Afghanistan News November 1, 2004

November 1, 2004

Afghan kidnap group issues Wednesday deadline
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Militants holding three foreign United Nations workers in Afghanistan have threatened to kill them unless all Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners are released from U.S. custody by noon (0730 GMT) on Wednesday.

The leader of Jaish-e-Muslimeen (Army of Muslims) told Reuters that the U.N. must also cease operations in Afghanistan, or the hostages would be killed "in such a way by which Muslims will be happy".

The group also released a video of the hostages to the Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera on Sunday showing them in good health.

The three -- Filipino Anjelito Nayan, Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland and Shqipe Hebibi from Kosovo -- were snatched from their U.N. vehicle in rush hour traffic on Thursday.

They had been helping to organise Afghanistan's first presidential election, which was held on Oct. 9.

Mullah Sayed Mohammed Akbar Agha, leader of the kidnap group, told Reuters in an interview that the group had four demands.

"The U.N. should leave Afghanistan and it should call Britain and America's meddling in Afghanistan as illegal," he said.

"Those who have no military involvement in Afghanistan, such as Philippines, must call Britain and America's meddling in Afghanistan as illegal and must stop its contributions through the U.N. for America and Britain's activities."

He also demanded that Kosovo and Britian immediately withdraw their forces from Afghanistan and that all Muslim prisoners in Afghanisan and Cuba, "be they Taliban or Al Qaeda", be freed.

The kidnappings have stoked fears among the 2,000-strong foreign community that militants in Afghanistan may be copying tactics used by insurgents in Iraq.

But a spokesman for the Taliban -- the hardline Islamic regime ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in November 2001 and now the main group fighting the government and more than 28,000 American and NATO troops in the country -- distanced the group from the kidnappings.

"We have no comment about the issue. It is their work and we are not involved in it," said Hamid Agha, chief spokesman for the Taliban.

GROUP OFFERS PROOF
The Jaish-e-Muslimeen have already proved they are holding the three by giving Reuters credit card numbers that authorities have confirmed are genuine.

Security sources say so far the group has only contacted a handful of journalists in Kabul about the kidnappings, and investigators were trying to open up channels of communication with them.

"We call on those holding them not to harm them," United Nations spokesman Manoel de Silva e Almeida told a news briefing on Sunday. "All three require medical attention and the best response to such a situation is their immediate release."

He would not give additional details for fear of jeopardising the investigation.

Jaish-e-Muslimeen emerged in early August when a group of Taliban commanders said they were splitting because the movement was beset with differences and had become ineffective under the leadership of its one-eyed leader, Mullah Omar, one of the world's most wanted men for helping shelter Osama bin Laden.

Its leader is Mullah Sayed Mohammed Akbar Aga and the group aims to rid Afghanistan of foreign troops and install an Islamic government.

"The objective of the group is not to weaken the jihad (holy war) but to strengthen it," Manzoor said at the time.

More than 1,000 people, most of them Afghans, have been killed mostly in Taliban violence over the past year, but U.S. President George W. Bush, seeking re-election on Nov. 2, hoped a successful Afghan poll would give his campaign a foreign policy fillip.

The vote count shows that U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai won the election, but official results have yet to be released pending the report of a panel investigating irregularities.

Video shows UN Afghan hostages
Sunday, 31 October, 2004 BBC News
Three UN workers held hostage by militants in Afghanistan have appeared in a video shown by Arabic TV. The three appeared unharmed in the video, in which their kidnappers called for the release of prisoners from Afghan jails and Guantanamo Bay.

Filipino Angelito Nayan, Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland and Shqipe Habibi from Kosovo were seized on Thursday at gunpoint.

They were in Afghanistan to help organise recent presidential elections.

The UN in Kabul, confirming that the footage did show the UN workers, has appealed for their release, saying they all needed medical attention.

There have been repeated claims that a militant Islamic group, the Army of Muslims (Jaish-e-Muslimeen) is holding the three foreigners.

Repeated messages have threatened the lives of the hostages unless Afghan prisoners are released, and foreign forces withdrawn from Afghanistan. The militants also want an end to UN operations there.

Taleban links

In the video footage, the three hostages were shown crouching up against a wall beside a masked man.

It is not clear when the video was made, although a member of the group was quoted as saying by AFP news agency that it was given to the TV station, al-Jazeera, at 0900 (0430 GMT) on Sunday.

The video was shown after the group provided evidence it was holding the hostages to the BBC, reading out at least one credit card number which belongs to one of them.

The group is believed to have strong Taleban links.

