Osama bin Laden's hideout revealed to tehelka
tehelka.com
Osama bin Laden is hiding in the Melova mountain pass, 24 km from the Pakistan border with Afghanistan, Afghan Commander Faqueer Mohammad Rohani reveals to Akbar Sultan
Chaman (Pakistan-Afghanistan border), November 29
Where is the world's most wanted fugitive? Even after US President George W Bush announced an unconditional reward of $25 million for information leading to Osama bin Laden's arrest, there is only loosely informed guesswork about the terrorist's possible hideout.
Now, an Afghan commander in control of Nangarhar province is willing to release the information - and says that he doesn't want the reward money. "I know where Osama is hiding," says Commander Faqueer Mohammad Rohani.
According to him, Bin Laden's hideout is Melova, about 8 km west of Tora Bora, which is 24 km north of the Pakistan border and about 38 km southwest of Jalalabad.
"No vehicle can access the Melova mountain pass," says Rohani. "You can only access it through horses. Even in the caves connecting mountains with each other one can move with a horse."
Rohani says that when he was in charge of the area during the anti-Russian jehad, he had built a training centre by digging 50 metres into a mountain cave. When they captured the cave complex, the Taliban extended the excavation 25 metres deeper to make it safer.
"Osama is up there hiding somewhere in the Melova mountain pass, as this is the safest place in Afghanistan," says Rohani.
Rohani became the "law and justice minister" of Nangarhar province after the Taliban hurriedly vacated it on November 14 in the face of the advancing Northern Alliance (NA). He is acting deputy to Younis Khalis, governor of the small province. Khalis, however, is 80 years old, and Rohani is de facto in-charge.
Speaking to me in Chaman, Rohani claims, "I have no interest in the $25 million reward for helping to find Osama bin Laden, but I can tell the Americans where to look for him. Right now, the American marines are just wasting their time."
Rohani is in Chaman to meet Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Karzai, to participate in the setting up of a Pakhtoon alliance to counter what many commanders consider is the menacing growth of influence of the Northern Alliance.
As our conversation progresses, he borrows a piece of paper from me and begins to draw an illustrated map of the best approach to a narrow mountain pass, a route that goes up a stream that flows between flanking cliffs with caves. About the caves, he tells me, "The complex was under my control when we were fighting Russia. I left the area when the Soviets pulled out but I still know everyone who lives there."
Rohani becomes bolder. "You can see Osama's two sons even now walking around," he says, "and I'm convinced Osama lives there. My sources tell me, 'Yes, he is there.'"
Grimly, he goes on, "Osama bin Laden's two sons were seen in the area I just mentioned. I had seen them at the governor's mansion in Jalalabad on November 15, from where they departed just a little while before a convoy of 15 buses full of Western journalists arrived there. Bin Laden himself had visited the governor's mansion on November 8, six days before the Taliban fled the area. He had offered his prayers there."
Through the 1980s, Rohani fought against the Soviet Union, alongside another guerrilla commander, Abdul Haq, who abandoned Afghanistan after the Taliban ran riot. Haq returned to Afghanistan late this September, professing to be devoted to ousting the Taliban.
The international media, in fact, reported that Abdul Haq had been sent by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to engineer a rebellion against the Taliban. But he was captured by the Taliban and executed, an event that is said to have been the first important setback in the plans of the so-called Operation Enduring Freedom.
Rohani has traveled from Jalalabad to the southern border town of Quetta to discuss emergent plans by local tribal chiefs and tribal force commanders to remove the Taliban from their nearby stronghold of Kandahar, where the fundamentalist regime is clearly making a last stand.
As many as 3,000 Arab Taliban remain holed up in the fortified town of Tora Bora, about 48 km south of Jalalabad. The town has an underground network of caves (complete with with running water and domed rooms that have been likened by those who have been there to a hotel). The Pentagon itself has cited two possible locations for bin Laden's hideout, both near Jalalabad.
But the hideout location details Rohani disclosed to me have no mention of any place near Jalalabad. "If the Americans want to catch him, they should consult with the people living there. Everyone knows about him but they are afraid of him," says Rohani. "He doesn't come out. He minimises his activities and lives like a very ordinary person."
Reminded that he can collect $25 million from the US government if his information proves correct, Rohani just says, "Money isn't everything. I want his (Osama bin Laden's) head. After all, he was instrumental in the killing of my best friend, Abdul Haq."
In fact, when I recently visited Jalalabad, the locals would point to the towering White Mountain range, saying that bin Laden was hiding "somewhere up there". |
