Frenzy of speculation on bin Laden's possible whereabouts

By Liz Sly
Chicago Tribune

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Ever since promises by America's top commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, that bin Laden would be caught "by the end of the year" there has been a frenzy of speculation on the whereabouts of the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

No one is claiming to have seen the elusive terrorist, who has a price tag of $25 million on his head. But according to the flurry of reports, he has spent the past few weeks rushing along the 1,500-mile Afghan-Pakistan border, crisscrossing mountains, dodging U.S. forces and giving Pakistani troops the slip.

In the latest purported getaway, bin Laden is said to have escaped a Pakistani raid late last month in the nation's tribal region and is living in Afghanistan. This was according to a fax, apparently from bin Laden, received a few days ago by a member of the former Taliban regime. The Taliban member told an Afghan government official in eastern Afghanistan and the official told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Just two weeks earlier, however, according to the British tabloid Sunday Express, U.S. forces encircled bin Laden in a hide-out near Quetta in southwestern Pakistan.

"He is boxed in," the report said. "He has no chance of escape."

A March 8 New Yorker article said U.S. forces think they have found the 6-foot-5-inch bin Laden in the wilderness of north Pakistan, where he may be able to blend in with a tribe of tall people.

And, the head of France's armed forces said Monday that bin Laden narrowly escaped capture by French troops working with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, perhaps several times. Gen. Henri Bentegeat did not say when or where the escapes happened.

Other reports suggest the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan is still far from pinpointing his location.

A Scottish paper last week described how an elite team of British paratroopers is scouring the mountainous border in search of a rare shrub spotted in one of bin Laden's videos. By finding the shrub, the paper said, the coalition would be able to obtain intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts.

Still others maintain he has been caught. Iran's state radio recently said U.S. forces nabbed bin Laden "a long time ago" and are waiting for a politically opportune moment to announce it, presumably to give President Bush's re-election campaign a boost.
 
That is a view widely held by ordinary Afghans and Pakistanis, who can't fathom why the U.S. military, with all its high-tech equipment, can't find one man after more than two years of hunting.

U.S. officials say they don't give credence to any of the reports. Al-Qaida fugitives long ago stopped using electronic communications, for fear of interception, and bin Laden hasn't made a habit of sending faxes about his movements.

The shrub video probably predated Sept. 11 and is too old to be useful, U.S. officials said.

The rumor mill had been curiously silent since bin Laden apparently gave U.S. forces the slip in the mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001. A few months later, reports of his whereabouts dried up. Some U.S. officials still suspect he might be dead.

But U.S. officials don't deny there is a renewed focus on the effort to defeat the remnants of the al-Qaida network operating in Afghanistan, along with its allies in the Taliban and the fighters loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the renegade fundamentalist warlord.

Still flush with their success in capturing Saddam Hussein, a joint CIA-military commando unit called Task Force 121 has been dispatched to Afghanistan with a new mission to get bin Laden.

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