Taliban chief: Bin Laden alive and well, AP/usatoday, Today
An interview in Urdu with a Taliban military commander conducted near Spinboldak, Afghanistan, 300 miles southwest of Kabul or 50 miles south of Kandahar, and broadcast on Pakistan's GEO television network claims that Bin Laden and Mullah Omar are alive and well.  This adds to my theory that OBL is being given active safe haven in western Pakistan.  This article in the Christian Science Monitor has some good background on OBL's whereabouts and why the "in and out of Iran" theory's specious.

Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani, the interviewee, was designated as a military successor/replacement Taliban leader for Mullah Omar, October 16, 2001, as Mullah Omar bailed during the defense of Kandahar.  He's been previously reported as having hijacked an Indian airlines flight in 1999 as well as the contact between the Pakistani ISI and the Afghan Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), a group linked to the attempted assassinations of Pakistani President Musharraf (brief from South Asia Terrorism Portal).  He's also the one behind attacks against Shi'a in Quetta, Pakistan, very close to Spinboldak. One odd report says that he may be in US custody as early as 1999.

As with Zarqawi speeches that are broadcast (one was, as recently as last month, on Radio Tajdid in the UK), these sorts of interviews are more a morale booster to keep their fight 1) going and 2) in public.  Yes, that there's enough doubt that OBL is alive is one aspect, the other aspect being an affirmation that he and Mullah Omar are actually alive, but these are secondary, depending on your point of view.  The Taliban is advertising publically via this interview and, since it was in Urdu, probably targetting a Pakistani audience for a replenishment of its forces.

This is the second time that Usmani stated that both OBL and Mullah Omar were alive, the first being in November 2002 during a release of an OBL audiotape, when it was mentioned that OBL was possibly travelling with Mullah Omar in Pakistan under the aegis of HuM.


More information about Spinboldak, Afghanistan: