Word: pakistani
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...moment when U.S. intelligence officials felt pretty good about themselves. Even as the cassette tape was making its way out of bin Laden's secret lair, his pursuers were sending out signals across the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he may be hiding. In recent weeks U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies have stepped up their search for top al-Qaeda leaders, with the skies above the mountains buzzing with spy planes and unmanned Predator drones, and a network of local spies and informants has been scouring the landscape for information. A Pakistani security officer told TIME...
...early January, the U.S. and Pakistan seized on the chance to bag even bigger prey. Details of the Damadola operation are beginning to emerge, and they provide a tantalizing glimpse into the intensifying hunt for bin Laden. A Peshawar-based official told TIME that in the past month, Pakistani-intelligence field agents had been tracking two groups of men who had crossed the border from Afghanistan into Bajaur, a small, often restive tribal region that borders Afghanistan's Kunar province. In the days before the attack, the search zoomed in on the group headed for Damadola; counterterrorist officials believed that...
...infiltrators sheltered in a small compound of three houses just outside Damadola. Shortly after 3 a.m. on Jan. 13, locals say, several missiles fired from Predators crashed into the compound, practically obliterating the houses. According to news reports, Pakistani officials initially said it was possible that al-Zawahiri had been killed, then backed away from the claim. Villagers told journalists who arrived at the scene that 18 civilians had died (the number was later revised down to 13); they denied that any bodies had been removed or that any foreigners had been in the compound. But some Pakistani intelligence officials...
Although the missile strike provoked a round of protests in Pakistan's tribal areas that forced President Pervez Musharraf to distance his government from the operation, cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan in the hunt for bin Laden has quietly deepened. A Peshawar-based Pakistani intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity says Washington has an understanding with Islamabad that allows the U.S. to strike within Pakistan's border regions--providing the Americans have actionable intelligence and especially if the Pakistanis won't or can't take firm action. Pakistan's caveat is that it would formally protest such strikes...
While the hope of finding al-Qaeda's bosses anytime soon remains just that--hope--the hunters have shown indications that they may be closer to picking up their targets' scent. A Pakistani intelligence official says Pakistani intelligence agents and CIA drones are searching the mountainsides for the second group that crossed from Afghanistan. In the message delivered last week, bin Laden signaled he would not allow himself to be captured alive. "I swore that I will not die except free, despite the bitter taste of death," he said. On that much, both bin Laden and his pursuers seem...