Peshawar, Pakistan ? Protected by sympathetic clerics, up to 1,000 Taliban and al-Qaida leaders are hiding in Pakistan and planning a Taliban comeback in Afghanistan, according to Taliban members and others familiar with the Islamic movement.

Most of the exiles including some of the best-known figures in the Islamic militia live quietly in Pakistan’s lawless frontier region, protected by tribal leaders of their own Pashtun ethnic group in an area where the central government’s authority is limited.

U.S. Army Col. Wilkerson, left, a brigade commander of the 10th Mountain Division, looks for enemy al-Qaida caves with an unidentified Canadian soldier, center, during Operation Harpoon in the Shah-i-kot Valley, Afghanistan. With them is another unidentified U.S. Army officer. The coalition forces in this area of the Shah-i-kot Valley have identified and destroyed some 24 openings or caves and found more, according to the Pentagon. Despite the success of the operation, it is widely believed that al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are biding their time in neighboring Pakistan, waiting for the U.S.-led coalition to leave Afghanistan.

Many of the Taliban fugitives remain convinced that interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai’s hold on power depends on U.S. support and once the Americans are gone, they will have little trouble dealing with Afghans who are now allied with Washington.

“I am waiting for the big war,” said Mullah Towha, former chief of security for the Taliban governor of Afghanistan’s Nangharhar province. “America and Britain will have to leave one day, and then we will have a jihad against those Afghans who fought with them against other Muslims.”

The mullah, who has trimmed his beard and abandoned his distinctive Taliban turban for a white skullcap, spoke to The Associated Press in a car as it weaved through the Khyber Pass in the middle of Pakistan’s tribal belt. He lives in an Islamic shrine protected by a “pir,” or holy man.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied knowingly harboring al-Qaida and Taliban renegades and has insisted that intelligence service links to extremists were severed after President Pervez Musharraf threw his support to the U.S.-led war on terrorism last year.

“There is absolutely no truth in these reports,” chief government spokesman Maj. Gen. Rashid Quereshi told AP on Tuesday. He called the idea that Pakistani intelligence was still supporting Taliban fugitives “nonsense” and “part of a malicious campaign against Pakistan.”

Who’s who list

Nonetheless, the Taliban fugitives reportedly living in Pakistan include some of the most high-profile and influential members of the hard-line Islamic movement. All once worked closely with Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service and have close ties to influential figures in the Pakistani military and government establishment.

According to Taliban and other sources, they include former Defense Minister Mullah Obeidullah, former Interior Minister Abdul Razzak, former Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund and Amir Khan Muttaqi, spokesman for the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

It is unclear why the Pakistani government has made no move to round them up. Local chiefs in the border area wield considerable power and tracking them down would take time and resources and doubtless meet local resistance.

Also, before Sept. 11, top fugitives were close to powerful figures in Pakistan, who may be protecting them.

The list also includes Jalaluddin Haqqani, who several Afghans say was the mastermind of al-Qaida and Taliban efforts to regroup in his stronghold of Paktia province target of the just-concluded U.S.-led Operation Anaconda.

The police chief of Paktia’s provincial capital Gardez, Haji Mohammed Ishaq, said Haqqani lives in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region along the Afghan border, supported by former leaders of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI.

Since most of the Taliban were ethnic Pashtuns, they have little trouble blending in with the mostly Pashtun population of the Pakistani border areas.

Al-Qaida sympathizers

For al-Qaida fugitives, the situation here is more complicated. Pakistanis who joined al-Qaida-affiliated movements such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, or Movement of Holy Warriors, returned freely to their own country.

A Muslim leader in Karachi, Hasan Turabi, said many of those Pakistani al-Qaida fighters have since turned to acts of violence in Pakistan, directing their anger at Musharraf for abandoning the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

However, Arabs, who formed the core of the al-Qaida terror network’s leadership and are easily identified as outsiders, must rely on the protection of Pakistanis who fought with them in Afghanistan. The Arabs also have the support of Pakistan’s hard-line clerics and tribal leaders who supported the Taliban.