Sunday Times (London) October 28, 2001
Why they can't find bin Laden
Despite their array of surveillance technology, the allies cannot locate their principal targetBy Tony Allen-Mills
Like many Afghan refugees arriving at Pakistan's border, Gul Alam had a story to tell. Months before the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, he had joined a work crew that was sent by Taliban militiamen into the mountains near Bamian, 150 kilometres west of Kabul. He spent a week building hardened mud walls inside a network of caves.
His story reached the ears of an agent for Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, and it eventually arrived, in compressed form, on a list of dozens of similar reports at the Virginia headquarters of the CIA. Agency analysts pored over satellite photographs of barren Bamian mountainside, seeking the faintest trace of human activity that might lead American military forces to the hiding place of Osama bin Laden. If they spotted something, nobody yet knows. There was another report last week about a convoy of luxury Toyota Land Cruisers seen driving east out of Kandahar a few days after Sept. 11. The drivers were not Afghans, but Arabs, a possible indication that bin Laden or his al-Qaeda terrorist associates were behind the heavily tinted windows. Where they went was unknown.
It also emerged that earlier this year an unmanned US reconnaissance drone took high-quality video of bin Laden, with his distinctive beard and white robes, surrounded by a large entourage at one of his bases in Afghanistan. When the drone returned later, he was gone.
It has been like this for at least six years, ever since the CIA established a special unit to monitor bin Laden's movements. Reports arrive, but invariably too late. Targets are identified, but the quarry has always "just left" before the bombs and missiles strike.
For the past six weeks the most formidable manhunt ever assembled has been reduced to chasing shadows. Arrayed against bin Laden and his henchmen are the combined forces of the CIA, the ISI, the U.S. air force, the SAS, satellite surveillance, Afghan opposition fighters, a smattering of Taliban defectors and floods of talkative refugees keen to bargain their way to safety.
They all say something different. Bin Laden is hiding in a cave. He has built a dozen fortified redoubts across the mountains. He moves every night. He has fled across the border to Pakistan, where he is protected by a local Pashtun warlord. Or perhaps he never left the Taliban's headquarters at Kandahar, where he may or may not be right now, with his feet up in the cellar of a mosque.
The monster is now a ghost, and he is beginning to scare American planners who thought they could find him. Not for the first time in Afghanistan's tortured history, a carefully devised military strategy is in trouble.
With Halloween approaching, one charitable group in Florida last week opened a seasonal haunted house display with a mock execution. An actor dressed as bin Laden was grabbed by "FBI agents" and dragged, kicking and screaming, to a fake electric chair. Sparks flew and the floor shook as bin Laden died theatrically. The audience cheered for more.
It is a scene many Americans would like to become reality, but senior U.S. officials have begun to express public doubts. Even Donald Rumsfeld, normally stirringly resolute as the secretary of defence, wobbled a little on Wednesday when he suggested bin Laden might never be found. He later qualified this, but other Pentagon officials confirmed their surprise at the absence of a breakthrough in toppling the Taliban or in significantly damaging al-Qaeda.
The plan looked sound. CIA agents, with Pakistani intelligence and exiled Afghan opposition leaders, would spearhead attempts to divide the Taliban by encouraging defections, through bribery if necessary. While American airstrikes kept pressure on the Taliban military, intelligence teams would seek bin Laden's whereabouts. "It will be betrayal, not bombardment, that gets him," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan.
Yet the strategy has proved "horrendously naive," according to one western official. The absence of a serious alternative to Taliban rule has left many tribal leaders deeply reluctant to bargain with America. Pakistan's support for Washington, and the alacrity with which it abandoned the Taliban after years of support, has made even the most opportunistic Taliban allies suspicious of further betrayals.
"They are making very little progress with key people in the Taliban who might know where bin Laden is," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of the CIA's counter-terrorist unit. Another intelligence source added: "Defections aren't happening. It's going to be a long struggle."
Although the net around bin Laden may be tightening, it shows no sign of ensnaring him yet. Despite widespread rumours that the Saudi-born fugitive has skipped the country, military planners are sure he is still in Afghanistan.
When he is not on the move, the Americans believe, he has two likely hiding places: in mountains near Jalalabad and an underground complex in the mountainous Oruzgan province north of Kandahar. The Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, was born in Oruzgan, whose tribespeople are said to be fiercely loyal to him and unlikely to betray the "special guest" bin Laden.
