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Osama tape : Proof of his being alive |
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An audio-tape on an Islamic website, where a man identifies himself as Osama
bin Laden and praises those who attacked the US Consulate in Jeddah, proves that the Taliban chief is very much alive. Its reference to the Dec 6 attack in which five militants shot their way into the compound of the US Consulate in Jeddah, killing five non-American employees showed that it was made recently. Four of the attackers were killed and one wounded in the attack.
US analysts who carried out tests on the recording, said it proves to be genuine. Unlike the earlier instances when such tapes were delivered to the Arabic satellite channel, Al-Jazeera, this tape was put on the Internet in full length because Al-Jazeera was seen to be drastically editing the tape.
The 76-minute tape posted on an Islamic website on Dec. 16 praised the attack on the US Consulate in Saudi Arabia and criticized the Saudi regime as weak and controlled by the United States. The tape appeared the same day another dissident had called for anti-monarchy protests in Saudi Arabia.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said Osama bin Laden is definitely in the region and will eventually be caught, even though American and Pakistani Generals insist the trail has gone cold. The Afghan intelligence agents have arrested two senior Taliban military commanders, including a former security chief of the hardline regime’s leader Mullah Omar and their interrogation may lead to clues where the Mullah or even Osama bin Laden are hiding. The arrest of Tohr Mullah Naqvi, Taliban’s military commander for Kandahar Province and his deputy Mullah Qayum, also known as Mullah Hunger, was announced in Kandahar on Dec. 14. Some important documents have been recovered from them which may lead to more arrests.
Speculation on Bin Laden’s whereabouts has long focused on the mountains along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Al-Qaeda leader slipped away from Afghan and US forces three years ago. The Pakistan Army has mounted a series of bloody offensives against foreign fighters near the border this year and American forces launched a winter-long operation last week against Taliban rebels on the Afghan side. But there has been no indication that they are close to seizing the suspected mastermind of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Pakistan has denied a newspaper report that the CIA has set up covert bases in the country’s remote tribal regions to hunt for Osama bin Laden. The report in the NEW YORK TIMES on Dec. 13 said, the CIA had concluded that Osama bin Laden was being sheltered by local tribesmen and foreign militants in north-western Pakistan. The report said Osama was suspected of controlling an elite terrorist cell that could launch a “spectacular” attack against America.
Many analysts are convinced that Osama is being protected by a well-financed network of Pakistani tribesmen and foreign militants who operate in the impoverished border region and that they have helped him communicate with major figures in his network. The place suspected of being Osama’s hide-out, in the shadow of the Hindukush mountain range, is in one of the most isolated and backward corners of the world.
Pakistan’s frontier is a barren terrain of mountains and mud. The fiercely independent ethnic Pashtuns who inhabit the region, are farmers and smugglers, most of them poor and illiterate. Local mullahs preach a radical Islamic ideology that portrays the United States as bent on enslaving Muslims and destroying their culture.
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