While US air strikes kept pressure on the Taliban military, intelligence teams would seek out bin Laden. "It will be betrayal, not bombardment, that gets him," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan.
Yet the strategy has proved "horrendously naive", according to one Western official. The absence of a serious alternative to Taliban rule has left many tribal leaders reluctant to bargain with the US.
At the Pentagon, the lack of quality intelligence is beginning to hurt.
Although the net around bin Laden may be tightening, it shows no sign of ensnaring him. Despite rumours that the Saudi-born fugitive has skipped the country, military planners are sure he is still in Afghanistan.
When he is not on the move, the Americans believe he has two likely hiding places: in mountains near Jalalabad and an underground complex in the mountainous Oruzgan province north of Kandahar. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was born in Oruzgan, whose tribespeople are said to be fiercely loyal to him and unlikely to betray "special guest" bin Laden.
In the past three weeks, the US Air Force has used burrowing – or bunker-buster – bombs against caves that showed signs of human use. Last week, it reportedly focused on the Paktia province, near Pakistan.
Jack Schroder, a University of Nebraska geologist who worked in Afghanistan, says a recent video statement by bin Laden showed distinctive patterns on the rock behind him, indicating a spot in Paktia, where the mountains are full of natural limestone caverns and tunnels and man-made passageways. Bin Laden was based in that area when fighting the Russians.
Some of the caves are little more than bunkers just below the surface, Schroder says. Others stretch for kilometres beneath the rock, carved out decades ago as an irrigation system for the parched lowlands. But experts are divided on whether the terrorist chieftain would choose such a site for a likely fight to the death with US, British and Australian special forces.
"On a purely technological level, the US military is prepared to find and destroy these caves," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington defence policy research firm. "But the notion that we can find bin Laden's 'fortress of solitude', and that all 5000 of his henchman are going to be down there among the stalactites, is ridiculous."
Until recently, the Pentagon hoped bin Laden's habit of moving around would expose his convoy. But reports suggest he has abandoned his fleet of maroon Land Cruisers for mules or horses. And two senior intelligence sources say there is evidence that bin Laden has "pulled his wires" – cut off all communication – and is intending to lay up for the looming Afghan winter with a small group of trusted fighters and lieutenants.
Fewer than 20 of bin Laden's 150 elite personal bodyguards are believed to accompany him at any time. The rest have been scouting new locations and making them secure or acting as decoys across the region. These men, mainly Egyptians, Uzbeks, Algerians and other Arabs, have sniper rifles with silencers and night sights plus hi-tech French communications equipment, backed by special forces training. What marks them out is their loyalty to their leader, whom they have known for 10 years or more.
One further option is that bin Laden, aware that his cave complexes would be targets and exposed to detection from the air in the winter, might have abandoned the hills for a city, where the risk of betrayal might be higher but where even the SAS would find it hard to strike at him. Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, may be too obvious a sanctuary, but other potential havens exist in the Taliban-controlled towns of Qalat, Ghazni or Khowst.
In truth, it is little more than guesswork. Lacking reliable human intelligence, the Pentagon has been relying on its unrivalled state-of-the-art electronic spying technology, hoping that one lucky break, one telltale speck on the landscape, will lead it to the serpent's den.
"The Bush administration may be getting worried – whether they are stating it or not – that the public is going to associate getting bin Laden with success," says Charles Hermann, a former staff member of the National Security Council.
Cal Jillson, a political researcher from Texas, says the administration has left itself no choice. He adds: "They've put such a clear face on this evil – bin Laden's – that they have to chase him until they run him down."
Memo to Rumsfeld: Military goals and objectives, when stated as forcefully as they were by the President in the wake of the attacks, are not moving targets. If you cannot find a strategy (and yes, successful strategies are often simple) to achieve the objectives, then find someone who can achieve them.
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Saudi Prince Wants U.S. Punished
A Saudi Arabian prince urged Arab nations on Sunday to impose economic sanctions to punish the U.S. for suspending talks with the PLO. Prince Turki Bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, a brother of Saudi King Faud, said in Orlando, Fla., that Saudi Arabia would impose sanctions if the U.S. did not resume talks with the PLO. The Prince was in Orlando to attend a meeting of the Council for the National interest and the American Educational Trust, two groups that support Pa;lestinian self-determination.
(end of article)
Keep in mind that many of the terrorists from 9-11 were Saudis. We could be blackmailed (black-oiled), and probably are already from doing anything serious about terorists who are Saudis. Our dependence on Saudi oil is something we need to find a solution to, I think.
There is not always an audience for a simple kick in the nuts--even though that is how we won WWII.
Over 6000 counts of conspiracy to commit murder, all with hate crime attachments.
1654 counts of obstructing justice and lying to Federal Investigators.
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