Abbottabad: Pakistan town where Osama bin Laden was killed - The Washington Post Abbottabad: Pakistan town where Osama bin Laden was killed The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost. Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set! By Mike McPhate By Mike McPhate May 2, 2011 A view of Abbottabad, Pakistan, from the surrounding hills. The city, founded by British military officer James Abbott in 1853 as a military cantonment and summer retreat, is the headquarters of a brigade of the Pakistan Army’s 2nd Division and home to many retired military officials.

Abbott wrote a poem to the city that reads in part : I adored the place from the first sight And was happy that my coming here was right And eight good years here passed very soon And we leave our perhaps on a sunny noon Oh Abbottabad we are leaving you now To your natural beauty do I bow Perhaps your winds sound will never reach my ear My gift for you is a few sad tears I bid you farewell with a heavy heart Never from my mind will your memories thwart Abbottabad’s mild temperatures and picturesque views of the surrounding Sarban hills made it a popular destination for Pakistani tourists looking for relief during the brutally hot summer months. The people of Abbottabad are an ethnically diverse group, most of whom speak the Indo-Aryan language Hindko and are known collectively as the Hindkowans. At one time they practiced Hinduism but most are now Sunni Muslims. Bin Laden managed to go undetected in Abbottabad by hiding in “an extraordinarily unique compound,” that with 12- to 18-foot security walls, the Post’s Philip Rucker, Anne E. Kornblut and Ernesto Londono report.

It wasn’t clear how long the al-Qaeda leader had been holed up there, but officials said they had been eyeing the compound “for months” after receiving a tip in August 2010. The last time the mountainous resort town’s name appeared widely in American news reports was in 2005 when the city was hit hard by the Kashmir earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people across northern Pakistan. Pranksters on Google Maps have located what is presumably bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, rating it with five stars, “Great property to get away from it all. Must See!” | Politics , US & Canada , Afghanistan , Pakistan , United States US president Barack Obama has announced that Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, was killed on Sunday in a US operation in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, about 60km north of Islamabad. "Tonight, I can report to the people of the United States and the world, the United States had carried an operation that has killed Osama bin Laden, a terrorist responsible for killing thousands of innocent people," Obama said in a statement. "Today, at my direction, the United States carried out that operation ...

they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body. "The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date against al-Qaeda. "We must also reaffirm that United states is not and will never be at war against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader, in fact, he slaughtered many Muslims," Obama said. Four people, including one of bin Laden's sons, were also killed in the operation. According to the New York Times, bin Laden's body was taken to Afghanistan and later buried at sea. Hours after Obama made the announcement, a top al-Qaeda ideologue promised revenge for bin Laden's death. The commentator, going by the online name Assad al-Jihad2, posted on websites a long eulogy for the al-Qaeda leader and promised to "avenge the killing of the Sheik of Islam". The Pakistani Taliban also threatened attacks against government leaders, including President Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistan army and the US. "Now Pakistani rulers, President Zardari and the army will be our first targets.

America will be our second target," Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, told the Reuters news agency by telephone from an undisclosed location. US celebrations Obama called bin Laden's death the 'most significant achievement' against al-Qaeda [EPA] As news of bin Laden's death spread, crowds gathered outside the White House in Washington DC to celebrate. Former US president George Bush called his death a "momentous achievement". "The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done," Bush said in a statement. Al Jazeeera's Rosalind Jordan, reporting from Washington, said the operation had been in the making for the last nine or 10 months. "The fact that it happened inside Pakistan, there have been suggestions that Pakistani intelligence may have been protecting them," she said. Patty Culhane, another Al Jazeera correspondent, said the US authorities received intelligence last September and were able to track bin Laden down through his couriers. They followed them to his compound which was reported to be worth over a million dollars.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Pakistan, said the development had caught a lot of people by surprise . "He was considered by many as a hero, but not to the extent that people would come out on the streets," he said. The reaction so far not likely to be strong on the streets, perhaps a protest here or there by the religious parties." 'Symbolic victory' Qais Azimy, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, said Afghan officials described bin Laden's killing as a "symbolic victory", since he was no longer directly connected to the group's field operations. "This organisation [al- Qaeda] is more than bin Laden, it may be symbolised by bin Laden, but it definitely is more than bin Laden" Mark Kimmit, US military analyst Mark Kimmit, a US military analyst, said bin Laden's death "was not the end of terrorism, but an end of a chapter". "Capturing or killing bin Laden has more iconic value. It will have symbolic value, because it has been a number of years since bin Laden has exercised day to day control over operations," he said. "We still have an al-Qaeda threat out there and that will be there for a number of years.