Elsewhere in the country, US forces have continued to clash with suspected Taleban and other militants, dampening hopes that the relative quiet during the 9 October elections would hold.

In the most serious incident, the US military says its soldiers killed five people and arrested nine others on Thursday near the Pakistani border.

A US spokesman said this followed an operation against what he described as an al-Qaeda facilitator, but he would not say who this individual was.

It is in this region that Osama Bin Laden is believed to be hiding.

UN appeals for release of hostages in Afghanistan
Sunday October 31, 3:36 PM AFP
The United Nations issued an emotional appeal for the release of three of its employees who were abducted at gunpoint three days ago in Afghanistan.

"We miss them and like their friends and families we worry about them. We call on those holding them not to harm them," UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva told a news briefing.

"All three require medical attention and the best response is the immediate release." He did not elaborate on their medical condition.

The three, a British-Irish woman, a woman from Kosovo, and a Filipino man, had been employed by the UN to oversee Afghanistan's first presidential election on October 9.

They were snatched from their UN-marked car in broad daylight Thursday in Kabul as they pulled up to their office.

A newly-emerged Taliban splinter group claims to have abducted them, and on Saturday issued the British-Irish woman's credit card number to prove it was holding them.

The group has threatened to execute the hostages unless foreign troops are pulled out of Afghanistan and Afghan security forces call off their search.

Afghan police have been concentrating their search on a valley west of Kabul for the past three days. They arrested three men on Friday who matched eyewitness descriptions of the abductors, but have made little progress in finding the hostages or their captors.

De Almeida e Silva said the three UN workers were committed to helping Afghanistan.

"They have very different backgrounds, they come from faraway lands with habits, cultures and traditions very diverse," he said.

"They have at least one thing in common: their commitment to serve people who can benefit from their knowledge and expertise and this is why they volunteered to come and work in Afghanistan."

Mixup with undercover American agent false alarm about suicide attack in Afghan capital
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) An American agent hidden under a heat-to-toe veil sparked fear of a suicide attack in the Afghan capital Sunday by fleeing from police who tried to search her at a city park, officials said.

Police initially thought the woman, who was carrying a bag under her traditional Afghan burqa, was laden with explosives when she tried to enter the Bagh-e Zanana gardens, officials said.

But an official with the NATO-run security force which scrambled patrols to the area said it appeared the woman had panicked because her bag contained a pistol. `It's all been resolved amicably,'' the official said, on condition he not be named.

A senior Afghan police officer said the woman had been brought to the Interior Ministry for a post-mortem on the embarrassing mixup. ``It's a big mess,'' he said.
When confronted at the park, the woman apparently retreated to a four-wheel-drive vehicle parked nearby containing at least one foreign man, officials and witnesses said.

Reporters saw a column of vehicles carrying police and bearded Westerners in plainclothes speeding away from the scene in the direction of the ministry. Police had sealed off the park, which has been restored with the help of foreign donations and is reserved for women. A group of officers beat an Associated Press photographer and his assistant when they entered.

Neither the woman involved in the incident nor the American security agency she was working for were identified. The capital is on a security alert after a suicide attack last weekend on a shopping street that left three people dead, and the kidnappings of three U.N. election workers on Thursday.

Karzai pledges to form narcotics ministry
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's incumbent president Hamid Karzai told British Prime Minister Tony Blair Sunday he will set up a ministry for narcotics, amid expectations of another major boom in opium and heroin production.

"Tony Blair called the president and they talked about narcotics, the (abducted UN) hostages and Afghan elections," a presidential spokesman told AFP.

"Mr. Blair said in the future the UK government will help more with the fight against narcotics in every way possible.

"The president said he will announce a cabinet-level post for the head of the narcotics department, a ministry," the spokesman added.

Opium and heroin production has boomed across Afghanistan since the collapse of the harsh Taliban regime, which had imposed heavy penalties for farming opium poppies.

It is the world's top producer of heroin, producing 90 percent of the heroin available on Europe's streets.

The trade brought in 2.5 billion dollars last year, some 35 percent of war-shattered Afghanistan's GDP.

Karzai's announcement of his plan for a ministry devoted to fighting narcotics comes ahead of the United Nations' annual report on opium production in Afghanistan, due on Thursday.

Poppy cultivation was expected to jump another 40 percent this year, the U.S. State Department's assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, Robert Charles, said in September.

Poverty-hit farmers growing opium can make 10 times the profit they would by just farming rice, the governor of northeast province Badakhshan, Said Ikramuddin, told AFP in September.

Karzai, who has won the country's first presidential election on October 9, is still awaiting the formal announcement of results, expected later in the week. He will have a month to form his cabinet before he is inaugurated.

