Still desperately seeking Osama

A report says Bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan. But haven't we heard this before?
Osama Bin Laden addressing news conference in Afghanistan
Osama bin Laden could be hiding in Pakistan's tribal region. Photograph: Reuters

His whereabouts have eluded the most special of special forces and left the west as frustrated as a four-year-old child that, try as it might, just can't figure out where on earth Wally is.

But almost eight years after the September 11 attacks, one man thinks he has pinpointed the exact location of Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist.

According to Thomas Gillespie, from the University of California in Los Angeles, the al-Qaida leader is hiding in a town in north-west Pakistan. Well, probably.

As the magazine and blog Foreign Policy reports, Gillespie believes there is "a 90% chance that Bin Laden is in Kurram province in Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas, most likely in the town of Parachinar which gave shelter to a large number of mujahideen during the 1980s".

Given the generous scale of the FBI's reward for information leading to Bin Laden's capture, Google Earth will probably be inundated with aspiring bounty hunters.

It also means that the mooted search for the Saudi-born terrorist on an island off the coast of Australia is likely to be called off.

News of Gillespie's study comes as Barack Obama announces the US will commit thousands more troops to Afghanistan, which, he argues, is central to global security.

However, the truth seems to be that neither the US nor the UK has any real idea as to Bin Laden's exact whereabouts.

Not even Morgan Spurlock, scourge of the fast food industry, managed to track him down.

As one intelligence analyst bluntly told MSNBC last summer: "We don't have a clue where he is or even may be. We have had no credible intelligence on OBL since 2001. All the rest is rumour and rubbish either whipped up by the media or churned out in the power corridors of western capitals."

Perhaps a local perspective would prove useful — if the US is prepared to take advice from five Pakistani experts. But, as one of them notes: "To kill or capture Osama bin Laden, the United States will above all need to win friends and allies in Pakistan's tribal areas. Unfortunately, US policies are doing precisely the opposite."

What ideas do you have for capturing the world's most elusive man? And who would you send to bring him in?