Guardians Declan Walsh har besøkt et område av Sør-Waziristan, ved grensen til Afganistan, hvor bin Laden trolig gjemmer/gjemte seg, visstok som første vestlige journalist. Det er spesielle inntrykk. Al-Qaida står sterkt.

A fury of dust billowed from the military helicopter as it prepared to leave Shikai, a hamlet of fortress-like farmhouses near the Afghan border. Faridullah Khan, a Wazir tribal leader, walked me to the landing pad. Eyes veiled by sunglasses and mouth obscured by a bushy moustache, Khan had an impenetrable air. But one thing was clear, he said: only one year earlier, the settlement was a major global operations hub for Osama bin Laden.

Several hundred Uzbek, Chechen and Arab militants lurked inside the towering compounds – training recruits, plotting attacks in Pakistan and the west, and operating a sophisticated propaganda factory complete with video-editing suites and CD burners. Some locals harboured the foreigners; others made a small fortune charging extortionate rates for everything from bread to beds; most were simply frightened.
«Al-Qaida was all over the valley,» Khan said as we neared the whumping helicopter blades, pointing to a line of craggy hills. «But this year they are gone, the army flushed them out. Al-Qaida is on the run. Peace has been restored.»

Twenty-four hours later, Khan was dead. The killers waited at a diversion off the 2_kommentar road. When his jeep passed – on the way from a meeting with the South Waziristan army commander – they sprayed it with bullets. But Khan did not die immediately, according to one witness. So to finish the job they incinerated the vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Offisielt spekulerer man i et det var et privat oppgjør.

But Wazir leaders – and several western diplomats – embrace a more sinister theory: that Khan, a key figure in last year’s army offensive against al-Qaida, was taken out by supporters of Bin Laden.

«There is an atmosphere of fear in the tribal areas. Al-Qaida is killing so many informers,» said human rights activist Afrasiab Khattak in Peshawar. «Faridullah Khan was seen as having links with western circles. That was probably fatal.»

Skildringen av hvordan Al Qaidas «offiser» Faraj al-Libby ble tatt, er spennende lesning:

Yet recently tantalising hints suggest that the Saudi’s ironclad cover has cracked. They first surfaced last May in Mardan, a frontier town that is best known for its soldiers and sweets, in a scene straight from a Quentin Tarantino film. As two men on a motorbike roared through a graveyard of white tombs and tinsel decorations, a group wearing blue burkas – the head-to-toe veil worn by women – stepped on to the road. Flicking back the burkas, they revealed themselves as armed Pakistani commandos. The pillion passenger, a bearded man with splotches on his face, panicked, and fled through a field, into a warren of streets, up a ladder and across a roof. He was finally cornered in the guest quarters of a businessman’s house. The commandos flushed him out with tear gas; he emerged weeping and clutching his mobile phone.

«The funny thing is, he was not very upset,» said Bakht Munir, a 30-year-old mechanic who said he directed the commandos to their quarry. «He looked almost relaxed.»

The man was Abu Faraj al-Libbi, al-Qaida’s third most senior operative after Bin Laden and the Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahiri, according to American and Pakistani officials.

Vel, andre sier Libbys betydning er overdrevet. Han var slett ikke nummer tre på rangstigen.

Walsh og hans kilder sier at Wana i Sør-Waziristan utviklet seg til Al-Qaidas hovedkvarter. Hit valfartet ledere fra hele verden. Her ble attentater og aksjoner planlagt. Terroren er i sannhet global. Aksjonene i Lonon kan ha vært planlagt eller assistert fra et av de mest utilgjengelige steder på jorden.

By spring of last year, Waziristan had become home to the world’s largest al-Qaida base. At least 15 camps were dotted around the southern area under the protection of the Wazir tribe, mostly around Wana and Shikai. The militants plotted against targets at home and abroad. Al-Libbi orchestrated two assassination attempts against Musharraf from Wana. Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani computer whizz from Karachi who was later arrested with blueprints of plans to attack New Jersey and London, was also a visitor. For all that is so far known about the 7/7 bombings in London it is possible – but not yet probable – that the plan germinated inside one of these citadel-like houses. «For the top notch al-Qaida, it became a pilgrimage to visit Wana,» said one former intelligence officer.

Situasjonen var uholdbar. USA tvang Musharraf til å sette inn hæren. Det kalles en seier, men den var i såfall ikke fullstendig.

En offiser viser frem bilder av datautstyr og avtaler med de ulike stammene. De fikk godt betalt.

The rest of the commander’s book is a summary of other successes: images of computer and video equipment found at the Shikai propaganda factory (hidden in a farmer’s basement); a record of payments to local supporters (on average £145 per fortnight); a chart of the peace deals subsequently signed with various sub-branches of the Wazir and Mehsud clans.

Imens er bin Laden forsvunnet. Befolkningen beskytter ham, og det er det største problemet i et område hvor myndighetene tradisjonelt ikke har noe å si. Kun stammene. Forfølgelsen av al-Qaida skaper også motvilje blant de lokale, som havner i kryssild.

But Waziristan is far from being at peace. In tandem with the feel-good measures, the army is also using more time-honoured tactics. Under the guise of the notorious Frontier Crimes Regulations it has torched the houses of suspected al-Qaida sympathisers and imposed collective fines of up to £45,000. This month it closed down a dozen refugee camps housing 27,500 Afghans.

Al-Qaida and its local supporters have murdered a stream of government «collaborators» such as Faridullah Khan in Shikai and issued death threats to many more. And in South Waziristan, anger towards the army and its American allies still runs high following last year’s bloodshed.

«Everyone is angry with the Americans,» says Niaz Muhammad, a timber merchant whose house was blasted by five rockets. «When they fight, they say it is for peace. When we fight, we are terrorists.»

Muhammad says 15 civilians died when the army attacked Makin village in search of a notorious figure named Mullah Shafi. «Everyone knew he supported al-Qaida,» he says. But the cleric slipped away during the fighting and, after lying low for a while, has now returned home. Meanwhile, al-Qaida has taken revenge by assassinating five pro-government elders.

Men det virker utrolig at ikke USA og Pakistan har kunnet lokalisere verdens mest ettersøkte mann. Kanskje de ikke vil? Det mener CIAs tidligere stasjonssjef i Peshawar.

A persistent theory, championed by the former CIA station chief Gary Schroen, is that Pakistan hasn’t found Bin Laden because it doesn’t want to. Ali Dayan Hassan of Human Rights Watch agrees that the «rugged terrain» excuse for not finding him is «rubbish» because the army has extensive intelligence tentacles in the tribal areas. Schroen 2_kommentartains that a diehard fundamentalist strain still holds sway within the army and ISI.

Most wanted

PS: den elektroniske versjonen var bedre og fyldigere enn den som står i Guardian Weekly