ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 12 -- Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, which is providing a safe haven for reputed terrorist Osama bin Laden, is bracing for an imminent U.S. attack, sending its top leader into hiding and repositioning its military hardware throughout the country, according to reports received today by Pakistani intelligence sources.
The radical Islamic movement's top leader, Mohammad Omar, has left his headquarters in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and is in hiding, according to Pakistani military intelligence officials. In addition, the Taliban has begun moving artillery batteries, aircraft and other weaponry in anticipation of a U.S. strike, the sources said.
"We have definite reports that the Taliban are now preparing to meet a major U.S. military onslaught," a senior security official said in a telephone interview from the Pakistan city of Quetta, near Afghanistan's southern border. "There is a warlike situation inside the Taliban military installations inside Afghanistan."
The Taliban today again denied that bin Laden, one of its most staunch supporters, was behind Tuesday's terrorist-directed airplane crashes that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon. But U.S. officials have said they have evidence linking bin Laden to Tuesday's attacks.
Intelligence officials here in the Pakistani capital said that although they believe bin Laden is in Afghanistan, they do not know exactly where he is. Most likely, they said, he is moving between hideouts even more often than he customarily does.
The United States launched cruise missiles in 1998 against sites in Afghanistan where bin Laden was suspected of training terrorists. The strikes were staged about two weeks after bombings, linked to bin Laden, of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Bin Laden escaped harm, but about two dozen Pakistanis at the sites were killed. Pakistan military authorities said they were not informed of the U.S. military strike until it was underway.
Sources here said today that U.S. officials have been pressing Pakistan for months to play a greater role in efforts to dislodge bin Laden from Afghanistan, a request Pakistan has resolutely resisted.
State Department, intelligence and military officials have asked Pakistan to support military efforts against bin Laden, including secret deployment of U.S. Special Forces in northern Pakistan that would conduct operations inside Afghanistan in an effort to capture him, senior Pakistani officials said.
Although Pakistan was a major staging ground in the 1980s for covert U.S. operations and support for Islamic rebels fighting against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, relations between the onetime allies have soured since the end of Cold War. U.S. officials have emphasized that relations are further complicated by the fact that Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons, making U.S. policymakers wary of taking any steps that would destabilize the country.
Pakistani authorities said that even though they turned down the U.S. request for Special Forces staging sites on their territory, the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan, on Afghanistan's northern border, had granted the United States authority to place Special Forces troops at a site on the border.
[The Reuters news agency, quoting Pakistan's official media, reported Thursday that Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, has promised the United States its full cooperation.
["I wish to assure President Bush and the U.S. government of our unstinted cooperation in the fight against terrorism," Musharraf told the APP news agency.]
Bin Laden, an exiled Saudi dissident, has lived in Afghanistan for several years under the Taliban's protection. Though the Taliban has controlled most of Afghanistan for five years, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognize it as the legitimate Afghan government.
The issue of a joint U.S.-Pakistani effort to force the Taliban to give up bin Laden has been discussed regularly for more than a year in visits to Pakistan by CIA Director George J. Tenet and Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, according to Pakistani officials.
The chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's equivalent of the CIA, was in Washington on Tuesday when the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington occurred. A Pakistani official here said Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed had gone to the United States specifically "to soothe U.S. concerns about Osama bin Laden and his possible ties with militant religious organizations in Pakistan."
Ahmed was stranded in Washington by the nationwide air-traffic shutdown, and he met today with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in a more highly charged atmosphere created by Tuesday's attacks.
U.S. and Pakistani officials also met here throughout the day, wrangling over the potential consequences of U.S. efforts to apprehend or attack bin Laden, according to Pakistani officials. "Such retaliatory U.S. military strikes against Afghanistan could create a security nightmare for Pakistan," said a senior Pakistani security official here. "We have told the Americans that such an action may prove to be counterproductive."
In an effort to demonstrate its compliance with U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, Pakistan's military government has frozen all accounts of the Afghan government in the State Bank of Pakistan, as well as accounts being used by religious organizations in Pakistan to help finance the Taliban. Even so, U.S. officials have accused Pakistan of doing far too little to assist in capturing bin Laden.
Pakistan has placed the estimated 45,000 troops on its border with Afghanistan on high alert in the event of an attack, which Pakistani officials say would send thousands of Afghans fleeing into Pakistan.
Pakistani security officials have warned U.S. officials that military strikes against Afghanistan could provoke an outpouring of public sympathy for the Taliban, a movement born in Pakistan's religious schools -- particularly from Afghan refugees in its camps. The Islamic seminaries remain the primary recruiting sources for the Taliban.
