ISLAMABAD, 12 September 2003 — President Pervez Musharraf said yesterday Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden could be hiding in Pakistan’s rugged northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
“I feel that he (Bin Laden) is alive, yes, because of the various information and intelligence that has come up now,” Musharraf told the BBC’s “Talking Point” program on the second anniversary of terror attacks in US. “But to guess whether he’s in Pakistan or in Afghanistan, the possibility exists that he is shifting places, shifting bases on both sides. That is the reality.”
But Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri dismissed speculation that Bin Laden could be hiding in Pakistan.
“Had he been there the American and Pakistani intelligence services — who have been working closely — would have known it,” Kasuri who is on a visit to Bangladesh told reporters in Dhaka.
Bin Laden, who had a $25-million bounty put on his head by the United States, has eluded a massive manhunt by a 12,500-strong US-led military coalition in Afghanistan and up to 60,000 Pakistani troops in the tribal regions along the border.
Musharraf said Pakistani troops could not entirely seal their side of the border.
“This is an inhospitable area in our tribal region, which has been accessed or we have gone inside now, after a century, and therefore to presume that we have knowledge of every inch of the territory and who is in it, is not on. Therefore I say I cannot really be very sure whether he’s in Pakistan or the Afghan side.”
Conflicting reports continue to surface as to the status and location of the Al-Qaeda chief. A video of Bin Laden descending a rocky slope with right hand man Ayman Al-Zawahri, broadcast on an Arab television network on the eve of yesterday’s second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and replayed around the world, was probably filmed in the northern hemisphere spring near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, journalists who have met him several times and know the region said yesterday.
“The landscape and the mountains of Kunar and Paktia provinces have a lot of resemblance with the mountains we see in the latest Bin Laden tape,” said Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who interviewed Bin Laden in Afghanistan three times between 1997 and 2001.
Mir, who has been writing Bin Laden’s biography at his request since 1998, returned last week from a investigative trip to Afghanistan’s Kunar and Paktia, provinces which lie on the 2,450 km border with Pakistan. The greenery in the videotape’s background indicated it was not filmed in southern Afghanistan, Mir said.
“The mountains of southern Afghanistan are yellow, they are without any grass, without any greenery, and the rocks are not black like those in the video,” he said.
“There were some white flowers and trees and grass in the background. So I think tape is definitely reflecting that he was around Kunar province, a few months ago.”
Bin Laden’s clothing indicated it was filmed around six months back, he said.
“It was not a very fresh tape, because Bin Laden was wearing a warm blanket, and there is no need of a blanket at the moment in those areas in the daytime, so I think it was filmed perhaps in March or April.”
Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani journalist based in Peshawar, 40 km from the Afghan border, believed it was filmed at high altitude. “There are pine trees in the background and pine trees are normally found at a height,” said Yusufzai, who interviewed Bin Laden twice in Afghanistan before September 2001.
“There is lots of greenery, so it seems to be late winter or early spring, also because Mr. Bin Laden is wearing some warm clothes. The greenery shows it’s somewhere near the border. But I can’t definitely say whether it’s last year or this year but more likely it was this year.”
Yusufzai said similar pine-dotted rocky slopes were found in several mountain ranges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the Hindu Kush straddling the border and the Karakorams of northern and northeast Pakistan.
“There are also areas in North and South Waziristan (Pakistani tribal districts) which are green, and in Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces on the Afghan side,” Yusufazi said, ruling out the southern border regions.
“I don’t think it’s (Pakistan’s) Balochistan province, or Helmand and Zabul in Afghanistan, because they are much drier.”
Mir and Yusufzai concurred that wherever the video was filmed, Bin Laden’s hunters could be sure he was now far away.
“He wants to play a game, he wants to deceive,” Mir said. “If it was Kunar province then he is not there any more, he is just trying to divert attention and he wants all of us to concentrate on Kunar while probably he is hiding some where else.”
