Al-Qaeda's New Hideouts

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For months U.S. and Afghan officials have speculated that bin Laden has sought refuge over the border, though Pakistani intelligence officials tell TIME that the Qaeda boss was last definitely seen on Nov. 17 in a 25-vehicle convoy, heading from Jalalabad into Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains. Since then, the Pakistanis say, there have been no credible sightings. But thousands of al-Qaeda fighters did cross into Pakistan in two waves. According to Pakistani intelligence officials, the first exodus came in November, when al-Qaeda fled into the remote Tirah Valley to escape the U.S. bombardment of Tora Bora. The second wave entered last March, during the allied forces' Operation Anaconda against al-Qaeda positions in Afghanistan's eastern Shah-i-Kot mountains.

Some were just passing through, en route to Indonesia, Yemen and the Arabian Gulf. According to diplomats, a few al-Qaeda fugitives may have been given money and transport to get out of Pakistan by sympathetic staff at an Arab consulate in Karachi. Bangladeshi intelligence sources say that in the same month, a Saudi-owned vessel smuggled 150 al-Qaeda and Taliban members out of Karachi to the Bangladeshi port of Chittagong.

But most of the terrorists stayed in Pakistan. Many of them, especially the non-Arab Uzbeks, Chechens and Sudanese, operate like bandits in the tribal areas, where they raid U.S. outposts across the border. The militants have fiercely resisted Pakistani efforts to arrest them. On June 25, several hundred Pakistani paramilitaries raided a mud-walled fortress in the mountains of south Waziristan, a rifle shot away from the Afghan border. According to a Pakistani intelligence source, they had help from several CIA operatives, who picked out the Qaeda refuge with satellite photos and electronic eavesdropping. The Uzbek fugitives had heavy machine guns and an arsenal of rocket-propelled grenades piled up on the ramparts, but they held their fire for close to an hour, until a group of Pakistani soldiers smashed the gate and walked into the courtyard. Snipers promptly raked the soldiers with machine-gun fire. About three hours later, a militant inside the fort yelled out that the group was ready to surrender. It was a ruse: as soon as al-Qaeda fighters, dressed in commando gear, began filing out, they opened fire on the soldiers and scattered across the orchards into the darkness. Two al-Qaeda men were killed, but an additional 35 escaped and are thought to be still roaming the tribal area. "When cornered, these people fight to the death," says a Pakistani intelligence official. "They don't want to end up in Guantanamo."

Since last year, hundreds of al-Qaeda terrorists of Arab nationality, richer and better at blending in, have vanished into Karachi, the megacity of 12 million on the Arabian Sea. Diplomats say that the Qaeda fugitives who reached Karachi late last year "were not living in slum areas" but preferred high-rent districts where money buys high-walled privacy. Some were believed to have hidden in posh safe houses for much of the winter. But since then, they have scattered again. Says a senior Pakistani official: "They don't like to keep in one place. They're in lower-class neighborhoods, middle class, everywhere." Karachi authorities say that raids of militants' hideouts and homes in recent weeks have uncovered huge stashes of Kalashnikovs, rockets and ingredients for bombs.