Where's Osama? And how much should we care?

Alternatively, bin Laden might have slipped across the porous frontier into Pakistan, as have hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in recent months, according to local residents.

The central government's writ does not run very far in the tribal areas of Northwestern Pakistan, where the conservative Muslim population has long shown sympathy for Al Qaeda. Though Pakistani army troops have been sent to the region, experienced guerrillas would not find it hard to elude them in the cave-riddled mountains.

Sen. Bob Graham, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said earlier this week that Washington believes bin Laden is in the tribal area of western Pakistan. But President Pervez Musharraf's government denies that.

"There are a lot of reports about Osama bin Laden being here or there or there," foreign office spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said on Monday. "If there is any accurate intelligence report about the whereabouts of these people, I am sure they will be nabbed immediately."

US officials have recently been playing down bin Laden's importance.

"I'm not solely fixated on [Osama bin Laden]," says Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, in an interview with the Monitor. "If [his capture] is incidental in our operations and we get to him, that's fine. I don't have a particular name affixed to what I'm going up against," he added.

That contrasts with the blunt threats Mr. Bush made against bin Laden in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies he will be sorely mistaken," Bush said in a radio address last September. "Those who make war against the United States have chosen their own destruction."

"The biggest weakness of the antiterror campaign so far has been the failure to target Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri," argues Gunaratna. "As long as they are alive, Al Qaeda will continue to pose a significant and direct threat to US interests."

Bin Laden's importance is not so much as an operational planner, Al Qaeda watchers say, because his group works as a semi-formal network rather than as a hierarchical organization. But "he acts as a symbol, and gives his imprimatur to operations that he legitimizes," argues Mr. Standish, editor of "Janes Intelligence Digest." "He is seen as the individual who, more than anyone else, symbolizes resistance to the superpower."

Other Al Qaeda officials "lack bin Laden's level of charisma and respect and authority," adds Gunaratna. "As long as a man of his stature is alive, he will be able to replenish the human losses and material wastage" by inspiring new recruits.

"Getting rid of the long- term threat means getting rid of bin Laden and Zawahiri," Gunaratna says.

In the meantime, he warns, "bin Laden's character is that wherever he is, he'll be active. Work is prayer for him. It is not in his nature to go into hiding, but rather to plan and prepare."

• Faye Bowers in Boston and Philip Smucker in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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