Why Can146;t we Find BIN LADEN ?

Shortly after the release of that tape, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why the United States had not been able to find the terrorist leader. 8216;8216;It8217;s very hard to find a single individual in the world. It8217;s a big place,8217;8217; Rumsfeld explained, adding: 8216;8216;He8217;s either alive8212;he8217;s alive and injured badly8212;or he8217;s dead. Who knows?8217;8217;

Today, bin Laden remains stubbornly alive, as demonstrated by another audiotape released in recent weeks in which he offered a truce to the US, should it withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and vowed never to be taken alive. Indeed, he has proved such a successful fugitive that it8217;s worth asking some of the questions that underlie the continuing US efforts to track down the al-Qaida leader: Does finding him really matter? What makes him so difficult to capture? And, if Osama bin Laden is finally located, would it be better to capture him or to kill him?

Why bother?
According to recent USA Today polls, seven out of eight Americans believe that it is important to capture or kill bin Laden, while 75 percent believe he is planning a significant attack on the United States. These numbers suggest that bringing bin Laden to justice would be a key psychological victory in the war on terrorism.

There is another reason that finding bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, is important. Bin Laden may no longer be calling people on a satellite phone to order attacks, but he remains in broad ideological and strategic control of al-Qaida around the world. An indicator of this is that two years ago Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the insurgent commander in Iraq, renamed his organisation al-Qaida in the Land of the Two Rivers and publicly swore bayat, a religiously binding oath of allegiance, to bin Laden.

Moreover, the 35 video and audiotapes that bin Laden and al-Zawahri have released since 9/11 have reached tens of millions of people worldwide. Those tapes have not only had the effect of pumping up al-Qaida8217;s base, but some have also carried specific instructions that jihadists have acted upon.

Why is it so hard?
The United States has had some success locating terrorists in Pakistan. Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed two CIA employees in 1993 outside the agency8217;s Langley headquarters, was tracked down four years later in the obscure town of Dera Ismail Khan. His capture was the result of a carefully cultivated network of informants and the payment of a substantial reward to the person who dropped a dime on Kansi. But those in bin Laden8217;s immediate circle do not seem to be tempted by the promise of rewards. There were no takers for the 5 million bounty the State Department put on his head following the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Africa. And there seem to be no takers now for the payout which has risen to 27 million. Throw in al-Zawahri, and the total reaches 52 million.

What8217;s more, bin Laden seems to have long been preparing for life on the run, adopting a lifestyle of monk-like detachment from material comforts. One Palestinian journalist who interviewed him in Afghanistan in 1996 recalls that dinner for bin Laden and some of his inner circle consisted of salty cheese, a potato, five or six fried eggs and bread caked with sand.

Noman Benotman, a Libyan who once fought with al-Qaida, told me that bin Laden used to instruct his followers, 8216;8216;You should learn to sacrifice everything from modern life like electricity, air conditioning, refrigerators, gasoline. If you are living the luxury life, it8217;s very hard to evacuate and go to the mountains to fight.8217;8217;

Where exactly is he?
There doesn8217;t seem to be much intelligence about bin Laden8217;s exact whereabouts. The conventional wisdom is that he is somewhere in the tribal belt along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but it is clear from the most recent videotapes of bin Laden and al-Zawahri that they are not living in caves. Both men8217;s clothes are clean and well-pressed, and the tapes that they have released are well-shot productions suggesting access either to electrical outlets or generators to run lights. Their statements have also been notably well informed about what is going on around the world.

In his most recent videotape bin Laden made a reference to the scene in Michael Moore8217;s Fahrenheit 9/11 where President Bush continued to read a story about a goat to a kindergarten class after he had been informed that passenger jets had crashed into the World Trade Center. Comments like that suggest that if bin Laden and al-Zawahri are indeed in the tribal areas, they are in a compound either in, or near, one of the larger towns with access to modern amenities.

One US military official familiar with the hunt told me he believes bin Laden 8216;8216;has been hunkered down in one place for a long time,8217;8217; making it harder to track him, whereas al-Zawahri is 8216;8216;more operational and is moving more.8217;8217; That may explain the US air strike aimed at killing Zawahiri in January in the village of Damadola, on Pakistan8217;s Afghan border. It resulted in the death of five alleged terrorists, but about two weeks later al-Zawahri released a videotape thumbing his nose at President Bush.

How to go about it?
Probably not by signals intelligence generated from phone calls. Bin Laden had been careful not to use satellite or cell phones since long before the 9/11 attacks. According to his media adviser, Khalid al-Fawaz, whom I met in London in 1997, bin Laden had already learned to avoid electronic communications. Bin Laden has released only one tape in the past 14 months, possibly because al-Qaida leaders are aware that every time they do so, they open themselves to detection as the chain of custody of these tapes is the one sure way of finding them.

Dead or alive?
Making bin Laden a martyr would not serve our interests. Instead he should be subjected to the same treatment that Saddam Hussein suffered when he was captured8212;checked for head lice and publicly humiliated on camera. Bin Laden is now a mythic personality, and the best way to revert him to the status of an ordinary human being is to treat him like one. It is, however, unlikely that he will be captured. Last year his former bodyguard, Abu Jandal, told the al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, 8216;8216;Sheikh Osama gave me a pistol. The pistol had only two bullets, for me to kill Sheikh Osama with in case we were surrounded or he was about to fall into the enemy8217;s hands so that he would not be caught alive.8217;8217; As bin Laden himself put it to Jandal, if he were killed, 8216;8216;his blood would become a beacon that arouses the zeal and determination of his followers.8217;8217; The man who once enjoyed a quiet rural life in the mountains of Tora Bora aims in death to ascend into the pantheon of Islamic heroes8212;a Saladin for the 21st century 8216;8216;martyred8217;8217; by those he calls 8216;8216;the Crusaders.8217;8217;

Peter Bergen is a fellow of the New America Foundation and the author of The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda8217;s Leader.