http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/006/nation/US_comes_up_empty_in_search_for_Omar+.shtml

US comes up empty in search for Omar

Cleric reportedly rides off; two other Taliban detained

By Elizabeth Neuffer a Nd Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff, 1/6/2002

ABUL, Afghanistan - Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Muslim cleric who is No. 2 on the American target list, has evaded a manhunt and vanished from the mountainous area in which he was believed to be hiding, Afghan officials said yesterday.

They said Omar had fled the region around the hamlet of Baghran, in south-central Afghanistan, possibly roaring out on a motorcycle. The team of US Army Special Forces and anti-Taliban Afghan troops who had been searching for him gave up the hunt and left yesterday, too.

For the past week, the same Afghans have claimed that a noose was tightening around Omar and hundreds of diehard Taliban loyalists in the area, as mujahideen fighters closed on their suspected positions in the rugged mountains near Baghran.

''There aren't any Taliban or Al Qaeda in Baghran now,'' Haji Gallalai, intelligence chief for the Kandahar region, told reporters. ''Mullah Omar is also not in Baghran.''

Even as Omar seemingly eluded capture, US forces in Afghanistan yesterday took custody of the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef. He was deported from Pakistan after being held by authorities there.

The American forces also have taken custody of Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi, who ran some of Osama bin Laden's training camps. Al-Libi, who is being detained in Kandahar, is a high-ranking member of bin Laden's Al Qaeda network captured in the war on terrorism, and American officials believe he could provide valuable intelligence information.

The same could be true of Zaeef, who is the most senior of 307 Taliban and Al Qaeda captives held by American troops. He is the cleric who became the public face of the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks, who defended Afghanistan's religious regime and bin Laden in almost daily news conferences in Islamabad.

The Pakistan Foreign Ministry announced his deportation yesterday. Pakistani authorities reached last night said Zaeef has been questioned by Pakistani intelligence officers and FBI agents in Pakistan, but apparently could not be arrested in that country because of diplomatic protocol.

''He was asked to leave the country, which he did,'' said a Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan.

In Kandahar, Gallalai, the intelligence chief, speculated that Omar - the religious leader who plunged his homeland into war with the United States by refusing to surrender bin Laden - might have made a daring getaway by motorcycle. Bin Laden is the only person the Americans want more than Omar, whose slaying or capture would be considered a major coup.

Though they had publicly expressed a strong desire to find Omar themselves, Afghan officials seemed unperturbed by his disappearance - an attitude that also applied to bin Laden.

Their obvious indifference to the whereabouts of the two most-wanted fugitives in the world underscored the difficulties the United States faces in tracking down bin Laden and Omar in a land notorious for shifting loyalties, deadly intrigue, and treachery.

Omar remains a revered mystic seer for many members of Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun ethnic group, while bin Laden is still revered as the courageous defier of corrupt Western values. It is widely suspected that many leaders in the assortment of warlords, tribal chieftains, and political powerbrokers grasping for power in the new interim government would prefer that neither man is caught.

The new US presidential envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilizad, arrived in the capital city of Kabul yesterday, while President Bush said in Washington that a US soldier killed in an ambush near the Pakistan border on Friday ''lost his life for a cause that is just and important.

''That cause is security of the American people [and] freedom of the civilized world,'' said Bush.

In Afghanistan, American troops expressed shock and sorrow at the ambush slaying of Army Sergeant 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman, the 31-year-old Green Beret from San Antonio, Texas, killed in a firefight in Paktia province. He was the first US military member killed by enemy fire in the three-month-old conflict.

Marines guarding the recently reopened US Embassy in Kabul said Chapman's death was a reminder of the hazards of serving on the Afghan front in the war against terrorism.

''The danger is more intimate than we originally thought,'' said Sergeant Joshua Stevens of Peabody, Mass. ''The threat is still there from people we don't know.''

Added Marine Lieutenant Janos Cook of Milton, Mass.: ''You don't come out to this part of the world and not expect trouble, but it's a terrible thing when it happens.''

A Central Intelligence Agency officer wounded in the same exchange of small arms fire remained in serious condition last night. CIA officials are civilians, not members of the US military.

The Green Beret and the intelligence operative had just departed a meeting with Pashtun tribal leaders, apparently to coordinate strikes against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, when they came under fire, according to US military officials. The two-man team was operating out of the town of Khost, near the Pakistan border.

The CIA officer has been evacuated from Afghanistan, but his name has not been released. Another CIA operative, Johnny ''Mike'' Spann, was killed Nov. 25 by Al Qaeda terrorists rioting at a prison in Mazer-e-Sharif. Also, three American soldiers were killed on Dec. 5 when a US bomb missed its target.

Khalilizad, who was born in Afghanistan, returned to his homeland for the first time in 30 years as the new presidential envoy. Khalilizad, 50, is the highest-ranking Muslim in the Bush administration, and has played a behind-the-scenes role as an adviser on terrorism. A member of the Pashtun tribal group, he first came to the United States as an exchange student.

''I am here on behalf of the president to express our support for the people of Afghanistan as they try to establish a new order to rebuild their country, to free Afghanistan from the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda,'' he said upon arrival in Kabul, pulverized by 20 years of warfare.

''This is a moment of opportunity for Afghanistan.''

US forces have succeeded in smashing the Taliban militia that imposed an often brutal form of Islam on Afghans, and have destroyed the hideouts and training camps of the Al Qaeda terrorists that the Taliban sheltered. But they have failed in capturing Omar and bin Laden.

The trail for both men has gone cold. Last week, Afghan government officials boasted that mujahideen were on the verge of capturing Omar near the settlement of Baghran, in the remote mountains 100 miles northwest of Kandahar. But yesterday, those officials said the cleric had mysteriously vanished, or perhaps had never been in Baghran.

The officials offered little in the way of explanation.

''Mohammed Omar is obviously becoming a question mark. ... We know that he is on the run,'' said Omar Samad, spokesman for Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry. ''The interim administration is resolved to continue the pursuit of Mullah Omar.''

Samad said no decision has been made on how Omar might be tried if he is ever captured by Afghan authorities.

The Bush administration wants to put him before a secret US military tribunal. But Samad said Afghans would prefer the cleric be ''tried openly,'' either at home or before an international court of some sort.

''Afghan people want him tried openly ... [so] that the whole world can see,'' he said in an interview.

In other developments:

The Afghan Foreign Ministry expressed concern over civilian casualties from American bombings. A ministry official called for greater coordination with the US forces to ''avert and avoid further civilian losses.''

Britain's Foreign Office said it was trying to confirm reports that three Britons fighting the Taliban had been captured.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002