"This organisation is more than bin Laden, it may be symbolised by bin Laden, but it definitely is more than bin Laden." Bush had repeatedly vowed to bring to justice the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, but never did before leaving office in early 2009. Bin Laden had been the subject of a search since he eluded US soldiers and Afghan forces in a large-scale assault on the Tora Bora mountains in 2001. The trail quickly went cold after he disappeared and many intelligence officials believed he had been hiding in Pakistan. While in hiding, bin Laden had taunted the West and advocated his views in videotapes spirited from his hideaway. Besides the September 11 attacks, Washington has also linked bin Laden to a string of attacks - including the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in Yemen.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies Related Osama bin Laden killed in US raid on Pakistan hideout | World news | The Guardian Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden killed in US raid on Pakistan hideout 'Justice done' and body buried at sea, says US, after al-Qaida leader is killed by special forces at Abbottabad compound Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces at a compound in Abbottabad, near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Photograph: AP Declan Walsh in Abbottabad, Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Jason Burke in New Delhi Monday 2 May 2011 06.47 EDT First published on Monday 2 May 2011 06.47 EDT Close This article is 5 years old Osama bin Laden , mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the world's most wanted man, has been killed in a US operation in north-western Pakistan, Barack Obama has announced. "Justice has been done," the US president said in a statement that America has been waiting a decade to hear. A US official said Bin Laden had already been buried at sea.

US special forces launched a helicopter-borne assault on a closely guarded compound in Abbottabad, 30 miles north-east of Islamabad, on Sunday night, Obama and US officials said. Bin Laden resisted the attackers and was killed along with three other men in a firefight. The operation lasted 40 minutes. The dead included Bin Laden's most trusted courier, who carried his messages to the outside world, and one of Bin Laden's sons, according to reports. A woman also died, according to some reports. It is not clear whether she was one of Bin Laden's four wives. US forces "took custody" of Bin Laden's body, Obama said in a televised statement from the White House. A US official said Bin Laden had been buried at sea, the AP news agency reported. Senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for burial within 24 hours. Pictures on the Pakistani TV station Express 24/7 showed flames rising from what is said to be the site of Bin Laden's last stand: a building surrounded by trees and high walls. There had been years of speculation that Bin Laden was hiding in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan or across the border in Afghanistan.

But the town where he was found, Kakul, lies a short distance from Islamabad and is home to the country's main military training institution, the Pakistan Military Academy. It is several hundred miles from Waziristan, where the CIA drone strike campaign has been concentrated. The fact that Bin Laden was killed in a urban area of Pakistan will raise questions about how the six-foot-four fugitive, one of the most famous faces in the world, managed to survive there for so long. Obama praised Pakistan for its "close counter-terrorism co-operation". But officials said the US was the only country that knew in advance of the operation. An official with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence declined to comment other than to say that it was a "highly sensitive intelligence operation". The dramatic news closes one chapter in the global turmoil sparked by the September 11 attacks on America that killed 3,000 people in 2001. The event triggered the war in Afghanistan, was used as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq and inflicted grievous damage on America's moral authority after the CIA torture of al-Qaida suspects and the detention of more than 700 people at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

The death of the Saudi-born fugitive is likely to have a major impact on US foreign policy in south Asia, where almost 100,000 soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan and CIA drones have been pounding al-Qaida targets in north-west Pakistan. "It's a game changer," said a senior western diplomat in Afghanistan. "But just what it will mean is not clear yet." There may be political repercussions at home. Hundreds of people gathered outside the White House before midnight to celebrate, singing The Star-Spangled Banner and chanting "USA, USA". The success that eluded George Bush sharply increases Obama's chances of re-election next year. As a candidate during the 2008 election campaign Obama repeatedly vowed: "We will kill Osama bin Laden." Despite the massive resources America devoted to the "war on terror", as the Bush administration termed it, Bin Laden has remained at large for almost a decade. Obama said more than two years ago that he had ordered the CIA to make the capture or killing of the Saudi-born fugitive its priority.

