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Harder task to catch Osama

BY JAMES RUPERT | Newsday Staff Correspondent

June 9, 2006

Osama bin Laden (AP Photo)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - So what about killing bin Laden?

Eliminating militant icons such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his role model, Osama bin Laden, may make for gripping TV drama and a brief sense of triumph in the West. But as U.S. officials repeated yesterday after news of al-Zarqawi's death, it doesn't end the violence. And scholars of Islamic militancy stress that decapitating the movements doesn't address the core problems that radicalize young Muslims.

And unlike al-Zarqawi, bin Laden is not believed to directly command fighters or plan attacks. His original al-Qaida network has been largely destroyed and replaced by a younger, broader movement.

Still, analyst Peter Bergen, author of "The Bin Laden I Know," says capturing or killing bin Laden is important if only to remove a source of inspiration and strategic direction for Islamic extremist movements.

There is little to suggest that U.S. forces and their allies are any closer to catching bin Laden and his deputy in the old al-Qaida structure, Ayman al-Zawahri, who are believed to be hiding and moving in Pakistan or neighboring Afghanistan.

It was not immediately clear whether al-Zarqawi's self-revealing half-hour video last month - which gave the world a rare look at his face, his aides and his surroundings in a desert - offered any clues that helped intelligence agencies track him down.

But with that recording, al-Zarqawi took risks that bin Laden and al-Zawahri avoid in their more sterile video and audio messages.

Analysts such as Fawaz Gerges, a Middle Eastern studies professor at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, noted last month that al-Zarqawi's environment was growing more hazardous because of divisions in the Sunni Arab section of Iraq where he operated.

But if anything, the environment providing bin Laden's cover may be improving.

In the past six months, his Taliban allies have consolidated control over a large swath of the border area, called Waziristan, and have raised a powerful new challenge to the U.S. and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.

Also, U.S. forces cannot operate easily or openly on the Pakistani side, especially since January, when a U.S. air strike aimed at al-Zawahri instead killed at least 17 Pakistani civilians.