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John L. Scherer
Locating bin Laden
October 29, 2010
 

So where, finally, is Osama bin Laden? Many in Washington still believe he is hiding in South Waziristan, or North Waziristan, or perhaps Bajaur, all outlying agencies in northwest Pakistan. After his having eluded intelligence agents and military forces searching the region for over nine years, it seems worthwhile to look elsewhere.

There are plenty of places. Shortly after 9/11, informants claimed bin Laden had been seen in West Darfur and in Juba, in southern Sudan. He and his family had lived in Sudan from 1991 to 1996.

More recently, in 2009, UCLA researchers Thomas W. Gillespie and John A. Agnew employed satellite geographical analysis to identify three compounds in Parachinar, the capital of the Kurram Valley, in Pakistan, which could serve as hideouts for bin Laden.

In March 2009, the New York Daily News claimed that the search had focused on the Chitral district of Pakistan, particularly the Kalam Valley. A captured al-Qaeda chieftain confirmed that bin Laden was hiding in Chitral.

In December 2009, a Taliban detainee in Pakistan insisted bin Laden had been living in Afghanistan. The detainee claimed that during the preceding January or February, he met someone who had seen bin Laden about 15 to 20 days earlier inside the war-torn country.

In the film Feathered Cocaine (2010), falconer Alan Parrot asserted that bin Laden has lived in Iran for at least seven years. Parrot interviewed another falconer there who claimed to have met bin Laden six times since March 2003 on hunting expeditions. The man insisted that bin Laden routinely engaged in falconry, and felt so secure that he traveled with only four bodyguards.

In May 2010, Human Events provided supporting evidence. Iran had accepted 35 al-Qaeda leaders after the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, despite the conflict between the Sunnis of al-Qaeda and the Shiite regime in Iran. In June 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that bin Laden was in Iran preparing new terror attacks. In 2004 Richard Miniter had written in Shadow War that two former Iranian intelligence agents told him they had seen bin Laden in Iran the previous year. Some analysts believe that bin Laden switched from video to audiocassettes because he could not find anywhere in Iran that resembled Afghanistan or northern Pakistan. In February 2009, the U.S. Treasury placed sanctions on high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives working out of Iran.

The Sunday London Times (December 23, 2009) reported that at least 19 of bin Laden's family had crossed from Afghanistan into Iran, most shortly before 9/11. They have lived under virtual house arrest outside Tehran, largely because the Iranian government did not know what to do with them. Some analysts had speculated that bin Laden's second son, Muhammad, had served as the second-in-command of al-Qaeda, and that another son, Saad, had instigated terrorist attacks until being killed by a drone in 2008. Relatives insisted, to the contrary, Muhammad is still living in the compound, and Saad ran away in 2009 to find his mother, who resides in Syria with three other bin Laden children. At one point, Saad reportedly lived at Kermanshah, Iran, near the border with Iraq. One of the daughters, Iman, escaped from Iran, and sought asylum in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden does not enjoy good relations with family members, so he may nowhere near them.

All of this sounds credible, but no one in the West has identified him in these places, or, for that matter, anywhere else. On December 6, 2009, U.S. Secretary of Robert Gates admitted that the United States had received no accurate information about his whereabouts in years. Pakistan's prime minister Yousef Raza Gilani has rejected claims that Osama bin Laden resides on his territory.

The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that an Israeli woman insisted she had seen bin Laden at the Denpasar Airport in Bali on August 22, 2002. He had a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist and was accompanied by two bodyguards. The man she saw had a short beard and wore Western clothes. Of course, the woman probably did not correctly identify bin Laden. A number of people surely believe they have spotted him at various locations during the past few years, but Israelis, who have struggled against terrorism for decades, are more likely to recognize him than other nationalities.

Al-Qaeda has made every effort to throw trackers off the trail. It has increased communications traffic (e-mails, coded messages, phone calls) periodically to suggest an impending attack, when none has occurred. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed confessed to attacks planned in the United States against school buses, oil rigs, and hospitals, when none happened. Ramsi bin-al-Shibh confessed to plots targeting the financial districts of Boston and New York, but these proved false alarms. The December 2009 airline bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmatullab, claimed his failed attempt to be the "first of many," but it probably was not. Terrorist attacks need not succeed to frighten the public. Abdulmatullab only had to mix the chemicals correctly and to place the bomb exactly where it could destroy enough of the plane to bring it down, but he managed neither. Faisal Shahzad's car bomb in the Times Square in May 2010 included fertilizer, but it had been rendered inert. The explosive was M-80s, each the equivalent of one-third stick of dynamite, connected to propane containers. Shahzad had to flee on foot because he left the keys to his getaway car locked inside the vehicle. He forgot his apartment key inside the SUV with the bomb. These individuals revealed just how desperate al-Qaeda has become.