Obama's big break came last August when the CIA learned of a location where Bin Laden may have been hiding : a tree-lined, high-walled compound near Abbottabad, a town in the foothills of the Himalayas two hours' drive north of Islamabad. In February the CIA confirmed that Bin Laden was hiding in the compound, part-owned by his courier. On closer examination it appeared to be a custom-built hideout. The compound was eight times bigger than neighbouring residences and the walls were between three and six metres high, topped with barbed wire. Access was highly restricted. Although valued at over US$1m, the residence had no phone or internet connection. After numerous conferences with advisers Obama ordered the operation on Sunday night. US officials said two American helicopters were involved but one crashed and had to be blown up. US military bases and embassies around the world have been put on high alert amid fears that al-Qaida might retaliate. Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remains at liberty. Obama, seeking to avoid an air of triumphalism, adopted a dignified, low-key tone during his announcement.

"Tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children." He said the death would not mean an end to the violence and predicted al-Qaida would continue to pursue attacks. Bin Laden's death sparked a frenzy of speculation on al-Qaida's future. Experts have debated for many years how important the leader is to the organisation. Some argued that because Bin Laden promoted decentralised fighting, with individuals acting on their own initiative, his death would make little difference. Others insisted Bin Laden and the other top al-Qaida leaders such as al-Zawahiri were crucial to the continued existence of the group. Though Bin Laden was an icon for many, his message of violence had been increasingly rejected across the Islamic world. From around 2005 repeated polls indicated flagging support for him personally and for his organisation.

The events of this spring, which saw popular mobilisation across the Arab world under slogans of democracy and pluralism, have been seen by many analysts as evidence of al-Qaida's increasing marginalisation and the failure to achieve its key strategic aim of radicalising large masses of population to lay the basis for the establishment of a new caliphate – a Muslim state governed only by Islamic law. Osama bin Laden obituary | World news | The Guardian Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden obituary Leader of al-Qaida and the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he became the world's most wanted man Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Monday 2 May 2011 13.05 EDT First published on Monday 2 May 2011 13.05 EDT Share on Messenger Close To his enemies, whatever colour or creed, he was a religious fanatic, a terrorist with the blood of thousands on his hands, a man who had brought war and suffering to a broad swath of the Islamic world and come close to provoking a global conflagration on a scale not seen for decades.

To his supporters, whose numbers peaked in the few years after the attacks of 11 September 2001 in America that he masterminded, he was a visionary leader fighting both western aggression against Muslims and his co-religionists' lack of faith and rigour. For both, Osama bin Laden , who has been killed at the age of 54 by US special forces at a compound near Abbottabad, a town about 50 miles north-east of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, was one of those rare figures whose actions changed the course of history. His life was one of extremes and of contradictions. Born to great wealth, he lived in relative poverty. A graduate of civil engineering, he assumed the mantle of a religious scholar. A gifted propagandist who had little real experience of battle, he projected himself as a mujahid, a holy warrior. A man who called for a return to the values and social systems of the seventh century as a means of restoring a just order in today's world, he justified the use of advanced modern technology to kill thousands through a rigorous and anachronistic interpretation of Islamic law.

One of the most notorious people on the planet, Bin Laden lived for years in obscurity, his public presence limited to intermittent appearances in videos on the internet. A man who professed to have sacrificed all for others and to care nothing for himself, he was fiercely conscious of posterity. Bin Laden's story started in the remote, poor, deeply conservative Hadramawt region of south-east Yemen, from where his father, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, set out for the Saudi city of Jeddah to seek his fortune around 1930. By the time Osama was born there, the 17th of 52 children, his father was a rich construction magnate. His connections to Saudi Arabia's ruling family, the al-Sauds, won him lucrative contracts to build palaces in Riyadh and the highway from Medina to Jeddah. The crowning achievement of the family firm, the Saudi Binladen Group, was reconstructing Islam's holiest mosque in Mecca. Osama's father was an austere patriarch; his mother, a beautiful, educated young woman from Syria who shunned the veil in favour of Chanel suits.

