Did Osama bin Laden ever come to Chitral?

When the US invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden was last reported to have been with other fighters in the rugged mountains of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, where he escaped after heavy bombing.

After that, there was an endless stream of rumors about his whereabouts and condition. The United States had set a price of two and a half million dollars on his head. He was targeted by intelligence agencies around the world. In addition to the American CIA and FBI, many secret agencies were involved in the campaign to find him.

Most people believed that bin Laden entered Pakistan from Tora Bora and was hiding in a tribal area along the Durand Line, but also as a possible hideout for Osama outside of the tribal areas from K-To Mountain in Gilgit-Baltistan. Several other areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa up to Chitral were also discussed.

Chitral is an area consisting of two districts located in the extreme north of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. However, at the time when the search for Osama bin Laden was going on, it was the same district. Its northern, western and southwestern borders are with Afghanistan. Apart from this, there are areas of Gilgit-Baltistan, Dir and Swat in its neighbourhood.

In its border with Afghanistan, there are several mountain passes through which it has a land connection with Afghanistan. Among them, there are passes around Garam Chashma and Arundu areas through which people also travel between the two countries.

These areas became the home of the Mujahideen during the Russo-Afghan War and the Pakistani government used to send arms and personnel through these passes to support the Mujahideen fighting against Russia in Afghanistan.

Due to severe weather and snowfall, Chitral was cut off from other parts of the country in winter and local people were forced to spend long winters in their homes. A tunnel now runs through the Lowari Pass, connecting it to the rest of the country for 12 months of the year.

Chitral is generally considered a peaceful area and local people do not like to get involved in conflicts. Even after 9/11 when the entire surrounding area became a war front, terrorist activities in Chitral were negligible.

When did Chitral come to the attention of the agencies?

Then what happened that a peaceful area like Chitral started to be seen by international intelligence agencies and international media as the hideout of the world’s most wanted terrorist?

It started after a report by Afghan intelligence agencies. In September 2002, journalists in the United States asked the then Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf, referring to these reports, whether Osama bin Laden was really in Chitral or Gilgit.

According to a report published in the American newspaper Christian Science Monitor, he denied this and said ‘I don’t think these elements are present in Chitral. Where we receive information, we act.’ Similarly, he also described Osama’s presence in Gilgit as far-fetched.

Video tape of Osama recorded in ‘Chitral’

General Musharraf’s denial did not stop this process. A year later, when a video of Osama bin Laden from an unknown location came to the fore, these rumors came to an end. It was Bin Laden’s habit to convey a message to the world or simply to make his presence felt by recording a video or an audio tape and delivering it to a media channel or making it public through a website.

These videotapes were usually recorded indoors and great care was taken when recording them not to reveal any details or information that could lead the agencies in any way to their whereabouts.

However, the special thing about this 2003 video was that it was recorded in an open space and the surrounding natural environment was visible in it. In the video, Osama bin Laden could be seen walking up a mountain slope with a stick. He was accompanied by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the recently killed senior al-Qaeda leader. The video was released on the two-year anniversary of 9/11 and also threatened more attacks.

All these details were very useful for the intelligence agencies chasing Osama. The US CI scrutinized these details.

According to the news published on the website of the American media organization CNN on August 28, 2006, the most important thing in this video that CIA experts noticed was the trees seen on the mountain, which they mistook for Chitral trees. Similar to

Prior to this video, Pakistani and American officials had jointly conducted a secret search operation in various areas of Chitral during this year and the reason for this was to meet Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, a special member of Al-Qaeda, after he was arrested in Rawalpindi in the month of March. There was information pointing to Osama being in Chitral and Balochistan. A news about this was printed in Dawn at that time.

‘US FBI Office’ in Chitral

According to Dawn, one day in April 2004, a procession took place from Chitral’s Chew bridge. This procession was led by Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali, the current elected Member of National Assembly from Chitral of Jamaat-e-Islami. At that time, Chitrali was a member of the National Assembly from the seat of the Muttahida Majlis Aam. The participants of the procession claimed that the American investigative agency FBI has rented an office inside the royal fort of Chitral. They were demanding to close this office immediately and send the Americans from Chitral.

In fact, some time ago, the Americans entered Chitral in a US consular vehicle and rented a house in Chitral city, indicating that they intended to stay here for a long time. Furniture was also sent from Peshawar for this house, but after this demonstration, perhaps the Americans had to suspend their intention to stay in Chitral and they were not seen here again.

On September 12, 2011, in a report of the American magazine New Yorker, it was written that in 2005, Afghan secret services arrested a Pakistani, Syed Akbar Saber. About Akbar Saber, the Afghan authorities said that before his arrest, he had brought Osama bin Laden to Peshawar, Afghanistan, via Kannada from Chitral.

It should be remembered that before the construction of the tunnel in Lowari, people going from Chitral to Peshawar had to pass through Kunar region of Afghanistan due to road closure. Afghan authorities accuse Akbar Saber of being an ISI agent and part of a team deployed by the agency with Osama, but Akbar Saber himself said that he was a member of a militia created by the agency instead of the ISI. He was part and was a doctor by profession.

Osama Bin Laden ‘guest of local family’ in Chitral

In August 2006, a CIA officer told CNN journalist Peter Bergen on condition of anonymity that Osama bin Laden was most likely hiding in Chitral, in the far north of Pakistan.

