Rumors Of Bin Laden's Lair

Bin Laden seems to be in good health, according to both the former Taliban deputy foreign minister and an Afghan named Haroon, who claims to have visited the Qaeda leader in June. Three of bin Laden's sons are said to be with him, sworn to kill their father rather than let him be captured alive. Two of his wives are said to be living nearby in the mountains, but not with him; he visits them when security allows. Taliban sources say the Qaeda leader communicates with his friends and followers via handwritten letters and computer disks delivered by relays of messengers. Each carrier knows only where to find the next link in the chain. The system is slow, but it keeps the Americans from using electronic intercepts to find him.

Bin Laden could hardly ask for a better hiding place. Even some American officials agree that Kunar is a likely refuge. The sparsely populated province isn't big--less than two thirds the land area of Connecticut--but it offers more comfort and protection for bin Laden than any other part of Afghanistan. "There is no effective central government control in the mountains beyond the capital," says Kunar's chief of police, Col. Abdul Saffa Momand (no relation to the major). The mountain roads are almost impassable; his men have no radios, and their families barely survive on their monthly salary of $14--when the paychecks come at all. "A soldier on patrol at night is risking his life for nothing," the colonel says. "It's impossible to access the areas where Al Qaeda is hiding," he adds. "Even from a helicopter you only see mountains, rocks and trees." Unlike the desert ranges that are typical in Afghanistan, Kunar's mountains are covered with evergreens and shrubs, and the terrain is crisscrossed with smugglers' trails leading over the border into Pakistan.

Kunar's population is, likewise, congenial to bin Laden. In recent decades the province has become home to more than a thousand Arab men, many of whom--like bin Laden's bodyguard al Jazeeri--have intermarried with local Afghans, gaining strong family ties in the region. At the height of the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, the CIA effectively ceded Kunar to the Arab volunteers who were pouring in to join the mujahedin. "We preferred that they operate in their own fief, and out of our way," says Edmund McWilliams, a retired State Department officer and Congress's special representative to the mujahedin during the late 1980s. In the last two years the mujahedin veterans have been joined by hundreds of Qaeda members and supporters uprooted from other parts of Afghanistan.

Bin Laden and his followers are living in relative comfort, officials in Kunar believe. Some may be huddled in the caves that honeycomb the mountains, but Major Momand's intelligence sources say others live openly in stone and mud houses built against the steep slopes, hidden by the trees and underbrush. Many of the dwellings have been renovated in the last two years. The Arabs share the mountains with Afghan nomads whose flocks of sheep and goats graze there. Shali Khan, together with his wife and two children, tends a herd of 150 sheep and goats, and often encounters columns of heavily armed Arabs traveling on horseback or on foot. He says he's glad to see them. "These Arabs are good people fighting the jihad," says Khan, who takes evident pride in his pointed mustache, despite his tattered clothes and mended sandals. "They pay me well for my animals and milk."

Bin Laden apparently feels safe enough to receive visitors--with precautions. In May an Afghan named Haroon asked permission to see the Qaeda leader. The young man is active in the Taliban's anti-U.S. resistance, and he had guided bin Laden from the besieged cave complex at Tora Bora to safety in the Shahikot Valley during the U.S. bombing in late 2001 ("How Al Qaeda Slipped Away," Aug. 19, 2002). The month after sending his request, Haroon got a message directing him to a place in the mountains north of his home in Paktia province. From there, he was taken higher into the mountains by a series of guides, each one greeting the next with a whispered password. After three days he was turned over to a group of Arabs. They strip-searched him, placed his ring, watch and shoes in a bag and closely inspected the buttons on his shirt.

He spent the night barefoot in a nearby cave. At sunrise two armed Arabs, their faces covered by scarves, escorted him to an old mud-and-rock house and told him to sit there and wait. Haroon says he felt afraid. Suddenly bin Laden arrived and spoke in Arabic, slowly and quietly, urging the young man to keep fighting. "The deserts of Afghanistan are being irrigated with the blood of mujahedin," he told Haroon. "But the jihad will never dry up." After about 15 minutes the visit ended. "Please don't try to see me again," bin Laden said.