LAHORE: Seven years after invading Afghanistan, the American intelligence sleuths stationed in Pakistan have launched a massive hunt to capture Osama bin Laden following intelligence reports that he has been spotted in the Karakoram section of the Himalayan range along Pakistan’s borders with Afghanistan and China.
According to well placed intelligence sources in Islamabad, the US intelligence sleuths stationed in Pakistan have stepped up increased surveillance operations through newly built bases in the region and additional daily flights of Predator drones scour the area for any suspicious characters who might lead them to the world’s most sought after fugitive.
The passionate search operation is learnt to have been prompted by some latest CIA reports that Osama has been located in the rooftop of the world — the area of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan to the west, in particular the chain of mountains in the province of Nurestan, and China to the north.
Frequent claims as to the location of the fugitive al-Qaeda chief have been made by the Americans since December 2001, although none have been definitively proven and some have placed Osama in different locations during overlapping time periods. The US intelligence sleuths in Pakistan concede that finding one person in a big populated urban city is much more difficult as compared with tracking down someone in Northern Areas or the border areas of Pakistan.
However, there are many other factors pointed out by the Americans that have combined in the five years since the 9/11 to make the hunt for the Most Wanted more difficult — Pervez Musharraf’s unwillingness to cooperate as he fears being abandoned by the Americans once Osama is captured; the re-emergence of the Taliban militia in both Afghanistan and Pakistan; the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq that has exhausted the US military and intelligence resources etc.
