Bin Laden Bounty Comes With Complications
Monday December 17 10:26 PM EST
By Andrew Chang ABCNEWS.com
Tractor trailers full of money is the price on bin Laden's head — will anyone get it?
The spirit of old-time Texas manhunts is alive and well in Afghanistan (news - web sites).
In Afghanistan, a Central Asian country of sand and dust, the staccato clap of galloping hoofs and the smell of gun smoke are as familiar as they were in the Old West.
And so is the "Wanted" poster. In the days after Sept. 11, Texas-bred President Bush (news - web sites) told reporters about his search for Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), the alleged mastermind of the attacks on New York and Washington.
"When I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the Old West a wanted poster. It said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive,'" he said.
Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he was placing a bounty on the heads of a "discrete number" of bin Laden's colleagues in al Qaeda and the Taliban. He said $10 million would be offered for information leading to the capture of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
The government had already been offering a $25 million reward for information leading to bin Laden's capture or death.
These are bounties never faced by Jesse James or any others of the worst of the Old West. What the United States is offering is an almost unimaginable amount in Afghanistan, a country of farmers, bandits and herders.
The average yearly income is around $200 — or 950,000 afghanis.
If an Afghan managed to get the $25 million reward, he'd get 118 billion Afghanis — an amount that would fill more than 3,500 18-wheel tractor trailers.
Reading the Fine Print
But that's highly unlikely, say many experts — including those giving the rewards.
Richard Boucher, a spokesman for the State Department, which funds the bulk of the reward, has stressed that the sum is "up to" $25 million.
Rumsfeld has also suggested scenarios in which information might pass through many hands before leading to bin Laden — and so would any potential reward.
"My guess is what would happen is some person, some human being somewhere, would have a scrap of information, and they would go to their leader, their — the tribal chief for that activity, and they then would see what they think about that. And then they might move that piece of information someplace else," said Rumsfeld.
"By the time you're through, the amounts of money that would be spread would vary, depending on the contribution that person actually made," he said.
The largest reward ever given out by the State Department totaled $2 million. That sum was paid for information leading to the arrest of Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who was hiding in Pakistan.
But there's no way to tell what happened to the reward or how it was spent. Experts say they think the informants were given a new identity and relocated to the United States.
A State Department official also pointed out that there is no way to apply for a reward.
An interagency committee, consisting of officials from the FBI (news - web sites), CIA (news - web sites), Justice Department (news - web sites), State Department and others, weighs the importance of the information, its reliability and degree of risk involved in obtaining it.
Then it makes a suggestion to the secretary of state, who ultimately decides on the amount.
Rewards have been for as little as $50,000. About 20 different rewards have been paid out in the time the program has been in effect, totaling more than $8 million.
A Chicken for a Kingdom
For the Afghan looking for a quick cash bonus with less rigamarole, there are other options.
Bin Laden's al Qaeda organization has also offered a bounty of $100,000 for any American soldier, $6,000 for a captured U.S. military uniform, and $3,000 for a captured American gun.
Taliban leader Omar has offered $50,000 to any Afghan who kills a Western journalist, although it's not entirely clear Omar or bin Laden could make good on their rewards at this point.
And despite all the money available, experts doubted that rewards would motivate many Afghans.
"I just don't think that money motivates the way that religion and ideology motivates [in Afghanistan,]" said Dana Ward, a professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif.
He pointed out that Afghans value connections, respect and power more than cold, hard cash. Offering an example, he said, "The poorest people will sacrifice their last chicken to give to a guest."
It's a tradition borne out of their country's central place on the ancient Silk Road, he said — but appealing to other aspects of this ancient value system also offered ways to get at Osama bin Laden.
Afghanistan's place at the crossroads of innumerable trade routes has given its natives an unusual hostility toward foreign interlopers. Ward predicted this would be more effective in motivating Afghans to chase down bin Laden, a Saudi exile, and even the Taliban, many of whom were raised in Pakistan's madrassahs , or religious schools. |