Incidentally, no terrorist data base identified Shahzad as a threat. John Pescatore, a former analyst with the National Security Agency, has, nonetheless, argued the importance of collecting data: "You definitely need to do it, because it gives you warning of major storms. But it's not going to tell you about individual raindrops."

Other analysts have asserted, without significant proof, that bin Laden masterminded plots by militant Germans and Britons to attack tourist destinations in Europe in the autumn of 2010. He probably played no role, and reports of intrigues relied on a single al-Qaeda source. One German official spoke of the alleged conspiracies as "a high, abstract threat." In the United States, the alert was to remain in effect for 90 days, but why not 50, or 27? It is all much too vague.

Muslim terrorist organizations around the world now act independently of al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden no longer picks targets or finances groups. Even before 9/11, journalist Mary Anne Weaver called the group a "clearing house" to solicit and distribute funds and logistical support, "a chameleon, an amoeba, which constantly changes shape." She wrote this in January 2000, and the description remains valid today.

Indonesia seems a more likely destination for bin Laden than anywhere else. Al-Qaeda began planning the World Trade Center operation in 1996, although Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, his nephew Abdul Basit Abdul Karim, and friend Abdul Hakim Murad decided to bomb the World Trade Center in 1992. Mohammed spoke about training and airline operation twice with the Kuwaiti pilot Murad in 1993. In an eighteen-minute video released on October 29, 2004, bin Laden claimed that he had conceived the attack after watching the Israelis destroy towers in Lebanon during their 1982 invasion. Whether he did or not, bin Laden had plenty of time to plot an escape route from Afghanistan to evade U.S. retaliation.

In fact, the group was moving its headquarters from Afghanistan to Southeast Asia prior to the attacks. In June 2000, Mohammed Atef, then second-in-command, and Ayman al-Zawahiri visited the Philippines and the Aceh special territory in Indonesia, where the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) had been trying to form a Muslim state since 1976. Muslim insurgents have been especially active in this region. In March 2010, Indonesian authorities raided the hideout of Dulmatin, the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings and a senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda. The army killed Dulmatin near Pamulang, in the Aceh special territory. Governor Irwandi Yusuf suggested he had been drawn to this region because Aceh was predominantly Muslim, the province imposed Shariah law, and GAM had taken root.

While there in 2000, Zawahiri and Atef may have prepared a refuge for bin Laden. The al-Qaeda chief would have found Aceh attractive. Located on the busy Strait of Malacca, it possessed significant natural gas, oil, and petrochemicals, and an extensive network of madrasahs and Islamic charities. Insiders have labeled Indonesia Asia's most corrupt nation. Government control broke down throughout the country after the resignation of President Suharto in 1998, and inadequate banking regulations have encouraged money-laundering. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any nation in the world, and local fundamentalists would have welcomed him. His portrait appeared in villages throughout the archipelago, and young people wore bin Laden T-shirts. Indonesia has nearly 17,000 islands: It is the perfect hideout.

Al-Qaeda has been active in this region for years. In 1994, senior al-Qaeda operative Omar al-Faruq accompanied the leader of one of the training camps in Afghanistan to Camp Abu Bakar, run by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines. After a direct request by bin Laden to MILF chief Salamat Hashim, al-Faruq established three training facilities on the islands. He subsequently moved to Indonesia to set up eight others, including one at Poso, on the island of Sulawesi. He spent three days in North Aceh late in 1999. Al-Faruq was captured in Java in 2002, but escaped.

At least everyone agrees that bin Laden remained at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, until mid-December 2001. As U.S. and British troops closed in, President George W. Bush diverted significant forces to Iraq, and Pakistani troops failed to block bin Laden's flight. The al-Qaeda chief first sought asylum among warlords in Pakistan, then may have left the country through Baluchistan, proceeding by boat to Southeast Asia.

Bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohammed Jalam Khalifa, purportedly coordinated a series of attacks with Riduan Isamuddin ("Hambali") and Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah. These included simultaneous bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines in December 2000; an attempt to assassinate Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri; and, with the assistance of Kuwaiti-born Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, suicide attacks against U.S. interests in Southeast Asia. The October 2002 bombing by Jemaah Islamiyah at the Sari Nightclub in Bali killed over 200 persons. A Saudi sheikh linked to bin Laden had wired $74,000 to Bashir to buy four tons of explosives, some of which were used to destroy the popular nightspot. Bin Laden would have been in Indonesia at this time.

Jafar Umar Thalib, a Yemeni, headed another Indonesian terrorist organization, Laskar Jihad, established in the Malukus in early 2000. He fought in Afghanistan during 1987-89, and met bin Laden in 1987 at Peshawar. Bin Laden offered him money, but Thalib claimed he found the al-Qaeda leader insufficiently learned in Islam, and turned him down. Indonesian authorities arrested Thalib in May 2002, and Laskar Jihad subsequently disbanded. In any case, Indonesia quickly became a popular destination for Afghani jihadist refugees after 9/11. Significant numbers of Afghans were fighting for Laskar Jihad against Christians in Sulawesi by late 2001.

Many Indonesians joined al-Qaeda. Indonesian Fathurrahman al-Ghozi served as operations chief for Jemaah Islamiyah, and handled al-Qaeda operations in the Philippines before being killed in Mindanao. Born in Aceh, a radical named al-Chaidar participated in campaigns in Afghanistan prior to heading a faction of Darul Islam terrorists. He received $243,000 from al-Qaeda after sending 100-200 Indonesian guerrillas to Afghanistan every year since 1989. Indonesian al-Qaeda member Parlindungan Siregar set up a terrorist training camp near Poso before moving to Italy and Spain. Omar Bandon, another Indonesian who served in Afghanistan, managed the camp. A fifth al-Qaeda operative, Reda Seyam, a German of Egyptian descent, arrived in Indonesia in September 2001, and was arrested there a year later. In June 2008, Indonesian authorities captured a Singaporean national named Alim, aliases Abu Hazam, Taslim, and Omar. Police detained him after raids near Palembang in South Sumatra province. The bomb-maker had traveled to Afghanistan prior to 2001, and had met bin Laden on several occasions. Linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, his unit was planning to attack foreign tourists.

It is understandable that the search for bin Laden has centered on Pakistan. Abu Zubaydah, who served as his military commander, was captured in Faisalabad in March 2002, and al-Qaeda leader Ramzi Bin al-Shibh was arrested in the country in September 2002, shortly after he had been intereviewed on al-Jazeera satellite tv. Authorities apprehended Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Rawalpindi in March 2003. All were key players in the World Trade Center attacks, and all certainly knew bin Laden's plans. Many in Washington had expected to find him after a close associate disclosed his location, but, as time has passed, this outcome has become increasingly improbable. None of the top al-Qaeda captives has revealed his whereabouts, while under duress and facing a death sentence, and no one has claimed the $25 million reward for the al-Qaeda chief.

More than 30 audio and videotapes by bin Laden have surfaced since September 11, 2001. The videos initially showed footage of him wandering the Afghan hills or speaking against a neutral backdrop. Bin Laden made one tape standing before a cloth background at a safehouse in Qandahar. It was discovered on December 13, 2001, in Jalalabad, Pakistan. More recent tapes have revealed that he has a reliable source of electricity for lighting and moderately sophisticated recording equipment, that is, he is not living in a cave or in a completely isolated area. A cave would need to be sealed, ventilated, and heated.

After an American geologist recognized a rock formation in Afghanistan that served as bin Laden's background for one videotape, and the region was heavily bombed, bin Laden has spoken before cloth backdrops. Enlarging the cloth and examining its weave should permit identification of the country or region of origin.

Bin Laden never experienced difficulty delivering tapes to al-Jazeera in Qatar. This suggests he is not in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where an army patrol might have intercepted couriers and confiscated tapes. News items mentioned in bin Laden's statements usually have trailed events by at least ten days, about right for a slow boat from Indonesia. In a tape played December 8, 2002, bin Laden mentioned the attack on the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, which had occurred on November 28. In an audiotape released on December 16, 2004, bin Laden blessed the suicide bomber who had attacked the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on December 6.

A tape released on November 19, 2001, referred to a mosque bombing at Khost which had occurred on November 16, but bin Laden was in Afghanistan at the time, so editing and delivery caused no delays. The difference between three and ten days implies he is long gone from Afghanistan or Pakistan.