New era of stability dawning in Afghanistan
By Hassan Hanizadeh Tehran Times
Hamid Karzai won the Afghan presidential election for a five-year-term in office in October.

All influential Afghan political groups and figures including Karzai’s main rival Yunes Qanooni accepted the results.

This indicates that Afghanistan is beginning to overcome all tribal biases and is entering a new stage in which it will prioritize national interests.

The country’s tribal overtones cannot be ignored, but now Afghanistan is striving to adopt a more advanced outlook.

The presidential election in Afghanistan, irrespective of its nature, quality, and fairness, has an important message to convey, i.e. the election will make the country a society which respects the rule of law.

Only now emerging from nearly 25 years of civil war, Afghanistan needs real interaction with its people and the international community more than anything else.

Through the election, Afghanistan put the era of instability behind it and entered a calm and stable stage in the knowledge that adopting the rule of law and avoiding ethnic strife can help this crisis-stricken country establish national sovereignty.

Hamid Karzai’s victory in the election requires the formation of a strong and united cabinet free of ethnic division so that the country can gradually solve all its internal and external problems.

The Afghan president should first take measures necessary to form a cabinet based on meritocracy and prepare the ground for parliamentary elections and then should put general disarmament atop his agenda.

Now that he has received a strong mandate from the Afghan electorate, Karzai can take measures to implement serious political, social, and economic reforms.

Karzai’s most important mission at this point in time is creating national unity, uniting religious and ethnic groups, and working to eradicate poppy cultivation, which has become a serious concern for Afghanistan’s neighbors.

Following the successful election in Afghanistan, the world expects the country to take more practical steps toward independence and democracy.

Issue of border loyality
Newsday 10/31/2004 By James Rupert
BORDER CONTROL POST 3, Afghanistan - In the predawn dark Sept. 1, about 200 armed men charged in from Pakistan, firing rockets and rifles at this mountaintop military base. Beating off the attack, "we killed three of them and captured one," said Sakhi Rahman, the Afghan post's commander. "They were all Pakistani."

Pakistani border forces posted nearby did nothing to halt the attack, Rahman told visiting U.S. troops last weekend . Rather, when the invaders fled back across the border, Pakistani troops helped them carry and treat their wounded, he and other soldiers here said.

While Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has made his government an essential U.S. ally in its "war on terror," some Pakistani officials and security forces continue to support the Islamic militant Taliban movement, notably in attacks into Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan military sources said. Pakistani border forces have helped truck Taliban militants to the frontier and even have supported attackers with rifle fire, they said.

Following pressure from President George W. Bush, Musharraf sent extra troops to parts of the Pakistani-Afghan border last month, and senior U.S. military officials have said Pakistan has clamped down on border infiltration, although it has not arrested Taliban leaders there. Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman, Masood Khan, said the estimated 70,000 troops along the border form "a large chunk of Pakistan's forces and represents a large commitment" by Musharraf's government "to root out terrorists of any persuasion."

From bunkers dug into their rocky mountaintop, Rahman and his Afghan troops look over the Pakistani region of Waziristan. At Musharraf's order, Pakistan's army this year has attacked deep into Waziristan, an autonomous tribal territory, to uproot the largely foreign al-Qaida movement of Osama bin Laden. Pakistan has arrested an estimated 600 al-Qaida activists in the past three years and killed others in battle, including Chechens, Arabs, Uzbeks and local tribesmen who took their side.

But the Taliban movement is more local -- born in Pakistan among the Pashtun tribes that dominate the Pakistani and Afghan border regions. It was bred, scholars say, by Pakistan's military intelligence agency as a way to install a pro-Pakistani government in Afghanistan.

Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan forced the Taliban from power here in 2001, many of the movement's prominent leaders have been living as refugees in Pakistan. Afghans and many specialists on the region say such Taliban exiles have organized and financed attacks on U.S. and Afghan government targets in Afghanistan.

Reasons to help Taliban - The Bush administration pressed Musharraf to prevent Taliban disruptions of Afghanistan's Oct. 9 elections and ordered 2,000 extra troops to help secure border regions south of here. Still, there has been no broad Pakistani crackdown on the Taliban, and Asian and Western scholars say U.S. forces in Afghanistan will never fully defeat the Islamic militants as long as Pakistan offers them sanctuary.

