A few days ago in a now familiar hotel room in Islamabad, I got a call from CNN's head office in Atlanta telling me that a new al-Qaeda video message had just been released.
Five years ago, right after the Sept. 11 attacks in the US, that would have been massive news. But now, I wasn't even surprised. So slick has Osama bin Laden's terror group become that I had seen al-Qaeda's heralding of their latest anti-Western diatribe on a broadband Internet connection two days earlier.
So much has changed since Sept. 11 when I'd watched first-hand from inside Afghanistan as al-Qaeda was blasted by US war planes. Al-Qaeda Internet messages are an almost routine monthly affair now.
And yet, in those same five years, very little in the battle against al-Qaeda has really moved on.
Al-Qaeda and its ideological affiliates are still attacking Western targets. Bali 2002, nearly 200 killed; Madrid 2004, more than 180 dead; and London last year, 52 killed. Another attack that could have been equally as deadly fortunately failed.
I was in Kabul on Sept. 11 when the Taliban were in power and Osama bin Laden had been their guest for five years. We broadcast Taliban denials of bin Laden's involvement.
The Taliban threatened that crowds would pull us limb from limb. We tried to stay, but as the "war on terror" unfolded, we were forced to retreat across the border to Pakistan. Less than three months later, bin Laden would do the same thing, chased out by heavy US bombing.
Bin Laden ran away, and continues his fight, popping up on the Internet with his lieutenant whenever they've got something to say. And that's why I'm in the hotel in Pakistan trying to figure out why he hasn't been caught, and what's happened to al-Qaeda five years on.
But to understand what's been happening over the past five years you can't just fast forward to today.
I've been following the US "war on terror" across the world. I was in Baghdad when "shock and awe" -- the massive US bombing barrages that forced former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 -- came crashing down. I've embedded with US troops, joined Marines in the massive Fallujah offensive of 2004 and been shot at with Iraqi politicians.
Most US troops in Iraq I've met believe they are fighting the "war on terror," while most Iraqis I've met believe they are paying the price.
For the past five years, I've criss-crossed the Middle East. There are common threads.
In general and once you get to know them, people are mostly welcoming, but there is a change underway. The looks I get from those who don't know me are far less happy than they used to be. Wherever I go, faces are souring.
That's how it was when I got off the plane here. I know the Pakistanis, I know how friendly they are; after all, I recently brought my wife and daughter here for wedding -- a wonderful experience.
But the fact is that people just aren't as happy as they used to be to see Westerners. We come with baggage.
Ask anyone why, and they'll tell you: "Your government, Mr. Blair," or sometimes when they think I'm American, "Mr. Bush is against Muslims."
Why else, they say, would your soldiers kill Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan?
I heard the same thing in London this summer. We are angry, hard-line Islamists told me, with the UK's foreign policy, putting British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. These young men see themselves as Muslim first, British second. They listen to al-Qaeda's messages and cheer at the Sept. 11 attack.Their views are some of the most radical I've come across since I used to meet with the Taliban.
It's clear that bin Laden is still relevant. Ask in Pakistan why he hasn't been caught and you'll get a conspiracy theory. Pakistan's Military President General Pervez Musharraf won't catch him, because if he does, the US won't need him anymore and dump him.
The hardliners believe no one will help because Pakistanis don't trust the US and dislike its "war on terror."
Musharraf's critics say he is a hardliner who has empowered the country's influential religious parties. His opponents say he strikes a fine balance telling the religious leaders they need him to keep the US at bay, while telling the US they need him to keep the religious leaders at bay.
The cumulative effect is that only a handful of al-Qaeda figures have been picked up -- and most have been picked up in Pakistan's teeming cities, not hiding in caves.
But there is a far more worrying trend than Pakistan simply harboring former al-Qaeda leaders
It is becoming a principal al-Qaeda hub of operation. Two London bombers came here for training and to record their suicide messages before their attack. The arrests in London last month over the suspected multiple hijacking came after a British Pakistani was arrested in Pakistan. And there's more.
In almost all the conversations I've had across the Middle East, the real reason the US is not getting what it wants, people say, is that it has mishandled its "war on terror."
That's what I'm thinking about as my team and I rush to set up for a live broadcast about the latest al-Qaeda message.
"So what does this message mean?" the CNN anchor back in Atlanta asks me. A valid question indeed. The best answer to this question, I believe, based on everything we know, is that "It surely doesn't mean anything good"
Nic Robertson is CNN's senior international correspondent in London.
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