M A I N   N E W S

Osama a virtual caveman
Rajeev Sharma 
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 4
If America and allies fail yet again in capturing the world’s most sought after terrorist Osama bin Laden, this time they can blame his new-found “caveman” status. 
He had escaped the American Cruise missile attacks of August 20, 1998 on Afghanistan as Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) had tipped him off about it some four hours before.

Today caves are promising to come to his rescue. Bin Laden has today become a virtual “caveman” as he is believed to be shifting from cave to cave every two or three days, which interestingly is one of the reasons why the USA has so far not been able to get precise intelligence about his whereabouts.

The USA must be ruing that day of May, 1996, when under its pressure Bin Laden had left his second home — Sudan — and shifted lock, stock and barrel to Afghanistan. Since then the civilised world’s chances of getting Bin Laden dead or alive got slimmed, if not extinguished.

Sources who specialise on Bin Laden and Afghanistan said Afghanistan’s unique topography and terrain, coupled with that country’s total political and diplomatic isolation, provide the biggest strategic advantage to Bin Laden.

They point out that it took as many as 50 days of war effort from the Indian Army and Indian Air Force (IAF) — apart from the US pressure on Pakistan — to throw out a couple of thousand infiltrators from Kargil. Incidentally, Kargil is the only place in India which comes closest to Afghanistan in terms of topography and terrain, but the fact is that Afghanistan is a much bigger Kargil.

Afghanistan has millions of mountains, a large number of which have natural caves. In case of such mountains which are highly strategic but caveless, Bin Laden, an adept civil engineer, has got artificial caves made.

Sources said though a plethora of spy satellites owned by the USA and its allies had been focussing on the Afghanistan-Pakistan axis since the September 11 terror attacks on the USA, they have failed to pinpoint Bin Laden’s exact location mainly because of the caves.

The advantage of the caves is that they provide a foolproof shield to the inhabitants from aerial and missile attacks. Equally important, spy satellites fail to record any suspicious movements as these are carved well into the mountains.

Bin Laden keeps moving from cave to cave and does not remain at one hideout for more than two or three days. He changes locations during night. While he is inside the hideout, all the approach paths, which are usually not motorable, are protected by his more than a 100 bodyguards who are armed to the teeth.

Sources said it is because of this handicap that the US reprisal attacks on Afghanistan have been delayed. While the USA had launched its retaliatory Cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan on the 30th day of the August 7, 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people were killed, not even a shade of such a spectacular action is forthcoming from the superpower full 23 days after the September 11 unprecedented terrorist attacks in which more than 7000 people are feared killed.