PESHAWAR, Pakistan — If Osama bin Laden crosses Afghanistan's wasteland frontier into Pakistan or enters Kashmir in India, he could enjoy sanctuary in those rebellious Islamic zones free from U.S. bombardment.

By journeying across the barren, unpopulated mountains and deserts which form most of the Afghan-Pakistan border, Mr. bin Laden could also boost the morale of Muslim extremists who cheer his goals.

He could even become the figurehead of a whole new fighting force, personally leading a jihad in Pakistan or India.

The Pashtunistan Option

For example, instead of Afghanistan's scattered, weakened, desperate Taliban, Mr. bin Laden might prefer trying to lead Pakistan's armed Pashtun tribes in their dream of an independent Pashtunistan.

Pashtunistan would supposedly unite the estimated seven million Pashtuns in Afghanistan and the 12 million Pashtuns in Pakistan.

Many Pashtuns want to erase a border drawn in 1897 by Britain's Sir Mortimer Durand.

The Afghan-Pakistan border, known as the "Durand Line," was simply a way arrogant British colonialists chose to section off and administer their territory to the east, which today includes Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

Even if Mr. bin Laden was seen at the helm, the U.S. might be reluctant to bomb Pakistan, its ally in the war against terrorism.

The Kashmiri Option

Alternatively, Mr. bin Laden could follow the Himalayan mountains further east and enter India's disputed Kashmir where thousands of Islamic mujahideen have been fighting the Indian army for more than a decade.

U.S. warplanes would also find it difficult to immediately bomb Kashmir despite New Delhi's interest in having Washington help India crush Kashmiri "terrorists".

Kashmiri guerrillas want to seize the Muslim-majority territory and attach it to Pakistan, which is an Islamic nation.

India and Pakistan fought three wars and both possess nuclear weapons.

Several Kashmiri Islamic groups are allegedly part of Mr. bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Mr. bin Laden considers Afghanistan's U.S.-backed Northern Alliance leaders in Kabul, Pakistan's military dictatorship and India's Hindu-dominated democracy among his worst enemies.

But he doesn't have to leave Afghanistan.

The Caveman Option

He still has caves and mountain strongholds scattered across the countryside, though many of those sites are in the cross-hairs of U.S. warplanes and anti-Taliban Afghans.

Two of his allegedly favorite al Qaeda network training camps — at Darunta and Farmihadda, in mountains above Jalalabad — are now littered with the twisted wreckage of tanks and other weapons as the result of U.S. bombardments.

The interior of those caves in eastern Afghanistan, however, have not been fully explored though the surrounding area was purged of Taliban forces in recent days.

Pakistan, the Taliban, the Pentagon and others insist the world's most wanted man is probably still inside Afghanistan. But no one knows for sure.

He has plenty of personal space. Mr. bin Laden — armed with a video camera, a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a cluster of Taliban and Arab al Qaeda bodyguards — could wander the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas as do thousands of Afghan nomads.

Disguised in ragged clothes and riding horses, they could raid vulnerable villages, scrounge their way through the winter by basking in Afghanistan's warmer deserts, and pop up again if the current civil war degenerates into further anarchy.

Financed by overseas investments, voluntary contributions and possible criminal activity, an unidentifiable band of marauders could eke out an obscure existence while staying on the move in rural areas.

The Fake Death Option

He could fake his death and have his gruesome-looking "corpse" videotaped for broadcast worldwide.

Or he could arrange for word to leak out from foreign lands that he has sought sanctuary far from Afghanistan, in an effort to create a global maze.

A list of distant nations where he might seek shelter includes Chechnya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia.

Mr. bin Laden, meanwhile, may wish to stick close to Afghanistan because U.S. involvement in its treacherous civil war may turn ugly and allow him new opportunities to strike back.

During the Soviet Union's 1979-89 war in Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden and U.S.-financed Islamic extremist guerrillas often lived off the land, while Moscow's Red Army and puppet regimes occupied all main Afghan cities and highways.

Moscow condemned them as America's "terrorists" who attacked Marxist schools, bombed mosques and slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians in their relentless assaults on Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and other cities.

In 1984, Mr. bin Laden reportedly built a guest house for al Qaeda recruiters here in Peshawar, east of the Khyber Pass, while the Soviets' war dragged on.

In 1989, the U.S.-backed rebels won and 115,000 Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, carting their comrades' 15,000 zinc-lined coffins.

Mr. bin Laden emerged much stronger than when he first joined the mujahideen in the mountains.

The Taliban's English-speaking ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salaam Zaeef, sparked the latest international confusion about Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts when he was quoted by Associated Press on Friday (Nov. 16) saying:

"Osama has left Afghanistan with his children and his wives and we have no idea where he has gone."

The media-savvy diplomat quickly denied the statement and later explained to Agence-France Presse: "I have never said that he [bin Laden] has gone outside of Afghanistan. This is a lie attributed to me.

"I repeatedly said that I have no information about Osama's whereabouts but I never said that he has gone out of Afghanistan."

Pakistan's government denied Mr. bin Laden had crossed the border, and assured the U.S. there was no need for alarm.

Bush's Vampire Fangs

On Sunday (Nov. 18), however, the Peshawar-based Statesman newspaper published an editorial cartoon showing America's Uncle Sam shoving a bunch of frenzied, armed Taliban fighters across a roulette table and awarding them to Pakistan's panicked and sweating dictator.

"You won!" Uncle Sam tells Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who vainly tries to push his troublesome new prize away.

The editorial cartoon in Islamabad's Nation newspaper on Sunday (Nov. 18) was more caustic. Pakistan's dictator is shown grimacing at a headline which reads: "U.S. Bombers Start Bombing Pakistani Territory."

U.S. President George Bush — wearing a red-white-and-blue cowboy hat, smiling with vampire fangs and twirling pistols in both hands — explains:

"Everything is fair in love and war, ha, ha, ha."

On Friday (Nov. 16), U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said of the elusive, suspected terrorist, "There isn't any reason to believe he's in Pakistan.

---

Richard S. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the co-author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" -- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.

His web page is located at http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent and he may be reached by email: animists *at* yahoo dot com