For decades, Pakistan has sought to influence or dominate the Afghan government, partly to protect its back as it confronts its rival India to the east. In the 1990s, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate backed the Taliban's seizure of power in Kabul. Now analysts such as New York University's Barnett Rubin say many in Pakistan's military and intelligence structures are trying to keep the Taliban viable as leverage against Afghan governments in Kabul or even in hopes of backing it in a new bid for power whenever the United States leaves Afghanistan.

Pakistan has "been supplied with information about the exact location of various major Taliban leaders," Rubin told an interviewer in August. "But they do not move against the Taliban. ... Instead, whenever there is pressure on about the Taliban, they arrest more al-Qaida people -- meaning people from Arab countries or from small extremist groups."

On this stretch of border, between Waziristan and the Afghan province of Khost, Rahman said CIA officials accompanied him and other Afghans in past months to show Pakistani security officials "where the Taliban had been firing missiles from" Pakistan into Afghanistan, but the Pakistanis "didn't act against the Taliban."
Cooperation with the Taliban by Pakistani border forces in this area "arise from local dynamics and do not reflect a more permissive policy by the Musharraf government," said Dr. Rifaat Hussain, a political analyst at Pakistan's National Defense College in Islamabad. The border forces are tribal conscripts whose obedience can be diluted by local public opinion, he said.

From Rahman's mountaintop, the lights of Miramshah, the Taliban stronghold, twinkle at night on the dark plain below. Less than 10 miles from the border, Miramshah and other villages host religious schools, or madrassas, run by the organization of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a prominent longtime warlord in Khost who this year was appointed the Taliban's No. 2 commander.

The schools serve as Taliban recruitment centers, where Pakistani and Afghan boys are taught that the Americans are an anti-Muslim force who have come to occupy a Muslim land and must be expelled.

According to soldiers in Rahman's unit, most of the attackers who could be identified in several Taliban assaults from Pakistan were not Afghans at all, but Pakistanis -- including members of the Pashtun Waziri tribe, students from Haqqani's madrassas and men from Punjab, an eastern Pakistani province.

For six months, U.S. Special Forces and CIA officers in Khost have tried to help seal the border by creating, training and equipping the unit in which Rahman serves -- the Khost Provincial Force. It is a 1,000-strong elite group of local Afghan tribesmen who are paid $170 per month, more than twice the wage of soldiers in the Afghan National Army. "The food, the training, everything is better than in the ... army," said Mohammed Yousuf, a doctor with the force.

Money from both sides - On both sides, the war is fueled by money. The Taliban "are paying Pakistani tribesmen to join them in attacks on us," Rahman said. He said his informants (whom he also pays) sent back word that the men who fought in the Sept. 1 attack here were paid about $85 for the night's work.

The U.S. strategy for sealing this border follows tradition. Historically, governments that have tried to rule the Pashtuns in their rugged homeland -- Pakistan, Afghanistan and, in centuries past, the British Empire -- have found it easier to hire local tribes to keep order. A senior U.S. officer in the region said the military is pleased with the tribal force and is preparing to repeat the experiment on other sensitive stretches of the border.

The U.S. military in Khost also is trying to prove to local villagers the benefits of cooperating with the U.S.-backed government authorities. In the past year, the 18,000-strong U.S. combat force in Afghanistan has been trying to build broader relationships with civilians, partly through reconstruction teams that combine diplomats, aid workers and soldiers to improve roads, schools, water supply and other basics that Afghans so badly need.

This month, when U.S. commanders suspected the Taliban were planning a border attack, they sent several dozen Marines in Humvees on a three-day tour of Rahman's position and nearby border areas. An Army civil affairs soldier, Spec. Chris Ifill, went along to survey how the military might best pursue its battle for Afghans' hearts and minds.

Two villages near Rahman's border post recently got new water wells from the Khost Provincial Reconstruction Team, and cooperation from local residents has improved since then, Rahman said. He said there are five more villages that want primary schools.

Despite the reconstruction projects, "a lot of people along the border are playing both sides," taking aid from the Americans and payments from the Taliban, Rahman told Ifill. In particular, he said, the Taliban have been recruiting nomads, called Kuchis, to carry rockets from Pakistan into Afghanistan and fire them at U.S. forces and their allies.

The Kuchis, Ifill said, are especially hard for U.S. forces to appeal to because, as nomads, they get limited benefits from the fixed infrastructure being built by the reconstruction teams.

Later that day, a squad of Marines sent to reinforce Rahman's post looked across to the Pakistan-Afghan border. Trained to find and engage their enemy, the Marines admitted to frustration over their inability to pursue the Taliban into Pakistan. "I know a lot of us would like to go right over the border and clean those guys up," said Cpl. Daniel Kachmar, who led the patrol. "But obviously, we can't."

