Trail of the world's most wanted man goes cold

WHERE'S OSAMA?

By Kathy Gannon ~ The Associated Press

TORA BORA, Afghanistan -- As Taliban defenses around Kabul crumbled under the fury of American bombs, the man responsible for it all -- Osama bin Laden -- was far away in the safety of this mountain fortress.

Then, by the time the Americans zeroed in on Tora Bora in December, unleashing 15,000-pound bombs on the caves and tunnels, bin Laden was gone, according to his former driver, a Taliban regional security officer and the former chief of Taliban forces here in eastern Afghanistan.

Since then, the trail has gone cold. Sightings have been replaced by rumors and U.S. officials admit they are baffled.

"We don't know whether he's alive or dead, in Afghanistan or Pakistan," Bryan Whitman, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said late Tuesday.

Afghan Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah said Sunday that he believes bin Laden is across the border in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities dismiss such talk as speculation.

But an Afghan intelligence official, Rehmat Shah, said bin Laden was sighted in June in Pakistan's South Waziristan region, a rugged border area where U.S. special forces and Pakistani soldiers are searching for al-Qaida fugitives.

Belief in death

Speaking Monday in Kabul, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, would only say there was no "convincing proof" bin Laden is dead.

Although bin Laden's whereabouts are a mystery, former Taliban officials and others are now willing to talk about where he was around the time of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Immediately after Sept. 11, Osama traveled around the country," said Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, who was the Taliban's deputy interior minister at the time. "He didn't stay in one place for more than 24 hours. He went to Kabul, Khost, Jalalabad, Uruzgan, Helmand, Jozjan, Faryab, Ghor and Badghis provinces, visiting the Arab camps. They were all over Afghanistan."

According to a retired Pakistani general, who spoke on condition of anonymity, bin Laden was at an al-Qaida camp in the Bagran district of Helmand province when hijackers steered jetliners into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

The general, who was in Kandahar, about 100 miles southeast of Bagran, on Sept. 11, said bin Laden's whereabouts were relayed to him by senior Taliban officials.

When the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began Oct. 7, bin Laden was in Kandahar along with Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, according to Khaksar. Omar sent his family to Maruf, the center of his Hottaq tribe. Bin Laden's family fled the country through Pakistan.

It's unclear when bin Laden took refuge in Tora Bora, a complex of caves and tunnels south of Jalalabad near the Pakistani border that was a guerrilla refuge during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s.

However, Afghans in the area reported seeing "the sheik," as bin Laden was known, on Nov. 19, three days after the Taliban abandoned Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province.

An Afghan who described himself as bin Laden's former driver said that four passports were brought to Jalalabad for bin Laden after Sept. 11. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he believed the passports were provided by Pakistani intelligence but did not know the nationalities of the travel documents.

Maulvi Mohammed Towha, a senior Taliban security official, fled Jalalabad on Nov. 16 along with the Taliban governor, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, who was also deputy prime minister. They were accompanied by about 2,500 men, including Arabs and Pakistanis from al-Qaida and its affiliated movements.

Some of the foreign fighters went northeast toward Kunar province and across the border into Pakistan, Towha said in an interview with AP in Pakistan. Others went south and east toward Tora Bora.

Residents of villages around Tora Bora said hundreds of Arabs fled toward the mountain hide-outs. None, however, claimed to have seen bin Laden.

"So many Arabs came through here," said Mattiullah Khan, a resident of Bachir Akar in Nangarhar province. "People hid them. They were happy to hide them. For several days we kept them in our houses."

Most of the Arabs are believed to have fled the area before the heaviest of the U.S. bombing, paying smugglers to guide them to Pakistan. From the caves of Tora Bora, the al-Qaida fighters and their families escaped through the villages of Suleiman Khiel and then to Milawa near the Pakistani border.

Despite a $25 million price on his head, bin Laden would probably have had little to fear from Afghan villagers, whose culture considers handing over a "guest" to outsiders to be shameful.

"No one would have handed them over to America," said Najibullah, who uses one name and lives in a mud-brick hut near Tora Bora. "Lots of them came through here. Some were families, Afghans and Arabs."

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has said he suspects bin Laden is dead. But many Afghans, especially bin Laden's admirers, believe he survived.

"He is alive," said Fazul Rabi Said-Rahman, a former Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan. "We have our special way of knowing. He is not dead."