The New Yorker has a 7,000-word roundup on the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Seems well-researched, including comments from the insightful Mansoor Ijaz:
The working theory of the C.I.A., and also of foreign intelligence services, is that bin Laden is most likely hiding somewhere along the fifteen-hundred-mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. “If he is protected by a big group, I think bin Laden is on the Afghan side of the border,” Musharraf told Le Monde in July. “If his group has less than ten people, he could be on the Pakistan side.” Some people familiar with the region claim that bin Laden’s whereabouts can be narrowed even further. Mansoor Ijaz is an American financier with family members in Pakistan who are connected with intelligence circles there. A New York-based investment company he owns, Crescent Investment Management, has ties to the international intelligence community through James Woolsey, a former director of the C.I.A., who serves on the company’s board. Ijaz recently returned from a trip to Pakistan. In an interview, he contended that bin Laden was “very much alive, and hiding in the tribal areas”—that is, in the borderlands dominated by ethnic Pashtuns. Ijaz said that, during his trip, he spoke with top intelligence figures in the region. “Bin Laden is travelling around within about a hundred-and-fifty-mile diameter,” he said. “He’s essentially being babysat by tribal leaders who have an arm’s-length relationship with the Pakistani government. The tribal leaders have said he can’t move except at night, and he can’t communicate by phone, radio, or walkie-talkie. He knows it is too dangerous. They have constructed a perfect spider’s web of communication.” Ijaz said he had been told that bin Laden communicated via “handwritten notes” transmitted by “a human chain-link fence,” because word of mouth had proved unreliable. “Some of his messages were not being correctly communicated,” he said.Ijaz said he’d been told that bin Laden was surrounded by concentric circles of security: an outer ring of loyal villagers, a second ring of tribal leaders, and an inner ring of personal aides and bodyguards. “Since he’s surrounded by devout followers, there’s virtually no chance of the U.S. being able to pinpoint him,” he said.
The article also reviews the tricky question of just how hard the Pakistanis are helping in the search. The government of Pakistan holds a fragile grasp on power in a brutal neighborhood, and has nukes sitting in storage for the fanatics who could seize control if Musharraf fails. No easy answers here.
Indeed, the most difficult problem for American officials who are trying to find bin Laden may be determining who his helpers are and how they fit into Pakistan’s power structure. “The reason bin Laden is so hard to get is that people are helping him,” Cofer Black told me. The search has been stymied not so much by tactical or logistical hurdles as by political ones. The tribal regions of Pakistan are impoverished and increasingly fundamentalist, and there is ambivalence within Musharraf’s government about how vigorously to press in the fight against Muslim jihadis. Although Musharraf has been an outspoken ally of the United States, the aggressive pursuit of bin Laden poses political risks for him, since it is sure to incite his regime’s fundamentalist opponents. Some skeptics argue that the capture of bin Laden may not be in Musharraf’s interest for other reasons as well. As long as bin Laden and other top figures in Al Qaeda are believed to be on the lam in Pakistan, they say, Musharraf can be assured of receiving favorable treatment from the United States in exchange for his coöperation.Posted by Alan at July 29, 2003 12:15 PMvia The New Yorker