The statement by Pakistan Army Lieutenant-General Safdar Hussain, military chief of Pakistan?s semi-autonomous northwest province, that al-Qaeda?s (Group Profile) leader, Osama bin Laden, is likely not hiding in the mountainous tribal border lands straddling Afghanistan (Country Profile) and Pakistan (Country Profile) is a startling rebuke to conventional wisdom, which has long posited bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other al-Qaeda leaders as hiding within the sanctuary of sympathetic local tribes in the area?s rugged peaks. The al-Qaeda members were thought to have entered the border region after fleeing the US war against the Taliban (Group Profile) regime in Afghanistan. Over the past two years, Pakistan has launched a number of incursions into the tribal borderlands in attempts to rout Islamic extremist militants, most notably al-Qaeda and Taliban elements, operating there. US forces in Afghanistan, in conjunction with their Pakistani military counterparts, have employed a joint ?hammer-and-anvil? strategy of staging major incursions?mostly by the Pakistani military from the Pakistan border areas?aimed at flushing militants into the waiting gun sights and cordon of US forces in Afghanistan. Pakistani counter-terrorism operations have netted scores of suspected Islamic extremists throughout Pakistan in recent months.

Hussain claims that repeated Pakistan military sweeps of the border region have not turned up any evidence of a signature of what is thought to be bin Laden?s necessarily large and pronounced personal security guard entourage, and as a result, he claims that bin Laden could not possibly operate without being discovered by Pakistani forces scouring the area. Pakistani military officials have also radically revised their figures of suspected militants operating in the borderlands from 500 to roughly 70 or 80. However, the New York Times reports that residents of Wana have said that militants continue to operate freely in the town and, in some cases, in larger numbers.