Where on Earth is Osama?

The world’s Most Wanted Man was not only sighted last in Pakistan, but the country’s role in the region has been getting more and more alarming.

Tora Bora is spelt differently now: Q-U-E-T-T-A. At least in intelligence documents. And the coordinates, for all satellite zoom-in purposes, have shifted slightly. Quetta, in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, is not far from the Chitral wilderness under the shadow of the Hindu Kush mountains that give it a faraway ring. To its west are the badlands of Afghanistan, but the verdant landscape in these parts suggests a serenity that could seduce anyone who doesn’t know better.

Time and tradition have stood still here. The locals are proud, fierce and wedded to ancient tribal codes that place honour above all. The odd foreigner who does come here, comes for a glimpse of the elusive snow leopard. The region’s geography offers nooks to hide, crags to flee, caves to inhabit and snow-capped peaks to fade as seasons change. It is here that the Mughal Emperor Humayun hid enroute his Persian exile under the onslaught of Sher Shah Suri. 

Nearly half a millennium later, another man on the run—the World’s Most Wanted—may have sought refuge in the same crevices and crannies. If information from the latest WikiLeaks exposé is anything to go by, he was reliably spotted in Quetta as recently as 2006. 

Nearly a decade after 9/11, Osama bin Laden could be alive and well, if not kicking, somewhere in the region. And someone in the higher reaches of Pakistan’s establishment knows exactly where—this much was made clear by Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, on her visit to Pakistan this July.

The Al Qaida Chief’s is an epic battle. In the public imagination, this is about one man against a superpower. The reality, however, is more complex. That he has escaped capture for so long makes it logical to assume that he has the camouflage and support of an entire State apparatus, beyond the tribal allegiances that are said to have held him safe all this while. There are millions of dollars on his head—‘Dead or Alive’—but tribal honour in these parts is not easily bought.  

So elusive has Osama been that it has looked at times as if the US would rather everyone forgot all about him. Leon Panetta, chief of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had made a claim not very long back that there’s been no precise information on Osama for almost a decade. The WikiLeaks’ exposed sighting of Quetta 2006 ought to be an embarrassment. Yet, it does not make the hunt any easier. The one piece of intelligence down the years that is almost cent per cent trustworthy is that Osama bin Laden is always on the move. 

What makes the Quetta report so salient is the startling details enclosed. It refers to monthly meetings held in this dusty city by Al Qaida to chalk out its tactical manoeuvres. Some of these plans are reported to actually have been carried out in the form of coordinated and large-scale attacks on US positions, the Afghan government and even Indian interests. Says the leak, ‘These meetings take place once every month, and there are usually about twenty people present. The place for the meeting alternates between QUETTA and villages (NFDG) on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The top four people in these meetings are Mullah OMAR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, Mullah DADULLAH and Mullah BARADER (PHON). Mullah DADULLAH is called DADULLAH LANG, because he is missing a leg.’ This information appears to be the best that the US is in possession of. Even though US President Barack Obama has blithely brushed the ‘leak’ aside as nothing new, he is sure to face tough questions on his Af-Pak policy because of all the information suddenly available to people at large. 

Indeed, intelligence briefs are a strange cocktail of information and conjecture put through a wringer of analysis, but anything on such a sensitive issue, no matter how sketchy, is sure to invite public discussion and scrutiny.  Says Harsh V Pandit of the department of war studies at King’s College in London: “The leaks do damage in the sense that they further strain the relations of trust between the US military and Pakistani security establishment. The US might want to use these leaks as leverage in garnering greater cooperation from Pakistan, but it’s highly unlikely that it will succeed. The Obama Administration will now find it extremely hard to convince the US Congress and public that its Af-Pak strategy is on track and is yielding results.”

One mask of Al Qaida that may have slipped through the Wiki notes is Quetta’s Taliban resurgence. Sources say that the Quetta Shura Taliban are now perhaps the most dangerous splinter of Al Qaida in Pakistan. They know Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, and are determined to guard their secret. 

This is a no-go area for American fighters, something they are unaccustomed to. For a military superpower that has a strategic culture of deploying overwhelming force, this is an excruciating headache. The US wants in. Pakistan won’t let it. As the US bodybag count rises, the pressure is likely to increase. But when or whether Pakistan will give in remains anybody’s guess. Even Admiral Mike Mullen, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has publicly expressed his frustration; in late July, he told reporters that  not only is Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, American interests in Pakistan were under attack because of help being given to its enemies by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

The leaks now will serve to heighten America’s exasperation. There are multiple reports of Pakistani efforts to undermine the US mission in Afghanistan, which if successfully done could let Islamabad revive its ‘strategic depth’ agenda of using its western neighbour as a tool in its own game. Pakistan, it is clear, has aided the Taliban with logistics, advance warnings, the provision of fuel and arms, and even training. 

