Bin Laden video highlights US quandary

The ageing process differs, according to individual circumstance. But to judge from the latest Osama bin Laden tape to surface, rarely can it have been so visible over such a short time.

On 7 October, the day America unleashed its military campaign against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, a calculating and confident Mr bin Laden vowed to launch a new holy war against the infidel United States. Sometime in late November, he was captured by a home video at a guesthouse in Kandahar, suave and gloating over the events of 11 September.

But in this latest recording, apparently made between late November and early December, at most a month later, he is a man transformed, and not in a way that would please his doctor. This bin Laden is thinner. His beard has whitened, his face is a chalky colour, lending him a spectral, almost ghoulish appearance. He looks far older than his 44 years.

Possibly the deterioration reflects the health problems, from which he has long been rumoured to suffer. But living a troglodytic, sleep-deprived existence in his suspected hideaway at Tora Bora, sitting out ferocious American air strikes, must be a stressful business.

The contents of the tape are in a by-now familiar style; a soft-spoken tirade against America and its machinations in the Middle East, and denunciations of the West's "unspeakable" hatred of Islam. "Our terrorism is benign," Mr bin Laden says in the English transcript of the broadcast on Wednesday by Al Jazeera television station in the Gulf state of Qatar. This is in a half-hour tape that had apparently been lying unnoticed in the offices of the satellite television network for a couple of days.

He refers to the "blessed" terror visited upon America on 11 September, and claims his movement "seeks to make the unjust stop making injustice. It seeks to make America stop its support for Israel, which kills our people." The full tape, aired yesterday, contained more of the same.

Beyond that, all is mystery. The question of whether he is dead or alive remains unanswered. Assuming the tape is genuine (and there is no reason to doubt its authenticity) the clues about when it was made are ambiguous. At one point, Mr bin Laden says he is speaking three months after the New York and Pentagon attacks. This would date it around 11 December, when the bombing of Tora Bora was increasing. Then he refers to the erroneous US bombing of a mosque in Khost on 16 November as having occurred "several days" earlier. That would imply the recording was probably made late that month.

So is this the first tape from a new sanctuary? Or is it a red herring, sent to al-Jazeera by anonymous air courier from Pakistan, but filmed in the Afghan mountain lair in which Mr bin Laden is still trapped? Or is he dead, and could the tape be one of a stockpile of similar recordings released to keep his myth alive?

So the hunt goes on, in Tora Bora and beyond. President George Bush's reaction was predictably dismissive: "The same old terrorist propaganda we've heard before." Yesterday he was deliberating whether to put up Christopher Ross, the US ambassador to Syria who speaks perfect Arabic, to deliver Washington's response on al-Jazeera. Yet, as one official asked: "Do we even have to dignify this with a response?"

But scorn cannot mask America's quandary. The people of the United States have been treated to any number of fanciful computer images of a post-plastic surgery Osama bin Laden visiting a supermarket near you. But the government simply doesn't know whether he is dead or alive, still less where he is.

The very existence of the video denotes an American failure. For Washington, which always needs to personalise an adversary, the war has, above all, been about nailing Mr bin Laden. To borrow Mr Bush's favoured imagery, the posse is out there but it has not got its man. If anything, the search is becoming more complicated.

The Pentagon seems still unable to make up its mind whether to send hundreds of marines to help Afghans and US and British special forces search the caves in Tora Bora, where less than a fortnight ago America was picking up electronic and intelligence evidence that Mr bin Laden, "the Sheikh", and his lieutenants were still in residence.

Just before Christmas, every sign was the marines would go in. Now it appears they will not, at least for the time being. Perhaps the mission is judged too dangerous, perhaps local Afghan leaders are objecting. Whatever the case, the Bush administration seems to have little clear idea how to wind up the campaign.

So where is he? After the icy warning the other day from Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence, that any state harbouring him was "out of its mind", the assumption can be made that he is not the official guest of any government, however hostile that government might be to Washington.

But Mr bin Laden does have unofficial sympathisers in many lands. Conceivably, he has slipped out of Afghanistan, across Pakistan and escaped by sea. But if he he has slipped away, his most likely refuge is neighbouring northern Pakistan, where tribal chieftains rule and the writ of the government in Islamabad does not run.

This remains by far the most likely haven. The rugged and mountainous border is impossible to seal, and the Taliban and al-Qa'ida have many supporters in the region.

Yesterday, an Afghan defence ministry spokesman in Kabul argued, perfectly plausibly, that Al-Qa'ida had been to all intents and purposes driven from Afghanistan. Mr bin Laden, he claimed, was in hiding in Pakistan under the protection of supporters of a radical Islamic leader, himself under house arrest, who helped create the Taliban.

The religious leader Maulana Fazalur Rehman, of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam party, swiftly denied the suggestion as "a joke, nonsense". That, of course, may be a self-serving disculpation, just as the Afghan official's claim might be a veiled sign of the Kabul government's impatience with American military operations in a sensitive part of the country. The truth is that such claims and counter-claims are likely to continue.

Thus the so-called Elvis effect. Without incontrovertible proof of his death (and, if Presley is any example, even with such proof) Osama bin Laden will join the company of Martin Bormann and Lord Lucan, with sightings reported around the world, decades after his physical disappearance or demise.

But a persistent bin Laden mystery would be far more than an intriguing criminal riddle. It would be a challenge to America, and an inspiration to his followers to press on with his murderous "holy war", perhaps with weapons even deadlier than jetliners aimed at skyscrapers.