No secret messages to confederates have been hidden in the text of tapes. None has warned of a specific attack or provided clues to future incidents, and the release of videos and audiotapes has not preceded attacks, as many experts first suggested. The closest connection involved a tape from October 1, 2004. Militants bombed a Shia mosque in eastern Pakistan the next day, killing twenty-five persons. This tape had not referred to an imminent assault, or to this particular attack, and the timing appeared coincidental. It is easy enough to find links where none exists.

Another video was left at the gate to the offices of al-Jazeera in Islamabad, Pakistan, on October 29, 2004. In it bin Laden admitted responsibility for the 9/11 operation. This delivery did not fit the pattern. Bin Laden might have attempted to mislead the West about his whereabouts, or the hypothesis that he is outside Pakistan misses the mark.

Commentators at al-Jazeera stated that a tape from September 19, 2007, sought to show bin Laden had survived the earthquake in Pakistan which killed 79,000 people. Analysts subsequently concluded the tape had been made before the earthquake. Bin Laden survived because he was not there.

Several days earlier, on September 7, bin Laden appeared in his first new video in almost three years. He moved around for three and a half minutes, but also spoke as the voice-over for a still photograph. The long interval between tapes suggested fear or caution. He may not have dared to shift locations, or, on the contrary, did not see a need, having resided safely in the same place for several years. That would contradict the assumption of some Western analysts that he constantly moves from one safehouse to another, as did Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat. One media report claimed that bin Laden and his cohort raced around Afghanistan on motorcycles, but bin Laden is over 50, too old to play Easy Rider on icy, winding mountain roads in winter.

This three-year interval between tapes is significant, but difficult to explain. Devastation from the 2004 tsunami in Aceh special territory persuaded GAM to make peace with the Indonesian government. The tsunami or peace may have forced bin Laden to curtail his activities. The vast reconstruction of Aceh during the ensuing period might also have inhibited bin Laden's movement and behavior. In 2006, for example, he released four audios and a videotape with old footage, but no new video. Perhaps he could not get new high-powered lights to produce videos after the tsunami.

For the videotape released on September 7, 2007, he dyed his beard black to appear more youthful. He probably had been out of touch with al-Qaeda operational leaders, and this tape sought to prove his vigor and to reassert his control over the organization. He had looked his worst—pale and pasty—in the "gaunt video" of November 19, 2001. That was because he actually had been living in a cave. Ever since, he has appeared healthier. Bin Laden's quarters are presumably roomy enough for him to endure restricted movement and to persevere with his crusade, despite his prolonged isolation.

Journalists Richard Beeston and Zahid Hussain noted in the London Times (September 8, 2007) that conservative Muslims sometimes dyed their beards henna, but not black, which is considered vain, and they rarely trimmed their beards, as had bin Laden. The hairs of his beard seemed thicker than when he was last seen in October 2004. The beard was false¸ the Times supposed, and bin Laden had shaved to avoid being recognized. Muslim men went without beards in Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Despite rumors, the al-Qaeda leader has not suffered from kidney disease requiring dialysis, from any other debilitating ailment, or apparently from wounds, although he did not move his left arm in a video dating from November 2001, or his left hand in a segment from September 2007. Although tall and thin, he has maintained his weight, which means that he has had no difficulty obtaining food.

Some tapes have run long and required considerable editing. One discovered on July 15, 2007, lasted 40 minutes and included a 50-second segment featuring old clips of bin Laden. It was intercepted before appearing on Islamist websites. A videotape from September 11, 2007, interspersed with outdated film segments, ran a full 47 minutes. Videos have contained scrolls in Arabic or English running along the bottom. All this required sophisticated equipment. NBC's Richard Engel has reported that bin Laden speaks flowery Quranic when his audience is Muslim, and modern Arabic when it is Western.

If bin Laden relocated to Indonesia, he would not be hiding in the jungle or forest, but living in style on the estate of a wealthy Muslim sympathizer. During the 1980s, bin Laden was never fond of caves or fighting, but distributed funds and collected worldwide data on Muslim fundamentalists, hence the name "Al-Qaeda," meaning "data base." Since he had outsmarted Western intelligence agencies, he would have chosen to live comfortably near the capital, Banda Aceh, or close to another sizeable port, where he could could follow events on cable or the Internet. Many Muslims pass through the provincial capital on pilgrimages, enabling him to maintain contacts without arousing suspicion.

