Click to play videoJalalabad (Afghanistan): He is the world's most wanted man and the search for him continues. Osama bin Laden's home base had been Afghanistan for many years. CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper takes us inside one of bin Laden's former houses.
Leaving Kabul isn't as easy as it once was. To drive to Osama bin Laden's last known residence you now need a half dozen SUVs filled with armed guards. These days, no place is safe in Afghanistan.
When the US began bombing Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, bin Laden was in the southern city of Kandahar. He returned to Kabul, then traveled to get to his compound near the Pakistan border, in the town of Jalalabad.
Its about a six-hour journey through a countryside little changed in generations. A new road is being built, but life for ordinary Afghans remains a struggle, grinding poverty, few options.
When you finally get to Jalalabad, bin Laden's house isn't hard to find.
This is the compound used by OBL and several hundred other terrorists in Jalalabad. It has been destroyed and it looks like its been bombed, but locals say it was looted.
A lot of the roofs are gone and the bricks are all strewn about this complex is about 2 acres; the entire thing is walled, as are most complexes in Jalalabad.
There are about 70 rooms in it, there are cooking facilities, there is even a little area where there as a mosque, a lot of rooms where there were bedrooms.
It's hard to get a sense of how it looked it back then. There is not much left. A drain pipe, perhaps for a sink or a toilet a few shards of pottery and broken bricks.
There are actually two facilities that Bin Laden and his associates used in Jalalabad. The second one, about a couple hundred feet away from the first complex, in the corner of it over here we found this square hole.
It's got a metal ladder going down, the walls are round they are lined with brick. I am not sure what this was used for so we are going to go down and check it out.
The ladder goes down nearly all the way to the bottom surprisingly there are weapons down there.
I climbed down to what I thought was a bomb shelter but it was perhaps some sort of a weapons storage facility because there's an RPG round and a mortar round. It's amazing that five years after this place was evacuated, there are still weapons laying around.
The significance of this place, this is the last place where OBL is known to have lived here in Afghanistan.
The Tora Bora mountains, on a clear day they are visible, it's about two and a half hour drive to get there, and it's from here where OBL fled with his followers into those mountains and then disappeared.
This is the place that he knew best as the us forces began really attacking Kabul, Bin Laden fled, last know to be here November 30, 2001.
CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen says it is impossible to try to reach Tora Bora.
It's so dangerous in Afghanistan you can't go to places like Tora Bora, it's sort of a free fire zone. Even if we had a lot of security it would be a dumb idea because basically what they do is it's one road and they can see you going up that road and by the time you come back, there's IEDs on that road.
Bin Laden and the Taliban, which allowed him to operate here may be gone but they remain popular in this part of Afghanistan.
It was much better under the Taliban. 17-year-old Abdullah says, it was more secure and right now it's insecure and the problems like lack of power, we didn't have them.
Nearly five years since bin Laden and the Taliban were driven from Jalalabad into the mountains of Tora Bora it seems their memory and power remain very much alive.
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