<http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_580758,00050002.htm>
Hindustan Times - February 21, 2004
Osama look-alikes fill lawless region of Pakistan Indo-Asian News Service Islamabad, February 21
Ask any farmer in Pakistan's Khyber tribal region, "Have you seen Osama bin Laden?" and you're likely to find a similar-looking, tall, bearded man at the restaurants of the area's main bazaar, reports UPI.
Ask a tribesman in Darra Adam Khel, the region's largest arms bazaar and the main source of homemade and smuggled weapons in South Asia and he'll tell you: "Shut up, you son of Satan."
Brigadier Mahmud Shah, chief administrator of the region, said that asking about bin Laden might even get you a bullet.
Warriors and renegades have hidden in the mountains and valleys of the rugged frontier that divides Pakistan and Afghanistan throughout history.
Now, US officials believe that Osama bin Laden, reputedly this century's biggest terrorist, also has taken refuge here.
Dozens of the fiercely independent Pashtuns tribes live in the region. Most of them are tall and bearded. They wear the loose trousers and long shirts that bin Laden adopted when he moved to Afghanistan in 1995.
If bin Laden is hiding among them, as US officials operating across the border in Afghanistan believe he is, it will be difficult to single him out from other bearded tribesmen, all of whom carry guns.
Pashtun tribes have an arrangement with Pakistan, originally negotiated by the British before they left the area in 1947, preventing the government from sending troops and policemen to the remote region.
That's why there are no trained law enforcement agents to spot and catch bin Laden and his men who, US officials say, are conducting raids deep into Afghanistan from their hideouts.
US officials in Afghanistan say that Taliban forces and affiliated fighters associated with Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar also participate in these raids.
Last month, US military and civilian officials in Iraq intercepted a courier carrying a 17-page letter they said was written by Abu Mussab al Zarkawi, a convicted Jordanian terrorist.
It was allegedly intended for his Al-Qaeda contacts in Pakistan's tribal belt.
The discovery added urgency to a US plan to drive Al-Qaeda from the area. Late last month, Washington said it intends to launch a major military offensive in the spring to flush out terrorists from the region.
Gen. David Barno, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, says Pakistan has already launched an offensive in the region.
Now "US and Afghan forces will be waiting on the other side to catch them," as Pakistani troops drive them out.
Despite the presence of thousands of US, Pakistani and Afghan troops in the region, nobody seems to know where the Al-Qaeda leader is.
The tribal belt is an almost thousand-mile long stretch across a mountainous region peppered with hundreds of gorges. Fugitives can easily move in and out of the area.
It is inhospitable, tribesmen are suspicious of outsiders, and tribal caravans have moved across the border without any documents for centuries. US officials worry that any effort to impose travel restrictions may be fiercely resisted.
"We believe that bin Laden is being very careful. He does not move with large groups, if he moves at all," says administrator Shah.
Shah, a Pashtun who maintains close ties to Pashtun tribal chiefs, says his sources tell him that bin Laden has about "about 100 to 200 die-hard followers who have built a protective net around him. They do not get close because that would draw attention."
Although Shah insists that bin Laden spends more time on the Afghan side of the lawless region, he said the Al-Qaeda chief might have fled to the Pakistani side two years ago when US forces bombed his hideouts in the eastern Afghan valley of Tora Bora.
"Pakistani troops are confronting the tribal elders and making them accountable for the behaviour in their area. Tribal chiefs who do not comply could face destruction of homes and things of that nature," Barno said.
For example, Pakistan troops recently detained hundreds of tribesmen for cooperating with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces and destroyed their homes and schools.
Pakistan is also trying to establish permanent military posts in these areas. It has built roads and schools with the money it received from the US.
Many in the region still sympathise with the Taliban, if not Al-Qaeda for religious and ethnic reasons, however. Like most of the Taliban, the tribesmen also are staunch Muslims and ethnic Pashtuns.
Religious sentiments are strongest in northern tribal regions. In the south, Pashtun nationalism is stronger. But Pashtun clerics operate freely in both the regions and do not hide their sympathy for the Taliban.
The Taliban are a reality in Afghanistan... and they should be recognised as such," says Mufti Kifayatullah, a leader of a seven-party religious alliance that which controls the provincial government in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province.
"The Taliban was an ideological force, and an ideological force can be beaten but it cannot be rooted out," he said.
Aware of these sentiments, the Americans are encouraging moderate Taliban leaders, such as Mullah Sabir and Mullah Jalil, both members of the deposed Taliban government, to replace the old guard.
Despite financial assistance from the US, anti-US sentiments remain strong. Even those opposed to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda do not openly associate themselves with the US.