Because of her foreign origin and as the 10th wife, her prestige in the household was low. Raised in a palace in Jeddah, Osama grew up polite, courteous, diligent and, from an early age, pious. His father died in a helicopter crash when he was 11. Stories of teenage revelry are unfounded. While his siblings studied and, often, partied overseas, the tall, painfully shy teenager chose to stay in Saudi Arabia . In 1974, he married the 14-year-old Najwa Ghanem, his mother's niece, and enrolled in the economics and management faculty of the King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah. Though he eventually graduated in civil engineering and spent a short time in the family company, his true interests lay elsewhere. In the late 1970s, universities across the Arab world were torn by fierce ideological struggle. In Egypt, leftists battled, both physically and intellectually, against the increasing number of supporters of Islamist doctrines.

Though circulating in the region since the 1930s, they had been re-energised by the failures of Arab armies against Israel in 1967 and 1973 and by the apparent inability of secular pan-Arab, nationalist or socialist ideas to bring any social or economic improvement to the lives of hundreds of millions. At university, Bin Laden, who had been raised in the strict tradition of Saudi "Salafist" Islamic practice known outside the kingdom as Wahhabism, was exposed to newer, more politicised and often anti-clerical religious doctrines. It was the fusion of the two, particularly by charismatic preachers such as the Jordanian-Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, that laid the foundation of the young man's own thinking. The year of Bin Laden's graduation, 1979, was a tumultuous one in the Islamic world. In February, Ayatollah Khomeini created the Islamic republic in Iran. Then, in November, rebels took over the mosques in Mecca and demanded a return to true Islamic rule. When soldiers eventually broke their siege and killed the ringleaders, Bin Laden was seething.

He saw the assault as an atrocity committed on the holiest soil in Islam. To him, the rebels were martyrs. A month later came the third defining event of the year: the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. Despite his later boasts, Bin Laden did not immediately travel to Peshawar, the Pakistani frontier town 20 miles from Afghanistan that had been at the centre of activism, covert or otherwise, against the Afghan Marxist government for several years, and had now acquired a new strategic significance as a key forward base in the cold war. Arriving in early 1981, he was to spend the next few years making trips between the city and Saudi Arabia before basing himself there from around 1986. Bin Laden's role in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s has been grossly exaggerated. His military contribution was negligible. The "foreign legion" never numbered more than a few thousand, of whom most never saw combat but ran charities caring for refugees or wounded Afghan fighters. It was to the seven Afghan mujahideen groups, and only to them, that the Pakistanis disbursed American and Saudi aid.

Likewise, it was only the Afghans who received training. Bin Laden was not, despite later claims, created by the CIA, who had no contact with such people. He spent most of the first half of the 1980s as a fundraiser and aide to senior figures among the Arabs in Peshawar, including Azzam. Bin Laden also used his knowledge of construction and the resources of his company, with the blessing of the Saudi royal family, to build roads, bunkers and encampments for the Afghan fighters. In 1987, now aged 30, Bin Laden took part in a battle in the hills around the small Afghan town of Jaji. Though heavily mythologised subsequently, the action saw determined fighting between Afghan mujahideen, backed by some units of Arabs, and Soviet troops. Now relatively well-known among the Peshawar-based militants, Bin Laden also began playing a role as a broker between competing Afghan and Arab factions as well as continuing to fund a radical newspaper and organising medical care for wounded fighters. It was during this period too that he began co-operating more closely with an older and more experienced Egyptian militant, a former doctor called Ayman al-Zawahiri.

However, the two were not close. Together with Azzam, Bin Laden also ran a logistical centre dealing with the volunteers arriving from the Arab world to take part in the "jihad". Witnesses also remember seeing Bin Laden at the battle of Jalalabad, an ill-fated and costly bid to capture the eastern Afghan city from forces loyal to the communist Afghan government in 1989, six months after the Soviet withdrawal. A year earlier, al-Qaida had been founded by Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and 14 associates in a series of meetings at a rented house in a western suburb of Peshawar. The meetings had stretched into the small hours as discussions ranged over the aims of the group, its composition and hierarchy. Little thought appears to have been given to its name, but it was an appropriate and useful one nonetheless. "Al-Qaida" was a commonly used word in Arabic and, though often simply translated as "the base", has a range of other meanings too. This variety and consequent flexibility, itself a departure from the style of names adopted previously by militant groups, was to prove key in the coming years.

