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| Carlo Montali/Reflexnews, for The New York Times |
| An American soldier from the 10th Mountain Division on an Afghanistan watchtower facing Pakistan. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar are believed to be hiding in the rugged border region. |
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 15 — If American forces found Saddam Hussein hiding in an eight-foot-deep hole in central Iraq, why have they not found Osama bin Laden or the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar?
Asked this question, American, Pakistani and Afghan officials and terrorism experts note immediately that the searches are enormously different.
There are 12 times as many American troops in Iraq as there are in the mountainous border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan where Mr. bin Laden is believed to be hiding. He has chosen far better terrain in which to hide. He also appears to have more loyalty from his close circle of aides than Mr. Hussein did, and therefore has confounded efforts to track him.
"It seems to me they are back at square one," said Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert and author of "Holy War, Inc.," on the rise of Al Qaeda. "My impression is that they are not devoting a lot of resources to it. It seems to be forgotten. Maybe the capture of Saddam will lead them to become interested in it again."
The general area where Mr. bin Laden is believed to be hiding is no mystery. Two years after he was overheard commanding troops in the battle of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, he is still believed to be somewhere amid the soaring peaks and crags of the 1,500-mile Pakistani-Afghan border.
Finding him in the lightly populated and rugged terrain with mountain passes at 15,000 feet above sea level has proved maddening.
"The environments are very different," said Rohan Gunaratna, author of the book "Inside Al Qaeda." "In the case of Iraq, the leader lives in an urban environment saturated with people. In the case of Al Qaeda, the leader is in a sparsely populated area."
The United States has some 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, compared with more than 120,000 troops in Iraq. For the first time in its history, Pakistan has sent army soldiers into its tribal areas, deploying 70,000 troops to try to seal the border — an almost impossible task given the number of mountain passes, the remoteness of the region and the fierce independence of its residents and tribal chieftains.
Mr. bin Laden is believed to know the area well, having visited it since his 20's and lived there for the last decade. He is believed to communicate only by courier and letter, avoiding phone calls and e-mail messages that the United States could detect electronically. He seems to travel with a small group of intensely loyal followers, probably fewer than a dozen people. Efforts to infiltrate the group with a mole, or coax a betrayal with $25 million in reward money, appear to have failed.
Mullah Omar is believed to be hiding somewhere in southern Afghanistan. Afghan officials have accused Pakistan's powerful military intelligence service of sheltering both men, or doing little to try to find them. American officials have dismissed accounts that Pakistani agents are hiding the Qaeda leader, but describe Pakistan's effort to crack down on the Taliban as a "gray area."
"The hunt continues," a spokesman for the American Embassy here said, referring to the search for Mr. bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
Hopes of finding Mr. bin Laden last rose in March 2003 when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda's head of operations, was captured in Pakistan. But his information regarding his leader's whereabouts proved to be more than one month old.
Since then, only low-level Qaeda foot soldiers have been captured, Pakistani officials said. "Cutouts," where one group of supporters is not told what the other is doing, have meant that detainees have little information. In the last six months, little to no new noteworthy intelligence regarding Mr. bin Laden has emerged, Pakistani officials said.
The lack of intelligence from human sources in the tribal areas has been the main problem, the officials said.
In interviews, tribal leaders have said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a conspiracy by the C.I.A. and the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. They have also argued that tens of thousands of Afghan women and children died in the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan.
They appear to believe firmly that Mr. bin Laden is a persecuted hero, and that an aggressive United States is bent on subjugating all Muslims. "He is essentially moving in the belt which is anti-American," said Talad Masood, a political analyst and retired Pakistani general.
About a year ago, an official from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence assigned to the South Waziristan tribal region was shot dead, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. There have also been a few instances where tribe members suspected of working for the United States have been killed, with warning letters left on their bodies.
In September, on the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a videotape surfaced showing Mr. bin Laden and his top aide, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, walking down a rocky slope. Pakistani officials said they had studied the landscape shown in the tape, but had given up in frustration. It could have been shot anywhere in northern Pakistan or southern Afghanistan, they said.
In early October, the Pakistani government sent its American-trained Quick Reaction Force to a village in South Waziristan, officials said. They had a tip that a leading Qaeda suspect was there.
A shootout occurred, and eight suspected Qaeda members were killed along with two Pakistani soldiers, the Pakistanis said. Intelligence officials later learned to their dismay that the suspect left the area a month and a half before the raid.
Pakistani officials said they believed that Mr. bin Laden might have been in Kunar or Nuristan Provinces in northern Afghanistan when American troops carried out an operation there in November, but that he moved once the Americans arrived. American officials declined to comment on the matter.
For now, Pakistani officials say they hope that an infusion of government-built roads, wells and schools in the tribal areas will aid in intelligence gathering. On the Afghan side of the border, American officials hope that increased reconstruction aid and strengthened authority of the central government in Kabul will produce the same result.
Mr. Bergen, the terrorism expert, noted that it took the F.B.I. five years to find Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bombing suspect, who was hiding in the United States and was the focus of one of the largest manhunts in American history.