Under these circumstances, Obama faces two choices. Withdrawal from Afghanistan, which could leave a vacuum for the Taliban. Or a dramatic escalation of hostilities, which might mean something resembling an invasion of Pakistan. Of the two options, the latter is less likely to raise the risk of another direct attack on the US itself. 

India cannot expect to stay safe, and New Delhi knows it. In a sharp response to the WikiLeaks information, the Union Ministry of External Affairs’ official spokesperson Vishnu Prakash has condemned the use of territory under Pakistan’s control to launch terror strikes. On at least three occasions, the leaks point to coordinated intelligence on attacks on Indian interests—on business projects as well as government outposts. One specific Polish leak shows a warning of an immediate attack on the Indian embassy. This, in fact, took place. Some 58 people were killed. The ISI’s backing of the attackers has been a sore point between India and Pakistan.

The leaks indicate several such cases of ISI complicity in such events, all aimed at ejecting India from Afghanistan. The tragic part is India’s lack of leverage in Islamabad to get something done about it. Whining and having the world acknowledge it is not the same thing.

What is India’s Afghanistan policy beyond building roads and training the odd professional? To what extent is New Delhi committed to the Karzai regime? What is India’s plan in the event of a US withdrawal? Without answers to these questions, the next attack on India’s vital interests could be far more deadly and humiliating.  

Pakistan’s ISI and Army generals appear to have based their covertly calculated support to the Al Qaida and Taliban on an assumption that the US cannot hold out for much longer in Afghanistan. Analysts believe that President Obama’s announcement of a withdrawal plan plays straight into the hands of Pakistan’s intelligence-security apparatus. 

Agrees Austin Long, assistant professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and an Afghanistan specialist, “It has long been argued by various analysts that Pakistan is, at a minimum, hedging its bets in Afghanistan, aiding the US effort in some ways and hindering it in others. The leaks seem to support this argument. The real question is how to align US and Pakistani interests in Afghanistan to allow a political-military solution both can live with.”

If you look at the Wiki documents in detail, the surprising part is not that Osama is mentioned as being present in Pakistan—but how little the US has on him. According to an analysis by the website Intelwire that has a detailed study of the Wiki diaries, ‘…There are less than five references to each man (Osama and Zawahiri) in 76,000 records. Compare that to 11 references to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (an Al Qaeda ally) and 85 references to Jaliluddin Haqqani (a Taliban Ally) and his network of fighters. There are 70 references to high-value targets including Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.’

Do your own count. There are fewer than 200 references to Al Qaida in WikiLeaks’ documents. Compare that to 6,000-ish references to the Taliban. 

For all the wizards of Armageddon deployed by the US expeditionary forces, for all those drones and robots, listening devices and computer-aided theatre dominance manoeuvres, when it comes to intelligence on the ground, the US has no clue of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. In several parts of the terrain, it doesn’t have any human intelligence at all. If you don’t know where to look, as veteran spooks say, you find zilch. 

The leaks lay bare the fact that the most snazzy of technology is no replacement of old-fashioned knowledge, the kind that comes from genuine espionage seen in cloak-n-dagger films. What this entire sorry episode highlights is the plain inability of the US to burrow its way into Afghan civil life. Try as it may, the US just cannot ‘get’ Afghanistan. In the meantime, there are reliable indications that the Taliban have regrouped and Al Qaida could well have been emboldened enough to take the fight to the US. 

The howling winds of the Hindu Kush can play tricks on the ear. They create giant sucking sounds like an unseen Hoover vacuum cleaner at furious work. The beating retreat of US forces is a bit out of tune amid the din that is Afghanistan. A big vacuum awaits an almost certain US withdrawal.

One can almost picture a future Afghan Loya Jirga (tribal conclave of elders), presided over by Osama bin Laden as the Amir of an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (on his own Khalifat ambitions, again, little reliable intelligence is available). He has a clipped message that Al Jazeera cameras are waiting to air. One can almost hear the words ringing loud, “This land of the believers did Alexander in, did the British in, the Soviets bled and the Americans fled. The enemy to the east will also soon roll over—it’s already playing dead.”  

If the World’s Most Wanted Man is alive, and ‘frontline state’ Pakistan’s role is as brazen as it seems from the Wiki leaks in sabotaging Indian interests in Afghanistan, South Block will need to do better than whine about Pakistan and its role and threat to peace. 

The Great Game is about to take one of its most dramatic turns. There is a flurry of strategic activity all the way from Washington DC to Islamabad. New Delhi cannot afford to sit idle.

About The Author

Ninad D. Sheth