Al-Qaida also differed from the multitude of other militant groups active across the Islamic world at the time in its avowed internationalism. Its founders' aim was to unite the disparate groups of militants who were fighting against the Soviets to focus their energies on new targets. Its campaign would take two main forms: guerrilla wars such as that in Afghanistan and a series of spectacular and violent actions that would radicalise and mobilise all those who had hitherto shunned the call to arms, eventually provoking a mass uprising that would lead to a new era for the world's Muslims. The two strategies would be mutually reinforcing. Azzam, who had been a huge influence on Bin Laden, was killed in a mysterious bomb blast in late 1989. With the Soviets leaving Afghanistan and the internecine squabbling between factions getting worse, Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. Expecting to be feted as a hero, he, like many other returning mujahideen, was shocked to find a frosty welcome from authorities in the kingdom. Though increasingly critical, however, Bin Laden had yet to turn fully against the rulers of his native land.

In August 1990, when Iraq annexed Kuwait and threatened Saudi security, he offered to raise an army of Arab Afghan veterans to fight the "godless" Saddam. His offer was rejected and the house of al-Saud sought US help instead. By January 1991, some 300,000 foreign troops were stationed on Saudi territory. Bin Laden accused the Americans of "desecrating holy Arab soil", and cited Qur'anic verses forbidding the presence of two religions in Arabia. He also criticised the Saudi grand mufti, Abdul Aziz bin Baz, and other senior clerics for approving the decision. Placed under house arrest, Bin Laden slipped out of Saudi Arabia, eventually reaching the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, where the leading Islamist ideologue Hassan Turabi had recently taken power and was offering protection and facilities to a wide variety of Islamic militant groups. For the next five years, Bin Laden tried to make progress with the al-Qaida project. He cultivated contacts with militants in Yemen and was linked to a bomb explosion there in 1992. He sent observers, though no fighters, to Somalia during the ill-fated international intervention there in 1993.

Other operations in the Balkans or the Caucasus brought limited success. Several attempts to reach out to other groups were rebuffed. There was a strong sense that Bin Laden had lost his way. Certainly the focus of the new militancy that the war in Afghanistan had spawned was elsewhere: in Algeria and in Egypt, where local groups such as al-Zawahiri's Islamic Jihad were taking on governments and their security services in bloody insurgencies; in the Balkans; in America, where a bid to bring down the twin towers narrowly failed. In Sudan, Bin Laden set up a tannery, farmed, built a road as a goodwill gesture and rode horses, a favourite pastime, while followers amused themselves playing football or swimming in the Nile. Nonetheless, Bin Laden was now on the radar of security services, albeit if his name was often misspelt and his role described as "financier". In April 1994, the Saudi government stripped Bin Laden of his citizenship and his family disowned his actions. Eventually, in 1996, Sudan succumbed to US pressure and expelled its controversial guest.

In need of a new sanctuary, Bin Laden accepted an offer of protection from three anti-Taliban Afghan warlords and flew to Jalalabad. The next years finally saw al-Qaida, already the vanguard, become the "base" or "foundation" too, as originally envisaged. Working with a growing group of experienced collaborators, Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri set up or appropriated dozens of training camps, guesthouses and other facilities that provided them with a pool of ready volunteers for various projects. At the same time they launched a sophisticated outreach programme, sending emissaries to groups throughout the Islamic world offering cash and technical help in return for a degree of fealty. Such bids were often unsuccessful, with groups in Algeria, Indonesia, Chechnya, Uzbekistan and elsewhere jealously guarding their independence, but they were accepted frequently enough for a "network of networks" to begin to emerge. The basic strategy remained the same: a series of spectacular violent actions to radicalise potential recruits, to weaken the enemy economically and morally, and eventually to provoke a mass uprising that would lead to the establishment of a new caliphate.

Bin Laden's now keen eye for public relations – and an understanding of the potential of the still new technology of satellite television - led to exclusive interviews with select journalists. He also began to issue his own "fatwas" or religious opinions. The first, in August 1996, stuck to familiar themes: promising to drive US troops out of the Gulf, overthrow the Saudi government and liberate Muslim shrines in Palestine. In February 1998, as he announced an alliance between al-Qaida and four other groups from Bangladesh, Egypt and Pakistan called The World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, Bin Laden issued a second fatwa, which called on all Muslims to "obey God's order" and kill Americans, including civilians, "wherever you find them". Pursuing his strategy of propaganda by deed, Bin Laden organised a successful attack on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August 1998. These killed 224, all but 12 of them African staff or bystanders. The US president Bill Clinton retaliated with cruise missile raids on alleged Bin Laden facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan.

