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Osama bin Laden's ability to give the slip to Western military might and all its intelligence has become something of a legend in the White Mountains of Afghanistan.
"Osama is a like a butterfly resting on a flower, and America is like a child chasing it with a cricket bat," says Shams Khan, a young Afghan commander.
Tracing the footsteps of Osama bin Laden - the most wanted man in the world - has kept much of the international community on edge. Information has been sparse. Even unconfirmed sightings of the most wanted man in the world often came days, if not weeks late.
Most of the "sightings," however, came from Afghanistan - from fighters or villagers, who claim to have seen him. These reports were often been embellished with talk of bin Laden riding in flowing robes through the nearest snowdrift. But what has become clear is that bin Laden has moved from one place to another almost at will. His ability to stay on the move, has, so far, made the US government's efforts to capture him futile.
"He left Tora Bora on two occasions, and on the last time, he never returned," Abu Jaffar, an Al-Qaida operative and Saudi financier told Luftfallah Mashal, an Afghan reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor. "We all believe he arrived safely in Pakistan."
The American strategy to corner and capture bin Laden hasn't yet produced any results. Many Afghans, even the fighters on the ground who are working in tandem with the US air strikes, began to say. "If you want Osama, come and get him yourself." "It has been a really fluid situation," a Pentagon official in Washington says. "And until we have him, we don't have him. We have lots of pieces of information coming in that we have to evaluate," the official says. "But at this point we have no idea if he is still in Afghanistan."
Two days before the fall of the Taliban in Jalalabad, bin Laden was sighted by two former Al-Qaida employees in a crowd of several hundred Arabs. Mujahid Ullah, the son of the aging power-broker, who greeted bin Laden in 1996 when his private jet arrived, negotiated with the Arabs to prevent a bloodbath in the city. The Al-Qaida chief was seen by two Jalalabad residents at close range as he was holding hands with the departing governor of Jalalabad, Mauli Abdul Kabir.
According to other sources at the meeting, the Arabs were promised "safe passage" to the Tora Bora mountain enclave in exchange for not staying and fighting in Jalalabad. Several Afghan leaders, who now have prominent posts in the new government, helped the Arabs in their escape even as US bombs rained down in the city.
The promise of "safe passage," has, according to other Al-Qaida sources, given birth to an "underground railway" that has moved Arabs and bin Laden loyalists out of Tora Bora through Afghan villages to the north, east, and west of the mountains.
The latest and, possibly, final departure of bin Laden from the Tora Bora enclave came around November 17th, 2001 before the arrival of US Special Forces, who directed the air war against Al-Qaida. But there had been several apparent chances to catch, or kill, bin Laden before the arrival of the US forces.
One theory has it that Bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora into Pakistan and then to Iran via sea routes used for weapons smuggling. Another is that he was able to travel through the porous borders into Yemen. And of course there are the death theories however bin Laden's brother, Sheikh Ahmad (who did not want his last name revealed) says the family received a phone call last week indicating he is still alive. His brother also adamantly denies his involvement is the September 11 attacks. "Any Muslim wouldn't accept this," he said, adding there was "no way" his brother could be involved in the hijackings.
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When Osama bin Laden seemed to melt into the snow-capped mountains of in eastern Afghanistan more than a week ago, many speculated that he had made a simple escape, taking an obvious route.
Osama had merely headed east, the thinking went, out of the rain of United States bombs on Tora Bora and into the arms of friendly tribes along the lawless and porous border with Pakistan.
It is a fine theory, many say - although perhaps only a bit better than a few others. Any travel, they insist, even into the tribal lands that produced many of his Al Qaeda fighters, would be far more difficult than many Western analysts suggest. But those who have spent their lives in this region are very careful about making predictions regarding the frontier, where virtually every man carries a gun - or a grenade launcher, or both - and much of the territory has no government police force at all.
Even more important, perhaps, while many tribes share Osama's militant beliefs and may be inclined to help him, many also share a culture in which family - which extends to the tribe - always comes first.
Harbouring Osama or the now-vanquished Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar would almost certainly put a conspirator's tribe in peril, and could be considered a transgression punishable by death.
Of course, there is also the multimillion-dollar bounty on both men's heads. All of which has prompted people in these parts to join Americans in their obsession with the pursuit of the world's most wanted man. The popular practice of developing "Where's Osama?" theories everyone acknowledges, they spend a fair amount doing.
The technique begins with making a few necessarily broad assumptions - the first being that Osama is still alive. Then you cross out several other possible but more treacherous escape routes.
Iran, on the western boundary of Afghanistan, opposed Osama's now-fallen hosts, the Taliban, from the start. Most Iranians are Shias, while Osama is a Sunni. He would likely find few friends in Iran.
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, that ring the northern tip of Afghanistan, all produced fighters for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and several powerful Afghan warlords who fought the Taliban are ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks.
There is the Chechnya scenario. There is also the rush south, through the Baluchistan province to the Arabian Sea and a freighter to Sudan, Somalia, Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines or Morocco.
There is the one where he was spirited out of Tora Bora by Al Qaeda operatives, had a haircut and shaved his beard, was given some sunglasses, perhaps, and is living in a safe house in Pakistan.
Source: Dawn/LAT-WP News Service
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Regardless if bin Laden is now somewhere in Afghanistan - or just across the border in Pakistan or one of the other many locations that are being touted - he is surely giving Western forces a run for their money.
Privately, many of the Afghan commanders, who were given the task of capturing the elusive bin Laden are now critical of the US strategy. While the two most senior warlords in eastern Afghanistan were saying last week that they believed, with little doubt, that the Al-Qaida chief was not in Afghanistan. "There is a growing sense that the bird has flown the coop and that killing hundreds of die-hard Arab and Chechen jihad fighters may not be in the Afghan interest," says a retired Afghan politician, Lal Gul. 
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s US Military continue to assault Al Qaida positions, Pentagon officials said they still believe bin Laden is in Afghanistan. Is this to justify continued bombing? International reports place him somewhere between the White Mountains of