Apa iya?
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CNN.com
NATO official: Bin Laden, deputy hiding in northwest Pakistan
By Barbara Starr, CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* "Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave," official says
* The leadership is living in relative comfort, he says
* Bin Laden likely moved around in an area of rugged terrain
* Official did not say how the coalition knows this information
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri
are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan,
but are not together, a senior NATO official said.
"Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave," said the official, who declined to be
named because of the sensitivity of the intelligence matters involved.
Rather, al Qaeda's top leadership is believed to be living in relative comfort,
protected by locals and some members of the Pakistani intelligence services,
the official said.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied protecting members of the al Qaeda leadership.
The official said the general region where bin Laden is likely to have moved
around in recent years ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far
northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley which neighbors
Afghanistan's Tora Bora, one of the Taliban strongholds during the U.S.
invasion in 2001.
Tora Bora is also the region from which bin Laden is believed to have escaped
during a U.S. bombing raid in late 2001. U.S. officials have long said there
have been no confirmed sightings of bin Laden or Zawahiri for several years.
The area that the official described covers hundreds of square miles of some of
the most rugged terrain in Pakistan inhabited by fiercely independent tribes.
The official also confirmed the U.S. assessment that Mullah Omar, the leader of
the Taliban, has moved between the cities of Quetta and Karachi in Pakistan
over the last several months.
The official would not discuss how the coalition has come to know any of this
information, but he has access to some of the most sensitive information in the
NATO alliance.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Monday that similar reports of
bin Laden and Mullah Omar's whereabouts have proven false in the past.
Malik denied the two men are on Pakistani soil, but said that any information
to the contrary should be shared with Pakistani officials so that they can take
"immediate action" to arrest the pair.
The NATO official, who has day-to-day senior responsibilities for the war,
offered a potentially grimmer view than what has been publicly offered by
others.
"Every year the insurgency can generate more and more manpower," despite
military attacks, he said.
Although there has been security progress, he pointed to an internal assessment
that there are 500,000 to 1 million "disaffected" men between the ages of 15
and 25 along the Afghan-Pakistan border region, he said.
Most are Afghan Pashtuns and make up some of the 95 percent of the insurgency
who carry out attacks just to earn money, rather than fight for a hard-core
Taliban ideology.
The official said it is now absolutely vital for the Afghan government to
address the needs of this group with security, economic development and jobs in
order for the war to end, and for Afghanistan to succeed.
"We are running out of time," he said.
The entire scenario is made more complex by the fact that "there is a huge
criminal enterprise in this country," dealing in human, drug and mineral
trafficking, he said. Those crimes are also tied into the insurgency.
He acknowledged the overall strategy now is to increase offensive airstrikes
and ground attacks in order to increase the pressure on the Taliban and
insurgents groups to come to the negotiating table with the current Afghan
government.
There is a growing sense that many insurgent leaders may be willing to accept
conditions such as renouncing al Qaeda because they want to come back to
Afghanistan.
But, the official cautioned, hard core Taliban groups such as the Quetta Shura
run by Mullah Omar, the Haqqanis, the HiG (Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin) and the
Pakistani Taliban still could potentially muster as many as 30,000 fighters.
The U.S. continues to face a more localized insurgency in the south. In places
like Marja and the Helmand River Valley, the majority of the fighters are
captured within a few miles of their homes.
The insurgent leader Mullah Abdullah Zakir has increased his strength in the
south, the official said. He essentially exerts some levels of control and
influence both in the greater Kandahar region and across the south from Zabul
to Farah province.
The official continued to stress the urgency of getting the Afghan government
to deal with the multitude of problems it faces.
Right now, the U.S. war plan approved by President Barack Obama extends through
2014, the official said. That is the official document that spells out matters
such as troop rotation schedules.
The U.S. military could sustain a war "'indefinitely," the official said. But
the goal is to achieve reconciliation and allow the Afghan government to
function and provide security and services to the people.
Without that, he said, "we will be fighting here forever."
Links referenced within this article
Osama bin Laden
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Osama_bin_Laden
Pakistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Pakistan
Al Qaeda
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Al_Qaeda
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http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/10/18/afghanistan.bin.laden/index.html?hpt=T1
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© 2008 Cable News Network.
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