Several Pakistani and Algerian allies were killed, although Bin Laden himself escaped unscathed. In their aftermath a Saudi deal with the Taliban for the expulsion of Bin Laden fell through. In July 1999, the US imposed sanctions on the Taliban. The idea for the 11 September 2001 attacks came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an experienced and capable Kuwait-born Pakistani militant who travelled to seek out Bin Laden shortly after the latter's arrival in Afghanistan. Building on schemes he had tried to implement in the far east, Mohammed's ambitious plans for hijacking dozens of aircraft to strike US targets was initially rejected by Bin Laden, but then dusted off, revised and finally accepted after a series of heated meetings of al-Qaida's leadership in the spring of 1999. They were controversial, with many militants fearing a backlash or an overwhelming American reaction. Bin Laden, convinced the US was a nation of decadent cowards, pressed ahead. The volunteers for the plan were found simply by scouring the various training camps, either those offering basic training for foreigners arriving to fight with the Taliban or those for more advanced candidates who were being trained by al-Qaida instructors in techniques of urban terrorism.

The CIA, which was now running a Bin Laden unit, placed a $5m bounty on the fugitive's head and worked up a series of plans to kill or capture him. These became more urgent in October 2000 when a dinghy charged with explosives was driven into an American warship off the Yemeni port of Aden, killing its own crew and 17 sailors. But targeting Bin Laden was difficult. American agencies squabbled among themselves. The military distrusted the plans concocted by civilians or the CIA. The raw intelligence did not exist. Though his relationship with the Taliban was complex, with much suspicion on both sides, Bin Laden had been able to graft much of his own internationalised ideology on to that of Afghans such as Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's leader. Bin Laden had been forced to implement a charm offensive after the Taliban expelled his previous protectors in the autumn of 1996, and over the years financial help and the military assistance provided by his Chechen, Arab, Pakistani and Uzbekistani recruits led to the formation of elite units attached mainly to the Pashtun Taliban forces, consolidating links.

Bin Laden, aware of the constant threat to his life, moved often between Kabul and Kandahar as well as a base near the Tora Bora mountain range in eastern Afghanistan, south of Jalalabad. On 9 September 2001, two men run by al-Zawahiri killed the legendary Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. Two days later, Bin Laden was in the hills of eastern Logar province, not far from where he had fought almost 15 years before. Listening to a shortwave radio, he learned of the success of the attacks in the US. The co-ordination of four simultaneously hijacked airliners; the origins of the terrorists and their "martyrdom"; the choice of targets all pointed to one group: al-Qaida. Such an attack had been signalled, if vaguely, by intelligence over the summer. Within hours, President George Bush had blamed Bin Laden and begun planning a major campaign that aimed to deter what were seen to be the states giving terrorists safe havens, and rooting out the terrorists themselves through aggressive military action. This was to be the "global war on terror".

Faced with an ultimatum, the Taliban again refused to surrender Bin Laden, who initially denied involvement, and an American-led aerial bombing campaign followed. When matched with action on the ground by anti-Taliban forces within Afghanistan aided by small groups of US special forces, the regime crumbled fast. In November, Kabul's liberated residents expressed their loathing for "the foreigners" – not the British or Americans, but the Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens. During the campaign of 2001, many leading al-Qaida figures were killed and the group's physical "base" destroyed. By mid-December, American planes were pounding the slopes above Tora Bora, where Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were thought to be. They also released the "smoking gun" video, in which Bin Laden spoke of how he had planned the 11 September operation. This did little to allay the conspiracy theories that were already circulating widely. The 2001 campaign was inconclusive, however, as al-Qaida's leaders escaped from Tora Bora.

The venality of the Afghan auxiliaries hired by the Americans as "beaters" to flush out Bin Laden, his local contacts, the half-hearted nature of Pakistani efforts and a sense of Islamic solidarity among local people was enough to allow them to slip away to the south. Bin Laden appeared gaunt and apparently wounded in a video. A new chapter began. Along with a physical "base", the word al-Qaida can mean a vanguard – al-Qaida al-Sulbah. Another meaning is a maxim or a methodology, something much more ephemeral. If, in the early 1990s, Bin Laden's organisation had been a vanguard and in the latter part of the decade it had been a base, in the coming years it would be more an ideology, a worldview, a way of doing things. Bin Laden found a new base in the restive and semi-autonomous Pakistani tribal agencies, just across the border from Afghanistan. Here he and his associates tried to rebuild what they had lost in terms of infrastructure. Using the cash they were still able to obtain from donors in the Gulf and elsewhere, they paid protection money to local Pashtun elders and, increasingly, militants.

