Word: pashtuns
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...slick cosmopolitan terrorist trained in the dark arts of conspiracy. He's simply a deluded peasant mystic who, having lost the key pillars of his power - military support from Pakistan and al Qaeda, and financial support from Saudi Arabia - has simply headed for the hills in his Pashtun heartland. The fact of his continued freedom signals the limited enthusiasm of the warlords that have replaced the Taliban for hunting him down...
...Laden has crossed the border, U.S. intelligence officials don't believe he has moved too far into Pakistan. He would find the safest harbor in the remote tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, where the authority of the central government is spotty and where many of the local tribes are Pashtun, the ethnic group from which most of the Taliban were also drawn. In some of those parts, bin Laden could count on a warm welcome. In Pakistan's Dabori Valley last week, where bin Laden stayed briefly after he was kicked out of Sudan in 1996, villagers say they would...
...There is good reason that Al-Qaeda thrived here when Osama bin Laden set up his terrorist training camps five years ago. It brought money to an area where cooking pots are a major expense. It maintained close ties with local Pashtun tribal leaders. There was relative peace. Now those same villages, scattered over hundreds of square kilometers of lawless and rugged mountains, are providing haven for Al-Qaeda fighters on the run. A commander named Abdul Basir says he caught five wounded Arabs in a place called Seliman Khil three days after they had be routed from their camps...
...capture bin Laden on his own. Zaman made his name as a mujahedin commander fighting the Soviets, then fled to Dijon, France, when the Taliban took Jalalabad in 1997. Ali's soldiers are the most hardened fighters in the gang chasing bin Laden. But Ali, who is not a Pashtun, commands little support among mountain villagers. Qadir marshals the weakest militia but controls a former Taliban ammunition compound chock full of rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and tank shells...
Person of the Week CHOSEN ONE Tapped to head the six-month interim Afghan government, ethnic Pashtun Hamid Karzai quickly promised amnesty to rank-and-file Taliban, and Western justice for top leaders and foreign fighters. But the rickety Bonn agreement could collapse at the whim of rogue warlords...