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2 The bin Laden needle in a
haystack By Michael Scheuer
More than six years after the September
11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden remains free,
healthy and safe enough to produce audio and
videotapes that dominate the international media
at the times of his choosing.
Popular
attitudes, and some official ones, in the United
States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) allies tend to denigrate the efforts made
by their military and intelligence services to
capture the al-Qaeda chief. The common question
always
is, "Why can't the US superpower and its allies
find one six-foot, five-inch Saudi with an
extraordinarily well-known face?"
The
answers are several, each is compelling, and
together they suggest that the US-led coalition's
military and intelligence forces are too
over-tasked and spread far too thin to have more
than a slim chance of capturing or killing bin
Laden and his senior lieutenants.
The
first factor is the issue of topography. Few US
citizens or Europeans have any idea of what the
terrain of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border looks
like.
This shortcoming must be attributed
to the failure of Western leaders to educate their
electorates using the abundant and commercially
available satellite photography that depicts the
nightmarish mountains, forests and roadless
terrain in which Western forces conduct their
search. The border area is genuinely a frontier in
the sense of the American Old West, but with
mountains that dwarf even the Rockies. Such use of
satellite photography would likewise show voters
that the Western concept of a "border" as a
well-defined and manageable demarcation between
two nation-states is not remotely applicable
regarding the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The second factor is the role of the
indigenous population. Bin Laden and his
lieutenants appear to currently reside in a region
dominated on both sides of the border by Pashtun
tribes. Ethnically and linguistically, the Pashtun
are fairly homogenous, but the multiple tribes are
divided and subdivided into myriad, often rival,
clans. What all Pashtuns share, however, is a
quite conservative brand of Islam and a tribal
tradition that insists that no individual, once
accepted as a guest by the tribe, ever be
surrendered to those seeking him and that he be
defended to the death.
Buttressing this
tribal stricture in bin Laden's case is the fact
that the Pashtuns are conservative Muslims, and
regard him - as does much of the Muslim world - as
an Islamic hero. The strength of this combination
is evident when it is noted that no Pashtun has
stepped forward to collect a cent of the tens of
the millions of dollars the United States is
willing to pay for information leading to bin
Laden's capture or death.
It also is worth
noting that the Pashtun custom of guest protection
and their tendency to evaluate bin Laden as an
Islamic hero is more or less shared by all Sunni
Afghans, that it is a near-countrywide Afghan
characteristic. Thus, the US-led coalition's
military and intelligence personnel are likely to
encounter these attributes along most of the
1,700-kilometer Pakistan-Afghanistan border in
areas north and south of the Pashtun-dominated
central border area.
In addition, the
Afghans' traditional hostility to foreign
occupation traverses all ethnic groups and this
nearly universal attitude is likely to be
encountered with increasing stridency as the
coalition's presence progresses through its
seventh year. Recent media reporting, for example,
shows that some mujahideen groups in the
pro-Karzai Northern Alliance's heartland are
beginning to reform on the basis of a desire to
rid Afghanistan of what they view as its current
set of foreign occupiers.
The third factor
is the coalition's choice of major search areas.
In many ways, the hunt for bin Laden depends on
clandestinely acquired information, and those who
comment on the effort - including the present
author - must admit that they are commenting and
analyzing on the basis of informed speculation,
common sense and historical precedent.
For
the past several years, the hunt for bin Laden has
been concentrated in Pakistan's Waziristan region
and the area adjacent to it on the Afghan side of
the border. Coalition and Afghan forces,
Pakistan's intelligence service and border guards,
and the Pakistani regular army have been involved
in the hunt. One must assume that credible
information has led them to that location.
Nevertheless, there are several good reasons that
make Waziristan an unlikely top choice as a hiding
spot for bin Laden and his lieutenants.
A.
Although clearly a remote area, Waziristan is an
area through which much commerce and smuggling
takes place. In addition, there is a great deal of
simply tribe-, clan- or family-related movement
through the area because of the trans-border
ethnic homogeneity. Of the entire length of the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border, only the
Kandahar-Chaman-Quetta and
Kabul-Jalalabad-Peshawar corridors have more of
such activity, making Waziristan an area in which
everyday human and business traffic provides
substantial cover for those hunting a fugitive,
and thereby making it a relatively unattractive
refuge.
B. Waziristan was a major staging
and training area for the Afghan mujahideen and
their non-Afghan allies during the anti-Soviet
jihad of the 1980s. As a result, the Pakistani,
American and Russian governments hold a good deal
of information about the location of camps, depots
and hideouts built by the Afghan mujahideen. This
kind of information also is held by some of the
war correspondents who covered the Afghan-USSR
war, and who are now covering the present
insurgency. It seems fair to conclude that the
anti-Soviet mujahideen built their facilities in
what they determined were the most secure
locations in Waziristan, and that bin Laden and
his lieutenants are fully aware
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