A grassroots militant movement was setting the area afire and Bin Laden, as he had done elsewhere, was able to graft his own global struggle on to the local one of the tribes of places such as Waziristan. Intermittent videos gave little clue as to his whereabouts but, broadcast by mainstream TV channels, repeated his call to arms to the Muslim masses. For some years, though he himself was in much more physical danger than at any previous time, it appeared than al-Qaida, by triggering a global confrontation with the west, might achieve its aims. Through 2002 and 2003, in part, but not only, provoked by the invasion of Iraq, a wave of radicalisation surged through the Islamic world, and there were major bomb attacks in Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, elsewhere in the Middle East, in Africa and in the far east. Many were perpetrated by individuals commissioned and trained in the al-Qaida camps in the late 1990s. But new volunteers were often recruited with little difficulty.

In 2004 came an attack in Madrid, which, though it did not have a direct link with al-Qaida, appeared to indicate that its ideology was having an impact everywhere, provoking the kind of generalised violence that Bin Laden had hoped for many years before. Another dynamic that did implicate al-Qaida more directly was the training and direction of young British men who found their way to Pakistan. These were responsible for a string of attacks – including those of 7 July 2005 in London. If the reasons that motivated these volunteers to seek out al-Qaida were their own, the group played a significant role in turning individuals with diffuse desires to participate in "jihad" into focused terrorist operatives with some, though luckily frequently insufficient, technical skills. Bin Laden's ability to exploit the media was also still very evident. His address to the American people on the eve of Bush's re-election in November 2004 received massive coverage. In it, the Saudi ideologue and propagandist appeared in statesmanlike robes rather than the more customary combat vest. In Iraq, where American and British forces were in great trouble, local Islamic militants had sworn allegiance to al-Qaida.

In Saudi Arabia itself there was a storm of violence, again by people professing loyalty to Bin Laden and undoubtedly influenced by him. Yet in retrospect, the period of 2005-06 was a peak. One thing was still lacking: any evidence of mass radicalisation. The militants were still very much in a minority and evidence from polls proved the growing disgust that many in the Islamic world felt for the extremists, particularly when they could see at first hand what their tactics meant in terms of shattered bodies and shattered lives. In Iraq, the globalised ideology of al-Qaida, stripped of any local cultural specificity other than the claim of Muslim solidarity, was increasingly rejected by the tribes in the western provinces that had led the insurgency up to then. In the Maghreb, militants remained reviled. The wave of support of three or four years earlier in the far east had fallen away, leaving radical groups isolated. Only in Pakistan and Afghanistan was headway being made in the great struggle against "crusader-Zionists". Criticism too had begun to come from within the militant movement, where key former associates spoke of how Bin Laden's thinking, tactics and strategy were all wrong. The number of Muslim casualties in al-Qaida's attacks was going up.

Bin Laden's associates were being picked off by the now intense missile strikes from unmanned drones over the tribal areas, and his communications were clearly difficult. One senior lieutenant made a plaintive call for funds. However, al-Qaida retained some capacity, as a series of abortive attempts to strike in Europe and elsewhere made clear. The ideology remained strong enough to attract aspirant militants, misfits, the angry and the alienated in sufficient numbers for the group to survive – the basic aim of any clandestine extremist organisation. The hunt for Bin Laden also suffered from huge structural problems, not least the need to rely on Pakistani assistance, and an inability to gather intelligence on the ground. Despite attempts to exploit new issues such as climate change or to deploy younger spokesmen, there was a sense that Bin Laden, and with him al-Qaida, was drifting away from the principal position he had once occupied in the landscape of contemporary Islamic militancy. The events of this year's Arab spring merely emphasised that apparent marginalisation. Bin Laden's ideology had been a response to the failure of many previous utopic projects in the Islamic world. It had held a brief attraction for some, not least because of the actions taken in a bid to counter it.

