At its narrowest point in the central Quảng Bình Province, the country is as small as fifty kilometres (31 mi) throughout, even though it widens to all over 600 kilometres (370 mi) in the north. Bin Laden had fled to the mountains, and the remaining Al Qaeda leaders understood that, as Arabs and North Africans, they could hardly ever mix in with the locals, who spoke Dari, Pashto, Balochi, and other regional languages.