Extension of gas pipeline project
The News Int. 10/30/04
The proposal to extend Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project to India will not only help in the ongoing peace efforts, but will also contribute to the overall progress and prosperity of the region. An official statement said that the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, Amanullah Khan Jadoon has received an invitation from his Indian counterpart to visit India to discuss this project. The invitation was delivered by the Indian High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Menon who also discussed matters relating to it. It was also agreed at the meeting that there were good chances of enhancing bilateral cooperation between Pakistan and India in various other fields of interest.

This mega project has been under consideration for the past few years and the unofficial reports of the trading sector concerning its feasibility are said to be in the final stages. The urgency for the completion of the project is evident. In view if its size and large population, India needs uninterrupted supply of low-cost energy and the availability of this is only possible from Iran, through Pakistan. However, India had been expressing certain reservations, vis-a-vis strained Indo-Pak relations, due to which progress could not be made on this project although Pakistan had expressed its willingness to allow the pipeline through its territory. While India will be able to meet its demand of gas to a large extent, the project will also benefit Pakistan in the shape of an annual income of 500 million dollars.

In the inter-dependent world of today, enhancement of cooperation among neighbouring countries has become inevitable. The examples of such cooperation in other parts of the world seem to have encouraged Pakistan and India to follow suit. The establishment of European Union in 1957 among only seven countries and then its expansion to include even those nations which have been at war with each other is an example for others to emulate. Who could think that they would have one currency and even agree on a common constitution.

Pakistan and India cannot remain isolated from the negative impacts of globalisation. The promotion of mutual economic, financial and trade relations between the two neighbouring countries as well as other countries of the region is the need of the hour. The fruits of regional cooperation and collaboration can only be achieved by increasing trade and economic relations and by linking bilateral interests. Stability in political relations in any region depends upon trust and protection of common interests. If this reality is kept in view, the gas pipeline project can serve as a means for connecting Iran, Pakistan and India in a relationship of mutual confidence and dependability.

It was after the meeting of President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during the UN General Assembly session in New York, that India, for the first time, showed serious interest in acquiring gas from Iran via Pakistan. According to analysts, presently Pakistan is considering three proposals. One of them is Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline. The second is Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan pipeline, and the third is the Qatar-Pakistan pipeline project. Iran gas project has been under review since 1993. Later, Iran had requested to extend it to India but due to the expenditure of two billion dollars and Indian attitude, the proposal remained in the doldrums. Now the situation appears to be becoming more conducive.

In February 2002, Pakistan and Iran had given the contract for the preparation of the feasibility. The report of the first phase has been provided to the Government of Pakistan. In October 2003, Teheran had given the proposal to Islamabad of laying the pipeline till the Iranian border. In this context, consultations at the technical level and exchange of information between the concerned Iranian and Pakistani gas companies are underway.

It is hoped that this monumental project will bring mutual benefits for the three countries and generate greater employment opportunities in India and Pakistan. High-level meetings on this project should be carried out immediately and they should be result-oriented so that the doors of progress and prosperity, closed for decades, are opened in the region.

Osama bin Laden casts himself as Muslim elder statesman
Latest video is less threatening, but raises new questions about the Al Qaeda leader's current location.
By Faye Bowers and Owais Tohid The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON AND ISLAMABAD - The Bush administration has rarely voiced his name. Kerry's campaign has uttered it as often as possible.

But Osama bin Laden spoke for himself Friday in his first videotaped comments in more than two years. "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda," he said to Americans. "Your security is in your own hands." (see story on US election impact).

Intelligence experts were struck by Mr. bin Laden's tone and by his appearance: No guerrilla garb, no rifle, no direct threats, or religious rhetoric of the past. Bin Laden was wearing a traditional Arab white thobe and princely, gold-trimmed outer garment. With the fall of Saddam Hussein and the marginalization of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, "part of what bin Laden is trying to do is fill the vacuum of leadership in the Muslim world," says Bruce Hoffman, a RAND Corp. expert on terrorism. "Part of his game is to portray himself as a statesman."

Bin Laden's reappearance serves to remind Americans not only of his threat - but of his elusiveness three years after Sept. 11. Why is he so hard to find?

One Pakistani military commander now says the Al Qaeda leader has fled the mountainous areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. There's speculation he may be hiding in Kashmir or in the cities of Pakistan - where several key top lieutenants have been caught in the past year. But most experts say that the US and Pakistan have no idea where he's holed up.

While bin Laden has been forced into hiding, effectively prevented from using cellphones, satellite phones, or the Internet, and many of his top echelon have been captured or killed, Al Qaeda's network continues to evolve and grow - as does bin Laden's legacy and mystique in the Muslim world.

