The tribal areas that straddle an unmarked, more than 1,000-mile-long frontier of jagged mountains and desert flats are populated by several million people who see bin Laden as a "freedom fighter."

The Northwest Frontier Province, one of Pakistan's four provinces, is actually governed by a pro-Taliban politico-religious alliance known as Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal. One of MMA's co-chairs is Sami ul-Haq who is a long-time personal friend of bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the Taliban chief who is still in hiding.

Baluchistan, the other province that shares a long common border with Afghanistan, is also governed by a coalition of MMA and other anti-U.S. parties. Military operations to put down Baluchistan's fourth insurgency since the eve of World War II seldom get reported as the entire province is banned to foreign reporters.

Quetta, the provincial capital, is home to many former Taliban officials. The government doesn't even try to arrest them, but claims it is actively pursuing al-Qaida terrorists. Musharraf may believe this to be the case but on-the-scene verification by United Press International showed a different picture.

In an unauthorized trip to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the Afghan border last September, this reporter, accompanied by a United Press International team of Pakistani nationals, heard from villagers that several thousand al-Qaida fighters had been living in their midst since the militants escaped from the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. Many had married local girls. Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Yemenis and other Middle Easterners were mentioned.

These were some of the fighters who took on the Pakistani army as it swept through FATA in 2004, sustaining heavy casualties. The army had been banned from FATA by treaty with tribal leaders ever since independence in 1947. U.S. pressure to seal off the escape routes into Pakistan from Tora Bora forced Musharraf's hand.

The army captured several dozen al-Qaida fighters on their way out of Afghanistan, but several thousand simply faded into friendly tribal villages and welcoming mosques. The army was not authorized to search to thousands of mud-baked dwellings or places of worship.

These were the villagers who told this reporter's UPI team four years ago that bin Laden and his party of about 50 escaped through Pakistan's Tirah valley on Dec. 9, 2001.

Last September, FATA locals also said bin Laden had a mobile dialysis machine that worked with a small generator.

This has revived speculation that bin Laden may have died from his kidney disease. He has not been heard from since the eve of the U.S. presidential election in 2004. All the video and audiotapes since then have been spoken by Zawahiri, the real brains of the al-Qaida movement. An Egyptian doctor, he was arrested and then tried for the assassination plot that killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Musharraf knows the CIA uses Predator pilot-less planes, controlled from Washington by satellite, to drop the occasional guided bomb of missile on suspected al-Qaida targets on the Pakistani side of the border. Known as the Durand Line, the border legally ceased to exist in 1993.

The treaty that established it was signed in 1983 by the king of Afghanistan and a British colonial official for 100 years. But Musharraf's wink and nod to the Bush administration for CIA missions is highly unpopular among some of his fellow generals and the Interservices Intelligence agency.

By hanging on to the all-powerful Army Chief of Staff position for the past six years, several candidates for the post had to retire before they could be considered, which has not enhanced his popularity among senior officers.

The gigantic earthquake of Oct. 7 that killed almost 100,000 and left more than 3 million homeless also dealt Musharraf's presidency a major political blow. MMA moved in faster with relief supplies than the slow-moving military machine. The U.S. Army, as well as British and German units, with helicopters reassigned from Afghanistan, is still working round the clock high.

TV footage is still showing men, women and children, barefoot on ice and snow, making their way down to tent cities where they still huddle in sub-freezing temperatures. Hundreds are still dying from the cold every day.

The "Death to America" demonstrations from Peshawar to Karachi were also directed against "Busharraf," as some editorial cartoonists refer Musharraf.

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