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Trail of the World's Most Wanted Man Grows Cold
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
By Kathy Gannon
Canadian Press

"So many Arabs came through here," said Mattiullah Khan, a resident of Bachir Akar in Nangarhar province. "People hid them. They were happy to hide them. For several days we kept them in our houses."
Most of the Arabs are believed to have fled the area before the heaviest of the U.S. bombing, paying smugglers to guide them to Pakistan. From the caves of Tora Bora, the al-Qaida fighters and their families escaped through the villages of Suleiman Khiel and then to Milawa near the Pakistani border.

TORA BORA, Afghanistan -- CP
As Taliban defenses around Kabul crumbled under the fury of American bombs, the man responsible for it all -- Osama bin Laden -- was far away in the safety of this mountain fortress.

Then, by the time the Americans zeroed in on Tora Bora in December, unleashing 15,000-pound (6,750-kilogram) bombs on the caves and tunnels, bin Laden was gone, according to his former driver, a Taliban regional security officer and the former chief of Taliban forces here in eastern Afghanistan.

Since then, the trail has gone cold. Sightings have been replaced by rumours and U.S. officials admit they are baffled.

"We don't know whether he's alive or dead, in Afghanistan or Pakistan," Bryan Whitman, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said recently.
(More: Canada.com News Source)
2002 © Canadian Press.

Dan