The envelope containing terror mastermind Osama bin Laden's latest message to the world was dropped into a letter box in an upscale neighborhood of the Pakistani capital, the second purported al-Qaeda video to come out of this nation in little over a week.
Officials cautioned on Saturday that the tape's release to the Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera's Islamabad office does not prove that bin Laden is in Pakistan.
But its appearance was nonetheless an embarrassment to a nation that bills itself as a key ally in Washington's war on terror, and that has spent months focusing its troops on a swath of tribal communities along the Afghan-Pakistan border where the fugitive al-Qaeda leader has reputedly been hiding.
Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, Al-Jazeera's bureau chief in Pakistan, said the tape was dropped off at the gate of the station's office Friday, just hours before it aired.
"The guard brought it to me along with other mail. It was in an envelope, I opened it and it was a big scoop," Zaidan said. He immediately sent the tape to Al-Jazeera's headquarters in the Gulf nation of Qatar.
Pakistan has sent tens of thousands of troops to the long and porous border with Afghanistan, concentrating on forbidding North and South Waziristan, where bin Laden and his top deputy, Egyptian surgeon Ayman al-Zawahri, are both believed to be hiding.
Scores of soldiers and civilians have been killed, but the operations so far have not netted any major fugitives, leading to charges that the sweeps are conducted as a political show to curry favor with Washington, which has given Islamabad billions of dollars in aid since President Pervez Musharraf threw his support behind the anti-terror effort.
Bin Laden appeared far healthier in the video released on Friday than many would have suspected, considering speculation that he was already ailing in the winter of 2001 when US, Afghan and Pakistani forces began their dragnet. US officials have often described him as holed up in a dank and dreary cave, all but cut off from the outside world.
Pakistani officials were quick to move into damage-control mode on Saturday, saying they had no idea how Al-Jazeera got the tape, and insisting its existence did not prove the terror leader was in the country.
Major General Shaukat Sultan, the army spokesman, said the intensity of Pakistan's efforts in North and South Waziristan would make it impossible for bin Laden to hide there.
"Even if the tape was dropped here, that doesn't mean that he is here," Sultan said. "Nobody knows where he is, but he cannot be in Pakistan's tribal areas because of the presence of so many troops."
Added Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao: "I don't think he is in Pakistan."
In Afghanistan, the US military dismissed the videotape as "propaganda," and insisted bin Laden would be caught.
"Although we don't have a timeframe for when bin Laden will be captured, we have full confidence that he will be," US military spokesman Major Scott Nelson said.
Asked where bin Laden was hiding, Nelson said the military still suspected he could be somewhere near the Afghan-Pakistani border.
"If we knew exactly where he was, we would be there in a moment and we would have a very happy day and a happy election," Nelson said.
Pakistan has made more than 500 al-Qaeda arrests since the Sept. 11 attacks, and arrests this summer that led to a terror warning in the US.
Observers say the success can be seen as confirmation of Pakistan's cooperation in the war on terror -- or as evidence that this is still the nation of choice for many of bin Laden's followers.
Talat Massood, a defense analyst, said bin Laden probably was in Pakistan, despite the official denials, and that he could be either in the Pakistani port city of Karachi or well cared for by followers in the tribal region.
A beauty queen who pulled out of the Miss South Africa competition when her nationality was questioned has said she wants to relocate to Nigeria, after coming second in the Miss Universe pageant while representing the West African country. Chidimma Adetshina, whose father is Nigerian, was crowned Miss Universe Africa and Oceania and was runner-up to Denmark’s Victoria Kjar Theilvig in Mexico on Saturday night. The 23-year-old law student withdrew from the Miss South Africa competition in August, saying that she needed to protect herself and her family after the government alleged that her mother had stolen the identity of a South
BELT-TIGHTENING: Chinese investments in Cambodia are projected to drop to US$35 million in 2026 from more than US$420 million in 2021 At a ceremony in August, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet knelt to receive blessings from saffron-robed monks as fireworks and balloons heralded the breaking of ground for a canal he hoped would transform his country’s economic fortunes. Addressing hundreds of people waving the Cambodian flag, Hun Manet said China would contribute 49 percent to the funding of the Funan Techo Canal that would link the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand and reduce Cambodia’s shipping reliance on Vietnam. Cambodia’s government estimates the strategic, if contentious, infrastructure project would cost US$1.7 billion, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s annual GDP. However, months later,
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
RSS