Government officials and terror experts say he's been extremely clever in the way he's honed his messages and staged attacks that emphasize his importance as the Muslim world's lone "hero" able to stand up to superpower US, the country he claims is out to humiliate and dominate the Muslim world. The latest tape - an effort to cast himself as an elder statesman, not just a global jihadist - may be the most politically sophisticated, and dangerous, say experts.

"Part of bin Laden's genius is staying on message," says a senior intelligence official. "It's the Americans, Americans, Americans." Bin Laden's messages, says the official, all focus on US foreign policy in six areas: "unqualified US support for Israel; US presence on the Arabian Peninsula; US support for China, Russia, India, and others for oppressing Muslims; 'military occupation' of Muslim countries - Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan; US ability to manipulate the price of Arabian oil; and, US support for Muslim tyrannies - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, and Algeria. He's said the same ... thing since 1986 and hasn't changed a bit."

In this speech, bin Laden tries to clarify his thinking or reformulate it. For example, he says that if it were really freedom he hated - as Bush has said - he would have attacked Sweden, not the US. "We fought you because we are free and because we want freedom for our nation. When you squander our security, we squander yours." He says that the genesis of the Sept. 11 attacks lies in 1982, when the US aided Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

CIA officials say there was no specific threat information on the current tape, but apparently they have only five minutes of the 18-minute tape. But they also say the threat may have come in another tape that was broadcast last week, purportedly by an anonymous American member of Al Qaeda. Both tapes were produced by the same Al Qaeda media office, As Sahab. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are handing the "American" aspect of it, and have alerted law-enforcement officers across the country to try help identify the individual.

"It's probably more important now than ever to get him [bin Laden] ," says Mr. Hoffman. "We did say at the time [of the 9/11 attacks] that we wanted him dead or alive, and our words must have meaning - someone can't do that without impunity."

But it's not easy to find him, intelligence officials and counterterrorism experts say. For one thing, he's practiced guerrilla warfare for more than 20 years in one of the most remote and inhospitable corners of the world. Bin Laden also has a groundswell of support in the Muslim world, not just among radical Islamists, but among the larger population, which probably helps him elude authorities.

Escape from Tora Bora
Take his escape from Tora Bora in late 2001. As the Monitor reported at the time, the US rained down bombs on the mountain hideout - claiming publicly he was surrounded there - while hiring local Afghans to guard the escape routes. Locals said that bin Laden paid the Afghans more than the US, thus enabling him to walk down the back side of the mountain and into Pakistan.

It's there, holed up in mountain caves along the border region with Afghanistan, that most intelligence officials and terror experts believe bin Laden has since been hiding. But much of the Afghan-Pakistan border region is a wild no man's land about the size of Texas. Experts liken trying to find bin Laden there to the FBI's five-year manhunt for Eric Rudolph, the young man responsible for several abortion clinic bombings as well as the 1996 Olympic Park bombings in Atlanta. He squirreled himself away in the hills of North Carolina and eluded one of the largest manhunts in US history for five years because he knew the terrain there better than those hunting him.

After two Al Qaeda attempts on his life late last year, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has redoubled his efforts, dedicating thousands of troops to the hunt. US and Pakistani intelligence teams in Pakistan are also working together to find bin Laden.

"To trace his whereabouts is a very difficult task," says Behrouz Khan, a security analyst based in Peshawar, Pakistan. "He has been in the state of war since 1980 and perfectly knows the art of guerrilla warfare.... Tora Bora was not the only hideout; he had numerous [hideouts] inside Afghanistan and along the border."

But one top Pakistan military commander said recently that bin Laden has left this region. "The way the Army has done its deployment, there is nothing that is beyond my eyes or my ears. I have a very good surveillance system in place. There is hardly any area, which we have not swept through. Had he [bin Laden] been there, and the way he moves with security guards carries a signature wherever he goes, I would have gotten him by now. I say he is not there," Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain Shah told Pakistani journalists.

Other tribal sources say most of the foreign militants, mostly Arabs, have left the region through the southwestern Balochistan province into Iran or to the Gulf States, and to different parts of the country. "Osama would be a great fool if he is still in the tribal region," says Riffat Hussain, a security analyst in Islamabad. "The most wanted man in the world would want to go as far away from that place - to some where nobody would suspect him to be."

Where's bin Laden now?
So where could bin Laden be?

