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Manhunt for Bin Laden Underway in Pakistan
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| Bin Laden hunt moved to Pakistan |
Report by Aamir Latif
PESHAWAR, Jan. 9 (IslamOnline) - Amid an increasing impression within the U.S. ranks that Osama bin Laden has escaped Afghanistan, a manhunt is underway in the mountains of western Pakistan, well-placed military and government sources told IslamOnline Wednesday, January 9, 2002.
According to military and government sources, the search in Pakistan is focused on a remote region stretching from the town of Parachanar south to the village of Wana near Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains.
Scores of Pakistani plainclothes intelligence officials are grilling the inhabitants of the Pushtoon tribal region, where many are openly sympathetic to Bin Laden, as troops scoured smuggling trails, rocky ravines and cave-pocked slopes, officials said.
The U.S. Special Forces participating in the search operation stayed only on the Afghan side of the border, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman insisted, although late last week, General Tommy Franks of U.S. Central Command in Tampa confirmed that U.S. forces were operating in Pakistan in collaboration with its (Pakistan) troops and not simply using the country as a staging ground.
“I have no such information that Pakistan has either allowed U.S. forces to carry out any search operation or they are carrying out manhunt for Osama bin Laden
inside Pakistan”, Aziz Ahmed Khan told the reporters in Islamabad Tuesday night.
Pakistani Interior Minister, Moinuddin Haider, told reporters in Islamabad that the 2200-kilometer long border between Pakistan and Afghanistan had been
closed. However, he said, the security forces were hunting for foreigners without ID papers or entry visas.
“We are catching and apprehending everyone”, he said. Confirming that the hunt is being coordinated with the U.S. helicopters patrol in Afghanistan he said “we
allow joint investigation with our agencies and others”.
Senator John Edward, a member of the U.S. senate Intelligence Committee on a fact-finding tour of the region, said that intelligence officials in Uzbekistan
believe that Bin Laden had made his way from Afghanistan and had gone into hiding in Pakistan.
“They are of the belief that he has now gone to Pakistan”, he told the Fox News Sunday Program from Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent.
The whereabouts of Taliban’s Supreme Leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, also remains a mystery a day after he was reported to have slipped out of the region near Baghran, in south central Afghanistan, apparently evading his pursuers on a motorbike.
Afghanistan’s interim leader, Hamid Karzai, acknowledged that Mullah Omar was still at large, offering no explanation as to why the government officials had
insisted for nearly a week that the Taleban’s spiritual leader was cornered near Baghran and desperately negotiating a surrender.
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