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Washington: A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama Bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaida operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior US intelligence officials familiar with the operation.
In one of the most troubling trends, US officials said that Al Qaida's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
Regrouping
The influx of money has bolstered Al Qaida's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping and reasserting influence over its far-flung network.
The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of Al Qaida funds, with the network's leadership surviving to a large extent on money coming in from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.
Al Qaida's efforts were aided, intelligence officials said, by Pakistan's withdrawal in September of tens of thousands of troops from the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border where Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Al Zawahri, are believed to be hiding.
Little more than a year ago, Al Qaida's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But US officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles.
"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them,'' said a senior US counterterrorism official.
The evolving picture of Al Qaida's finances is based in part on intelligence from an aggressive effort launched last year to intensify the pressure on Bin Laden and his senior deputies.
As part of a "surge'' in personnel, the CIA deployed as many as 50 clandestine operatives to Pakistan and Afghanistan - a dramatic increase over the number of CIA case officers permanently stationed in those countries.
All of the new arrivals were given the primary objective of finding what counterterrorism officials call "HVT1'' and "HVT2.'' Those "high value target'' designations refer to Bin Laden and Al Zawahri.
The surge was part of a broader shake-up at the CIA designed to refocus on the hunt for Bin Laden, officials said. One former high-ranking agency official said the CIA had formed a task force that involved officials from all four directorates at the agency, including analysts, scientists and technical experts, as well as covert operators.
US continues to pay Pakistan $1b a year
The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion (Dh3.6 billion) a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan's president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaida and Taliban fighters are most active.
The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised. Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan's military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion (Dh20.5 billion) under the programme over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the September 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds.
Some American military officials in the region have recommended the money be tied to Pakistan's performance in pursuing Al Qaida and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan.
American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organisations have gained strength in the past year.
But Bush administration officials say no such plan is being considered, despite new evidence the Pakistani military is often looking the other way when Taliban fighters retreat across the border into Pakistan, ignoring calls from American spotters to intercept them. There is also at least one American report that Pakistani security forces have fired in support of Taliban fighters attacking Afghan posts.
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