Sailab Mehsud, a Pakistani expert on the tribal areas of South Waziristan, says, "He could be anywhere from the tribal region to Afghanistan to the troubled Muslim province of China, as Uighur Muslim militants have also fought with him. For him the Pashtun [tribal] belt would be a safest bet. They [Pashtuns] are staunch Islamists and according to traditions they never hand over their guests. Osama has experienced that as Taliban preferred to risk their rule but refused to hand over him to Americans."

Many tribal members feel indebted to him and also admire him for what he did to help evict the Soviets from Afghanistan and stand up to the US. "His elusiveness intrigues people," says Noor Mohammad, an educated tribesman in South Waziristan. "They love the suspense, and keeping the US on its toes is a bonus."

Mr. Mohammad adds: "Nobody has succeeded in penetrating Osama's close ring of companions. Either people are not providing information because they sympathize with him or they are too afraid of Osama's network despite" the $25 million reward the US has put on him.

Many Pakistanis speak about bin Laden with admiration. "I wish Bush fails to catch Osama," says a Westernized Pakistani teenager, who asked that his name not be used. "It is good that he brings sleepless nights to Bush, who invaded Iraq for nothing. We are no friends with Osama, but America has gone too far against Muslims."

The Osama Surprise
Sunday, October 31, 2004; Page B06 The Washington Post
AL QAEDA HAS been threatening, and many people have expected, another terrorist attack against the United States before Tuesday's elections. Others have speculated that the Bush administration would surprise the world with the arrest of Osama bin Laden. Instead, what surfaced Friday was an 18-minute videotape from the al Qaeda leader in which he sought to lecture Americans on the eve of their vote. In doing so, he managed to establish that he is still alive, in relatively good health and in command of an organization, three points that some experts had come to doubt -- and that implicitly indict the administration's efforts to neutralize him. A lethal attack could still be forthcoming. Yet it was not a picture of great strength that Osama bin Laden offered Friday -- nor one that ought to divide Americans.

Start with his defensiveness: The "emir" who once issued medieval declarations of war against "Jews and crusaders" and who bankrolled the Taliban's despotism in Afghanistan now feels obliged to protest that he does not "hate freedom." To justify his murder of thousands of Americans on Sept. 11, 2001 -- a crime for which he now openly takes responsibility -- he cites not his erstwhile platform for Islamic dictatorship in the Middle East but -- improbably -- Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Something is clearly troubling Osama bin Laden: Could it be the millions of Afghans who eagerly turned out to vote in the country's first democratic elections this month and who overwhelmingly supported the moderate, pro-Western Hamid Karzai for president? Or the growing support for democratic government in Iraq, especially from senior members of the Islamic clergy? Al Qaeda suddenly finds itself on the wrong side of a swelling debate about freedom in the Middle East -- one triggered both by Osama bin Laden's bloody extremism and the powerful U.S. response to it.

His appeal to Americans was remarkably weak: Leave Afghanistan and the Middle East to us, he said, and we will spare you as we have Sweden. Few would have accepted this proposal even before Sept. 11; three years later, it is so preposterous that it merely evinces the enemy's desperation. The tirade against President Bush and his family was even clunkier. Maybe it was meant to shift voters away from the president on Tuesday; more likely it will do the opposite.

Both Mr. Bush and John F. Kerry were quick to reject Osama bin Laden's words and to promise unrelenting war against him. After a brief pause, each then sought to turn the moment against the other. With hours left in their tight race, this was inevitable, and there is no reason why Mr. Kerry should not reiterate his oft-stated criticisms of the administration's campaign against al Qaeda, nor Mr. Bush his about Mr. Kerry's aptitude for fighting terrorism. What ought to remain clear, however, is the common and uncompromising rejection of Osama bin Laden and his suggestion of appeasement. The candidates can do that today and tomorrow; on Tuesday, it will be time for Americans to demonstrate, by their attendance at the polls, which side in this war loves freedom.

Tribal Pride Poses Challenges for Karzai
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON Associated Press Writer October 31, 2004, 3:21 PM EST
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan -- Along the winding dirt road that climbs into Afghanistan's remote central highlands from Kabul, the tattered campaign posters from October's presidential elections tell a worrying story for the victor, Hamid Karzai.

Despite winning a clear majority nationwide, Karzai's candidacy did not energize ethnic groups other than his own Pashtun kinsmen -- nowhere more so than in Bamiyan, scene of some of the worst excesses of the former ruling Taliban.

The journey to Bamiyan from Kabul illustrates the problem. In the Pashtun villages near the capital, the campaign posters are mostly of Karzai. Reach the ethnic Tajik communities in the foothills and images of his chief rival, Yunus Qanooni, start to dominate. Arrive in the isolated mountain settlements of Bamiyan and there's only one candidate -- Mohammed Mohaqeq, chieftain of the hardy Hazara tribe.