In the past three weeks, the U.S. air force has used burrowing or "bunker-buster" bombs against caves that showed signs of human use. Last week it reportedly focused on the Paktia province, near Pakistan. Dr. Jack Schroder, a University of Nebraska geologist who worked in Afghanistan, says a recent video statement by bin Laden showed distinctive patterns on the rock behind him, indicating a spot in Paktia, where the mountains are full of natural limestone caverns and tunnels -- and man-made passageways. Bin Laden was based in this area when fighting the Russians.
Some of the caves are little more than bunkers just under the surface, Schroder said. Others stretch for kilometres under the rock, carved out decades ago as an irrigation system for the parched lowlands. But experts are divided on whether the terrorist chieftain would choose such a site for a likely fight to the death with U.S. and British special forces.
"On a purely technological level, the U.S. military is prepared to find and destroy these caves," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington defence policy research firm. "But the notion that we can find bin Laden's 'fortress of solitude' and that all 5,000 of his henchmen are going to be down there among the stalactites is ridiculous."
Until recently, the Pentagon hoped bin Laden's habit of moving around from cave to cave would expose his convoy. But reports now suggest he has abandoned his fleet of maroon Land Cruisers for mules or horses. And two senior intelligence sources said there was evidence Bin Laden had "pulled his wires" -- cut off all communication -- and was intending to lay up for the looming Afghan winter with a small group of trusted fighters and lieutenants.
Fewer than 20 of bin Laden's 150 elite personal bodyguards are believed to accompany him at any time. The rest have been scouting new locations and making them secure, or acting as decoys across the region.
These men, mainly Egyptians, Uzbeks, Algerians and other Arabs, have sniper rifles with silencers and night sights plus high-tech French communications equipment, backed by special forces training. What marks them out is their complete loyalty to their leader, whom they have known for 10 years or more.
One further option is that bin Laden, aware that his cave complexes would be obvious targets, and would be more exposed to detection from the air in the winter, might have abandoned the hills altogether for a city, where the risk of betrayal may be higher but where even the SAS would find it hard to strike at him. Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, may be too obvious a sanctuary, but other potential havens exist in the Taliban-controlled towns of Qalat, Ghazni or Khowst.
In truth, it is little more than guesswork. Lacking reliable human intelligence, the Pentagon has instead been relying on its unrivalled state-of-the-art electronic spying technology, hoping that one lucky break, one telltale speck on the landscape, will lead it to the serpent's den.
Spy satellites with high-resolution cameras scan the terrain every day. The U.S. air force and CIA deploy manned U-2 spy planes and unmanned Predator and Gnat drones for detailed aerial reconnaissance. The Predators carry both night-vision cameras and Hellfire missiles for immediate launch.
In addition, a new generation of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, the turbo-fan-powered Global Hawk, which boasts even greater surveillance potential, is believed to have been rushed through testing and into the battle zone.
And it does not stop there. Helicopters and other aircraft can spread sophisticated electronic motion sensors across suspect mountain paths. With cold weather already cloaking the mountains, the Pentagon plans to fit helicopters with thermal cameras to detect signs of underground warmth, such as cooking fires in caves.
The helicopters will be armed with AGM-130 missiles that can be fired into the mouths of suspect tunnels. American bombers will continue to target "basically everything ever identified with bin Laden", said Cannistraro.
In a co-ordinated attempt to reduce the gap between receiving intelligence and ordering strikes, the U.S. air force is sending airborne command posts into Afghan airspace, with senior officers on board specially equipped transport aircraft ready to order instant attacks on so-called "targets of opportunity" -- or moving targets that emerge after conventional strikes.
For President George W. Bush, beset by domestic problems with anthrax, the news from the front has scarcely been encouraging. Doubts that were largely absent in the shocked aftermath of Sept. 11 are beginning to find a public voice. "The Bush administration may be getting worried -- whether they are stating it or not -- that the public is going to associate getting bin Laden with success," said Charles Hermann, a former staff member for the National Security Council.
Cal Jillson, a political researcher from Texas, Bush's home state, said the administration had left itself "no choice." He added: "They've put such a clear face on this evil -- Osama bin Laden's -- that they have to chase him until they run him down."
Last week, Rumsfeld likened the hunt to the age-old search for a "needle in a haystack." He added: "Have we located bin Laden in a way that allowed us to do anything about it? No. Are we continuing the effort? You bet. Do we expect to get him? Yes."
At present, this confidence owes more to hope than reality, but until bin Laden is killed or captured, the Americans will be unable to claim a first, significant victory in the war against terrorism.
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Limited