Bin Laden's recent recorded statements have been general in nature, largely warnings and exhortation. In a 2004 tape, he demanded the overthrow of then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. A message dating from 2007 emphasized the importance of Muslims becoming martyrs. On April 15, 2004, he offered European nations a truce if they refrained from interfering in the affairs of Muslim countries. A few months later, on October 1, he urged resistance to "crusader America." In a tape from September 7, 2007, he discussed the contradiction between the military might of the United States and its international political weakness, the former superpower having been "bled dry economically." An audiotape from November 29, 2007, admonished European nations to end their involvement in Afghanistan. Another communication urged Americans to embrace Islam. In early October 2010, he released two videotapes on climate change and the need to create a foundation for flood relief in Pakistan. The floods had begun in July 2010. Observers noted that in these messages he appeared more the elder statesman than the fiery Islamic fundamentalist.

In his latest audiotape, released on October 27, 2010, bin Laden asserted that the kidnapping of five French citizens by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb on September 16, 2010, at Arlit, Niger, had resulted from France's oppression of Muslims. He warned that protecting French security required such oppression to end, as well as French withdrawal from the "ill-fated Bush war in Afghanistan."

The so-called oppression presumably referred to a ban of the burqa in France, where some Muslim women wear this full-body covering. The French Senate passed the ban on September 14, and the al-Qaeda leader did not respond for six weeks.

Maamoun Youssef of the Associated Press has reported that bin Laden and Zawahiri recently have posted their tapes on the al-Jazeera website rather than on sites operated by militant Muslims. He speculated that the shift reflected technical difficulties or closure of several militant websites. On the contrary, the pair may now be so isolated from militant fundamentalists that they have returned to the always reliable al-Jazeera.

On May 6, 2004, in his most specific message, bin Laden offered ten kilograms of gold to anyone who assassinated L. Paul Bremer III, then U.S. administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, or Kofi Annan, U.N. secretary-general. No one took him up on these offers. If bin Laden were actually running operations, he would secretly plot these assassinations instead of pleading in public.

During the mid-1990s, bin Laden built a farm 20 miles south of Khartoum, Sudan. The location was sufficiently remote so that no one could approach without being seen. Bin Laden had no power or telephone lines to the farm to prevent evesdropping. He also owned a a three-story apartment surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire, located in the Riyadh district of the Sudanese capital. Photoanalysts should be searching for a walled compound protected by barbed or concertina wire, especially large residences with arrays of antennae and high levels of human or vehicular traffic.

The search in Indonesia can be narrowed. The earthquake and tsunami of December 26, 2004, flooded low-lying Banda Aceh inland to five kilometers. Flood depths along the coast reached nine meters. Assuming bin Laden was in the area, he had to have been living beyond this five-kilometer limit. About 65 square kilometers were inundated between Banda Aceh and Lhoknga. Tidal waves destroyed beaches to 1.5 kilometers, so he would not have been hiding along the west coast. The tsunami did not affect the port and industrial city of Lhokseumawe in North Aceh. He might very well have been staying in this vicinity, even at the Lhokseumawe Islamic Center. Bin Laden would have avoided Central Aceh, which had flooded in 1996, and stayed out of the vast areas in this region that had been or are being deforested.

In August 2008, the Middle-East Foodstuff Consortium announced a $1.53 billion investment in southeast Sulawesi through the Bin Laden Group of Saudi Arabia. No evidence links this enterprise to terrorism, but this intriguing development adds another piece to the puzzle.

Admittedly, such speculation is based on circumstantial evidence. Skeptics will respond that he could be anywhere, but to say this misses the point. The situation recalls the drunk crawling around a lamp-post at night looking for his keys. Someone asks him why he is only searching in the light, and he replies that he could never find the keys in the dark. One should look only where one is likely to find bin Laden, that is, where he has cultivated extensive ties.

Indeed, bin Laden may be exactly where intelligence agencies think he is hiding, along the Afghan-Pakistani border. And yet, Predator drones overflying Afghanistan have not seen him and U.S. special forces raiding inside Pakistan have not found him. Casting our nets more widely seems an excellent idea after nine unproductive years of searching.

Reagan biographer Edmund Morris once noted that Americans admire people who are intelligent, but embrace those who are brave. Locating bin Laden will require both. It is time to find and fix America's mortal enemy.

About John L. Scherer
John L. Scherer is the editor of "Terrorism: An Annual Survey," the quarterly Terrorism. He has published extensively on this topic and on foreign policy.