Between 1998 and 2001, hundreds of Hazaras were massacred for their resistance to the Taliban. And in what was perhaps the hardline militia's most wanton cultural crime, they destroyed two towering 1,500 year-old Buddha statues -- ancient religious icons that offended their rigid interpretation of Islam.

Unsurprisingly, the American-led offensive that toppled the Taliban in late 2001 was welcomed here. Yet the U.S.-backed Karzai, who has held power since then, failed to poll even 10 percent here in the Oct. 9 election -- even though he had a local Hazara leader as his running mate.

That rejection could bode ill as Karzai embarks on a five-year mandate to reunite a country where tribal rivalry has turned to outright conflict.

Mohaqeq, a former commander in the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and who was recently ditched from Karzai's Cabinet, traded on a renewed sense of ethnic pride among Hazaras and perceptions that their undeveloped corner of Afghanistan has missed out on foreign aid in the past three years.

He streaked home with 76 percent of the Bamiyan vote, and fared even better in neighboring Daykundi province, also dominated by Hazaras, despite a third-place national finish with 11 percent of the ballots.

While rural development projects have brought relative prosperity to the poor of Bamiyan after years of neglect -- there are no Taliban rebels to intimidate aid workers -- many others feel left behind.

Poignantly, a few families who had their homes burned down by the Taliban live in some of the hundreds of small cave shrines hollowed out of the historic cliff face where the grand Buddha images once stood.

"I hear that Karzai is the king of Afghanistan, but he hasn't helped us," said Ruqiar, a 21-year-old mother in a traditional sequined dress and green shawl, cradling her baby boy in front of a pitiful stone-age home shared with 10 others. "The only thing we've got from Karzai is security."

Unfulfilled promises on big-ticket projects to bring electricity to the city and rebuild the road to Kabul also worked against Karzai at the polls.

"Tens of millions of dollars has been spent on roads in Kandahar city," said Karzai-appointed provincial Gov. Mohammed Rahimaliyar, referring to the main city in southern Afghanistan, dominated by Karzai's fellow Pashtun tribesmen. "Bamiyan still doesn't have one meter of asphalt."

The Central Highlands, where most eke out a living by herding sheep and growing wheat, is cut off for five or six months each year by heavy snow.

"Hazarajat has been less developed than the other regions. It's always been the same," Abdul Rahman, a campaigner for Mohaqeq, said, as he broke his Ramadan fast. "I'm sure the next five years will be the same as the past three."

Suspicion of central government dates back to the late 19th century when a brutal pacification campaign waged by Afghan King Amir Abdur Rahman displaced Hazaras and gave their lands to Pashtuns.

As minority Shiite Muslims, the Hazaras -- who make up at least 10 percent of Afghanistan's estimated 25 million people -- have since suffered discrimination and been marginalized from mainstream political and economic life.

But that has started to change. Karzai's interim Cabinet included several Hazaras, and Mohaqeq's strong showing in the election -- and dogged refusal to concede defeat -- makes him a force to be reckoned with.

"Hazaras have traditionally been the downtrodden group in the country, and now it's their chance to stand up and claim what is theirs," said Molly Little, a United Nations field worker based in Bamiyan.

Many in the city say the resounding vote for Mohaqeq was less a vote against Karzai than the culmination of a shift in regional power, toward Mohaqeq's faction in the dominant local Hezb-e-Wahdat party and away from that of Karim Khalili -- Karzai's vice president and running mate.

The current provincial administration, widely accused of corruption and failure to address the region's needs, is loyal to Khalili, who fled the country during the Taliban era and has made little impression since returning.

Rahman said his candidate, Mohaqeq, never left Afghanistan. He described him as the "strong face of the Hazaras."

"If Karzai ignores us, he will have another defeat in the parliamentary election" planned for the spring, Rahman said.

One worrying aspect of the renewed ethnic pride appears to be an increasing suspicion of other Afghan tribes, although foreigners are welcomed. Anecdotal accounts point to petty persecution of Pashtuns and Tajiks by local authorities, and Tajiks displaced from Bamiyan during the years of conflict have struggled to reclaim land appropriated by government and given to Hazaras.

Rahimaliyar, the provincial governor, said ethnic divisions could grow stronger if Karzai isn't seen as addressing Hazaras' concerns. But he sees little danger of rebellion.

"God willing, people will never go back to the gun. They can go to the ballot box instead," he said. "People are grateful for peace."