Osama Bin Laden: Dead Or Alive?

CHICAGO U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE/GETTY IMAGES
Still alive? Osama bin Laden

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For all his elusiveness, bin Laden probably hasn't strayed far from the region. Huge swaths of southern and eastern Afghanistan are still controlled by militants sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Omar is believed to have taken shelter in the mountains near Kandahar; in May he purportedly gave an interview to a London-based Arab newspaper in which he vowed to defeat the U.S. and claimed bin Laden is alive. The CIA believes bin Laden fled Afghanistan and is holed up in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, a rugged, desolate region that's nearly impossible to monitor. "It's literally the Wild West," says a high-ranking intelligence official. But some U.S. military officers and diplomats in Pakistan say that if bin Laden is alive, he has more likely melted into the teeming masses of a city like Karachi, staying out of sight while associates bring him food and supplies and keep watch for his pursuers.

That's a nightmare scenario for American intelligence. In the past, the U.S. has tried to nail bin Laden by tracking him electronically, using surveillance drones to listen to his communications and then drop a bomb fast. But military and intelligence sources say that since December his signal has gone dead. If he is hiding in a place like Karachi, he probably forgoes modern technologies. "You can't listen in when people don't talk," says a Pentagon official.

Even if U.S. spooks get a bead on bin Laden inside Pakistan, the options for finishing the job have become riskier. American commandos don't have the local knowledge to work effectively in Pakistan's tribal areas, and any U.S. military hit on Pakistani soil could inflame the country's restive population. Though a few U.S. intelligence agents are said to be in the tribal areas, a covert operation would require Pakistani permission, which President Pervez Musharraf is loath to offer. Pakistan has sent troops and helicopters into the tribal areas to help find bin Laden and his men, but Pakistani forces are also using the opportunity to establish their control over the border area by building roads and improving the local infrastructure. Those projects may win them domestic allies in the long run; still, they have diverted men and resources away from the U.S.'s top priority.

By destroying bin Laden's sanctuary in Afghanistan, U.S. commanders hoped they could flush him out and pick him off with an air strike. With bin Laden underground, possibly in a country inhospitable to U.S. action, the best chance of eliminating him may lie in cultivating agents who can infiltrate his inner circle and bump him off. But recruiting spies who must be ethnically suited for their mission and possess the savvy to get inside is slow, painstaking work.

Embarrassment over the failure to catch bin Laden has added to rising tension between the Pentagon and the CIA, whose seamless cooperation was critical to the rout of the Taliban. Both agencies are responsible for gathering intelligence, but some military officials suggest that CIA agents charged with finding America's chief enemy are distracted by the tasks of rebuilding Afghanistan like settling disputes between rival Afghan warlords. "There has been a lot of mission creep over there," says a senior military officer. In response, a U.S. intelligence official says, "There has been no ratcheting back. Whoever is telling you that doesn't know what they are talking about."

Despite such signs of frustration, the long, fruitless hunt has served as a useful reminder that defeating terrorists as ruthlessly committed as bin Laden will require not just military firepower but also patience, guile and a good deal of luck. Says a top intelligence official: "You follow up as many leads as you can, and often it does depend on a slipup or a mistake. Eventually people come out of the woodwork." The U.S. has no choice but to wait.