He believed that, contrary to the common perception of Osama hiding in a cave, he could be ‘residing with a local family with at most two bodyguards’ in Chitral.

He cited the trees seen in the 2003 videotape as well as the audio tapes released by Osama and said that another proof of Osama’s presence in Chitral was his audio messages being broadcast to an urban broadcaster such as Al Jazeera. ‘ There is also the time required to reach.

Osama used to transmit his messages through messengers rather than electronic means due to security concerns, as electronic devices can be spied on to determine the user’s location and capture is still possible.

The CIA officer gave the example of the killing of al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed on June 7, 2006, and Osama’s audio message on his death was broadcast on TV on June 30.

The delay in the messages led American experts to suspect that because Osama was in Chitral, his messages were taking so long to reach the cities. However, when Peter Bergen asked Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Mehmood Durrani, about Osama bin Laden’s presence in Chitral, he said that due to its cultural and religious differences, this area was suitable for Osama’s residence. do not have. He said, ‘They (people of Chitral) don’t like it. He will find himself very unfamiliar in Chitral.’

‘Search for 9/11 mastermind in Chitral’

An article published in the American newspaper New York Daily News on June 15, 2009 caused a stir. Several other international newspapers also commented on or quoted the article, and Chitral was again discussed with more intensity than before as a possible hideout for Osama bin Laden.

The article was titled, ‘Where is Osama bin Laden? The United States focused on the Chitral region of Pakistan in search of the mastermind of 9/11.

This was the era when drones were used as an effective weapon in the war against terrorism. Apart from receiving secret information and surveillance, they were also used to launch missiles at terrorist hideouts. During this period, there were daily drone attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but there were never any drone attacks in Chitral. However, in those days, there were many reports of drones flying in the skies of Chitral, which the local people looked at with mixed expressions of suspicion and fear.

When this news about Chitral was published in the above-mentioned American newspaper, it also mentioned the frequent flights of these planes coming for the purpose of surveillance in the skies of Chitral and it was said that those entering and exiting Chitral are closely monitored. has been started. The article claimed that US officials believe Osama has been living in Chitral since 2006. Apart from Chitral, they were also suspicious of Kalam in Swat. Here again Osama Bin Laden’s recorded messages were mentioned.

The American newspaper wrote that from 2003 to 2008, none of these messages came out during the winter season. From this it was concluded that Chitral was cut off from the cities in winter and it was not possible for Usama to send his messengers to the city with messages.

US officials believed that Osama bin Laden’s January 14 and March 14, 2009 messages about Israel were actually recorded in December, when the roads to Chitral had not yet been closed. and then a second message was recorded and broadcast after the roads opened in March. In the news, several experts, including CIA officers, were told that they consider Chitral, surrounded by the Hindu Kush mountains, to be Osama bin Laden’s secret abode.

It’s not just agencies looking for bin Laden in Chitral!

On June 15, 2010, the American channel CBS published a news story which stated that on June 13, 2010, an American tourist disappeared from the Ashpata-in hotel in Hussain Wadi Kalash of Chitral without informing the police officer who was guarding him.

After receiving the information, the police started searching for the tourist and the man was soon found in a forest nearby. The man’s name was Gary Brooks Faulkner, and he told police he wanted to enter Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden. At that time, a pistol, a sword, special night vision goggles, a Bible and a small amount of hashish were recovered from him.

According to Faulkner, it was his life’s mission to capture Osama and avenge 9/11 and collect a price on his head. He also claimed that he had received a divine order to capture Osama, he had previously visited Pakistan seven times and had also circled Chitral three times.

The later details about Faulkner in GQ magazine on September 8, 2010 were very funny and interesting. He had tried twice before to come to Pakistan from the US by boat, but after departing from a US coast, due to strong winds, he ended up in Mexico instead of Pakistan.

After failing to travel by boat, he went to Israel to fly to Pakistan by hang-glide, but broke his bones after a hang-glide accident. A comedy film called ‘Army of One’ was also made in Hollywood in 2016 based on this interesting story of Faulkner.

Pakistani authorities interrogated Faulkner and handed him over to US authorities without further action.

Chitral again in the eyes of the United States

In October 2010, a senior NATO official told CNN’s Barbara Starr that Osama bin Laden could be in Chitral or Kurram Agency.

The NATO officer also identified these two areas as the possible hideouts of Osama bin Laden as well as his key confidant Ayman al-Zawahiri. When Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik was asked about this, his reply was that such reports have been proved wrong in the past. He denied that Osama and his accomplice were on Pakistani soil.

But contrary to Rehman Malik’s denial, the following year, US Navy commandos killed Osama bin Laden in an operation in Abbottabad. After his body was identified, it was submerged in the Arabian Sea. From his hiding in 2001 to his death in Pakistan in 2011, in which areas and under what conditions he lived and especially whether he ever used Chitral as his hideout, all these The secrets may now forever be buried with his corpse in the depths of the ocean and never fully answered.

After the death of Osama bin Laden, Brooks Faulkner, who searched for Osama bin Laden with a sword in the Kalash Valley, has once again come to the fore. They were demanding their share of the $2.5 million bounty on Bin Laden’s head.

When he was asked what was his role in the death of Osama, he said that I was the one who took Osama out of the mountains and brought him down to the valley (Abbottabad). Of course, Faulkner did not receive any of this money.