An intelligence analysis sent last week to the Director of the U.S.-based Central Intelligence Agency, discloses that Osama Bin Laden, the ‘world’s most wanted man’ has escaped Afghanistan. Moreover, the report concludes that Bin Laden fled the region by sea.
CIA experts concluded that the Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader escaped from the intricate cave network in Tora Bora around the first week of December 2001. Reportedly, a captured al-Qaeda fighter claims to have witnessed Bin Laden bestowing operational control upon one of his deputies.
It is believed that Bin Laden left behind a tape-recorded message and transmitted the message once he was long gone, to fool U.S. special forces troops who were in hot pursuit.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that the search for Bin Laden was been widened beyond Afghanistan.
"It would not be unfair to say that every one of us has this as a mission and that all the forces that are currently in Afghanistan or in any other country where we are pursuing the war on terrorism are focused on doing just that," Admiral John Stufflebeen, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff conveyed.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said recently that he has seen no evidence that indicates the whereabouts of Bin Laden.
German, British, American and French forces have been searching dozens of vessels in the Arabian Sea for the last two months as last week's CIA report concludes Bin Laden most likely fled by sea to Pakistan. The American military has been criticized by some American newspapers for not using larger numbers of ground troops to seal off Tora Bora during the intense bombing campaign.
For weeks, conflicting reports as to the whereabouts of the indicted al-Qaeda leader have surfaced. Afghan interim government officials believe that Bin Laden is no longer in the war-torn country. Some reports speculate that Bin Laden has already been killed in the U.S.-led war against terror.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry has issued a compulsory call-up order to around 140 of its volunteer army reserves, ordering them to serve in intelligence operations in the international war on terror and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.
“They [Bin Laden and Taliban leader Omar] think they can run, they think they can hide, because they think this country’s soft and impatient,” declared President George Bush last weekend. “But they’re going to continue to learn the terrible lesson that says don’t mess with America.”
Yet some experts are calling such threats empty, as America has thus far failed in achieving one of it principle goals of its war against terror – finding Bin Laden and bringing him to justice. Nonetheless, in recent days there has been some progress in flushing out other senior al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. America recently announced that it had in custody Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan who was supposed to have been in charge of paramilitary training at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, as well as Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban’s former ambassador in Pakistan.
A recent public opinion poll commissioned by CBS News, a television network in the U.S found that 60 percent of respondents believed the war on terrorism would not be won until Mr. Bin Laden had been found. Until Bin Laden is found ‘dead or alive,’ reports on his whereabouts will likely continue, as will the American sentiment that justice has not yet been served. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
