![]() ![]() Because people hate American foreign policy and corrupt Arab dictatorships they have some sympathy for al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. "When people in Palestine voted for Hamas it was not for radicalism, they voted against corruption. But, he stressed, support for Bin Laden does not equate to a vote for terrorism. That sentiment is echoed across the Muslim world, said Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper. Osama stands up to them." Like many Pakistanis he discounted suggestions that Bin Laden was linked to the World Trade Centre attacks. "Americans have done many bad things against Muslims. "Osama is a hero," said Kamran Ali, a 23-year-old call centre operator in Islamabad. But elsewhere in the Muslim world he is a man to be greatly admired. ![]() Nine out of 10 people view him negatively, according to a recent poll. ![]() Most Afghans have little time for the man who sparked an invasion of their country in 2001. ![]() If America really has such strong soldiers and intrusive satellites, they conclude, Bin Laden must already be in the bag. "Many, many people believe such stories," said Sarah Chayes, a writer who lives in Kandahar. Across the border in Afghanistan the belief that Bin Laden has already been caught by America - and is even hidden inside the White House - is remarkably common. Based on this the CIA is sending fresh operatives to trap him, ABC News reported last Tuesday.īut if the Americans think he is in the border areas, the tribesmen who live there think the opposite. "To the best of our knowledge the senior leadership, number one and two, are there," said Admiral Mike McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, last week. Last September a French regional paper, L'Est Republicain, quoting a French intelligence report picked up at a cocktail party in Pakistan, claimed he had died of typhoid in the tribal belt.Īmerica's spies are convinced OBL, as they call him, is hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt. Some watchers claim he is dependent on dialysis others say this is nonsense. Shortly afterwards angry local clerics blew their cover and they left.īin Laden's kidney problems have been the subject of intense speculation. After the mammoth earthquake that devastated northern Pakistan, Senator Harry Reid from Nevada announced that Bin Laden had perished under the rubble.Īt about the same time a discreet team of American investigators arrived in Chitral, a quiet mountain retreat to the north, where they believed they had picked up the trail. A year later the Spanish newspaper El Mundo claimed to have located him inside a Muslim enclave of western China. The Pakistani army thought it had him cornered in a village in the lawless North Waziristan tribal agency in 2003. A powerful myth has swelled around him - the tall, stern-faced Saudi-born militant has become the ghost of the Hindu Kush, variously reported dead or alive at different points inside the epic mountain range. Despite the world's largest manhunt and a $25m bounty he remains at large, the Scarlet Pimpernel of jihad. Six years after 9/11, Bin Laden is maddeningly out of reach. ![]()
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