Osama bin Laden dead or fled

PAKISTAN'S intelligence and security establishment thinks Osama bin Laden is dead or has fled heavily bombarded tribal areas and gone elsewhere in the Islamic world, probably Yemen.

"If he is still alive - and I emphasise if - he is definitely not in Pakistan," Interior Minister Rehman Malik tells The Weekend Australian in an interview in Islamabad.

"He could be in a neighbouring country, and he could even have used a boat to go elsewhere ... possibly getting aboard a fishing boat on the remote Makran coast of Baluchistan and going to another country."

Both President Asif Ali Zardari and Dr Malik have a political imperative in insisting the al-Qa'ida leader is not in Pakistan, but senior members of the country's intelligence agencies who have previously been upfront in admitting he was probably in Pakistan now say they have doubts he is alive or in the region.

One senior security analyst said: "The reality is that our FATA tribal region - including Waziristan, where Osama has often been touted to be - has simply become too hot for him.

"The killing two months ago of (Pakistan Taliban leader) Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack, and the killing of a string of other highly placed militant leaders, including Osama's third son, shows just how unsafe FATA has become for them.

"Combine that with the all-out offensives and bombardments being waged everywhere - including Waziristan - by our security forces, and it becomes clear that even Osama could no longer count on the protection he enjoyed previously."

Speculation in the intelligence community is that if bin Laden has moved, it might be to Yemen, where he has spent time and al-Qa'ida has a powerful base.

There is also speculation about Iran; Pakistani intelligence claims members of bin Laden's family - he has several wives and at least 23 children - may be based there. Earlier this year it was reported bin Laden's third-eldest son, Saad, an al-Qa'ida operative, had been killed in a drone attack in Pakistan after leaving his base in Iran.

Al-Qa'ida has been operating in Iran with the help of the extremist Quds Force.

Nothing has been heard from bin Laden since June, when a statement attributed to him was aired on al-Jazeera in what was seen as a move to pre-empt a major address to the Muslim world by US President Barack Obama. The video carried an old picture of him.

Asked about bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Dr Malik said that immediately after Pakistan's new democratic government took office last year, "there were some indications he was in Afghanistan". Other intelligence sources said Pakistani intelligence had tracked him in the tribal territory of Mohmand, close to the Afghan border, but that recently, as with bin Laden, "the trail has gone dead".

Many in the Western intelligence community distrust whatever emerges from Pakistan about where bin Laden and Zawahiri may be, pointing to longstanding double-dealing by the country's intelligence and other agencies.