Five years ago, right after al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks in America, that would have been massive news. Now I wasn't even surprised. So slick has Osama Bin Laden's terror group become I had seen its heralding of their latest anti-Western diatribe on a broadband Internet connection two days earlier.

So much has changed since 9/11, when I'd watched firsthand from inside Afghanistan as al-Qaeda followers were blasted by US war-planes out of their terror training camps. Al-Qaeda Internet messages are an almost routine monthly affair now, not to mention the broadband connection in the Islamabad hotel -  equally unthinkable back then.

And yet in those same five years very little in the battle against al-Qaeda has really moved on. Al-Qaeda or its ideological affiliates are still attacking Western targets, killing its citizens. Bali 2002 nearly two hundred killed, Madrid 2004 more than 180 dead and London this year 52 killed and another attack that could have been equally as deadly fortunately foiled.

I was in Kabul on September 11, 2001. The Taleban were in power, and Osama Bin Laden had been their guest for five years. Using what was then cutting-edge technology - a video phone call - we broadcast the Taleban's denials of Bin Laden's involvement.

The Taleban threatened crowds would pull us limb from limb. We tried to stay. But as the "war on terror", as the hunt for Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda allies was to be known, unfolded, we were ultimately forced to retreat across the border to Pakistan.

Less than three months later Bin Laden would do the same thing, chased out by heavy American bombing. It would be the last time he was seen.

Bin Laden ran away, and today he continues his fight, popping up on the Internet with his lieutenant whenever it seems 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 America's war on terror across the world. I was in Baghdad when "shock and awe", the massive US bombing barrages that forced Saddam Hussein from power in 2003, came crashing down. I've embedded with US troops, hauled my gear on foot alongside Marines in the massive Fallujah offensive of 2004, been shot at with Iraqi politicians last year, and watched men burn and women cry this year.

To a man and woman, most US troops in Iraq I've met believe they are fighting the war on terror. Most Iraqis I've met believe they - the Iraqis - are paying the price.

In Saudi Arabia I've witnessed police shoot-outs with al-Qaeda. In Jordan along its impoverished back streets we tracked the roots of al-Qaeda's most bloodthirsty killer, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

For the past five years I've criss-crossed the Middle East. There are common threads. The common people, once you know them, are mostly warm and welcoming. But there is a sea 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 warm and friendly they are. After all, a few months ago I bought my wife and daughter here for a wedding, a wonderful experience they'll never forget. 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 that you, your government, Blair or -  sometimes they think I'm American - Bush, is against Muslims. Why else, their argument goes, would your soldiers kill Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I heard the same thing in London this summer and last. We are angry, hard-line Islamists told me, with the British government'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, watch tapes of Osama Bin Laden and cheer at the 9/11 attack. Their views are some of the most radical I've come across since I used to meet with the Taleban.

It is clear that bin Laden still has relevance. Ask in Pakistan, the last country he was believed headed towards, 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 Americans won't need Musharraf and his autocratic rule anymore and dump him. Like all conspiracy theories, these are shot full of holes and denied by the Americans. Push a little harder and you may get closer to what people really think. The hard-liners believe no one will help because Pakistanis don't trust America and dislike its war on terror. Musharraf's critics say he is a hard-liner whose policies have empowered the country's influential religious parties. His supporters say he strikes a fine balance, telling the religious leaders they need him to keep America at bay while telling the Americans they need him to keep the religious leaders at bay.

Little in the hunt for al-Qaeda or Bin Laden is done, everyone says, without massive pressure from the US.

Over the past five years, the cumulative effect is that only a handful of al-Qaeda figures, notably Khalid Sheik Mohammad, reportedly the coordinator of the 9/11 attacks, have been picked up. Significantly, most have been picked up in Pakistan's teeming cities not hiding in caves.

As I've been discovering, there is a far more worrying trend than Pakistan simply harbouring former al-Qaeda leaders. It is becoming a principal al-Qaeda hub of operation. London bombers Shahzad Tanwer and Mohammad Sediq Khan both came here for training and to record their suicide messages before their attack on July 7 of last year. Their messages were later released by al-Qaeda's video production arm, As Sahab, itself apparently a Pakistan-based operation.

And this year the arrests in London in August over the suspected multiple hijacking came after a British Pakistani was arrested here. And there's more.

In almost all the conversations I've had here and across the Middle East - from moderate to radical to plain ill-informed - the real reason America is not getting what it wants, people and politicians say, is the United States has mishandled its war on terror to the point that it has backfired. The conclusion here is that the threat of terror attacks is as great if not greater than it ever was.

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's message. Of course, as is true for al-Qaeda, our job is technically easier than it was five years ago. Gone is the video phone. Simply hook up to the hotel broadband and off you go.

"So what does this latest message mean?" the CNN anchor back in Atlanta asks me. A valid question. The best answer I can think of, from all we know, is that it surely doesn't mean anything good.

Nic Robertson is CNN's senior international correspondent based in London.

Nic Robertson

Special to The Nation

Islamabad