Hopes rise in hunt for bin Laden

KABUL, Afghanistan — Allied officials in Afghanistan hailed the capture of Saddam Hussein, saying Sunday the blockbuster arrest might make it easier to catch the world's other top fugitive — al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Afghan officials said the former Iraqi dictator's capture also could help dampen support for a burgeoning insurgency here.

"This is obviously good news for the people of Iraq who suffered for so long under Saddam's tyrannical regime and it is a warning to all the other outlaws who are at large like bin Laden, (Taliban chief) Mullah Omar and (renegade warlord) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who hopefully sooner or later will be brought to justice," Omar Samad, a spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry, told The Associated Press.

Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the mountainous no man's land between Pakistan and Afghanistan, possibly feeding off the support of deeply conservative tribal villagers who share his hard-line vision of Islam.

That support, and the mountainous conditions, have helped him elude one of the largest dragnets in history. The one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar is also on the lam, as is Hekmatyar, a former prime minister who has joined the battle against U.S. troops and the Afghan government.

"It's totally different terrain, a different situation and a different social structure," Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said of the reasons bin Laden has not yet been caught. "In the tribal areas, control is very weak."

Still, he said, "I think eventually they will be caught. They will not wander forever."

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said the arrest would help American forces in their hunt for bin Laden.

"The fate of Saddam Hussein will increase the human intelligence the people here are already giving us as they help in the fight against the enemies of Afghanistan," he told AP from Bagram Air Base, U.S. military headquarters.

Officials say Sunday's images of a captured Saddam, looking tired with a wild, unkempt beard, might give pause to potential militants thinking of taking on the U.S.-led coalition here.

"A lot of what we see (in Afghanistan) is irrational and misguided," said German Lt. Gen. Goetz Gliemeroth, commander of a 5,500-strong international peacekeeping force that patrols the Afghan capital. "Whoever tends toward extremism might now think twice about it."

Talat Masood, a Pakistani military analyst who closely follows Afghanistan, said news of Saddam's capture would echo loudly through al-Qaida and the Taliban's mountain lairs.