But most Muslims always knew something essential was missing: the notion of Allah al-rahman w'al-rakhim – God the merciful and beneficent. Bin Laden once claimed: "It is our duty to bring light to the world." Yet behind his rhetoric of righteousness, divine justice and retribution, there was nothing but darkness. He had four wives and 19 children. One of his sons was killed alongside him. • Osama bin Laden, terrorist leader, born 10 March 1957; died 2 May 2011 • This article was amended on 4 May 2011. The original gave the date of Osama bin Laden's death as 1 May. This has been corrected.

Seals alleged to have divulged classified information to the maker of a video game called Medal of Honour: Warfighter Published: 9 Nov 2012 Judges' ruling in Salim Hamdan case may have repercussions for others convicted under Military Commissions Act Published: 16 Oct 2012 Abbottabad, The Peaceful Pakistani City Where Osama Bin Laden Met His Violent End Abbottabad, The Peaceful Pakistani City Where Osama Bin Laden Met His Violent End May 02, 2011 RFE/RL The hideout in Abbottabad where Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces on May 2. The city is a hub for tourism due to its pleasant weather. Share See comments ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan -- For 10 years, the world has expected that if Osama bin Laden were ever found, it would be in a cave somewhere in the mountains on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The expectations grew, in part, from U.S. President George W. Bush's famous promise four days after 9/11 to "smoke out" Al-Qaeda and its leaders.

They also grew with Bush's later comments that bin Laden encouraged suicide bombings while he and his top associate "save their own skins by hiding in caves." For the latest on the bin Laden story, follow RFE/RL's Pakistani and Afghan journalists on Twitter at @GandharaRFE But the news that bin Laden was found, not in a cave, but in one of Pakistan's most popular hill resort towns, set all expectations on their head. The Al-Qaeda chief may indeed have been caught hiding, but his hideout was a three-story, million-dollar mansion with all the amenities. Abbottabad, Osama's place of refuge, is a verdant town located in the hills 60 kilometers north of Islamabad at an altitude of about 1,250 meters. The city is not well-known outside of Pakistan, but it is extremely well-known inside the country, where its pleasant weather makes it a hub for tourism. 'Peaceful Environment' Fawad Ali Shah, a correspondent for RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal in Abbottabad, says the town's reputation is not for militancy. Instead, it has a high concentration of top schools and military establishments and is the home of many retired Pakistani military officers.

"It is the home of the Baluch Regiment of the Pakistan Army, of the Pakistani military academy Kakul, in which the newly commissioned armed forces officers are trained, and there also are many educational institutes," Shah says. "So, basically, it is a cantonment and people living here are peaceful and the environment is peaceful." A video grab shows a gaping hole in the wall of the mansion where Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Abbottabad. Bin Laden's mansion was just 90 meters from the gate of the Kakul Military Academy, the army-run institution where top officers train. His house itself resembled a fort, with two security gates and compound walls 3.5-to-5.5-meters high, topped with barbed wire. A Pakistan intelligence official said the property where bin Laden was staying was 278 square meters in size and that the residents burned their own trash rather than letting the city collect it. No Internet or phone connection led to the house, so all messages arrived and left with couriers.

'No One Could Have Imagined' One might expect the secretive nature of the house, which Washington says appears to have been "custom-built to hide someone of significance" in 2005, would arouse local suspicion. But Shah says it did not, perhaps because Abbottabad seemed like such an unlikely place to find the bearded cave-warrior depicted by Washington. "No one could have imagined that a man of such high profile could have hidden here," Shah says. "Everyone is shocked that Osama bin Laden was hiding here in Abbottabad, because basically the elite of Pakistan lives here." But if Abbottabad, which is far from Afghanistan's tribal regions where bin Laden was most frequently assumed to be hiding, is an idyllic spot, it does have some features that might help explain bin Laden's presence there. The hilly region around Abbottabad was long home -- with the Pakistani military's consent -- to training camps for mujahedin groups operating in Kashmir. The mujahedin groups, which carried out guerrilla operations in the Indian-held area of Kashmir, made common cause with the Afghan Taliban and other jihadist groups in Pakistan's tribal areas after 9/11, when Pakistan officially became an ally of the United States in the war on terror.

The familiarity and contacts that the Pakistani mujahedin groups have with the Abbottabad region also could serve anyone hiding out in the area well, especially such a prominent figure in the jihad against the United States as Osama bin Laden. 'To Your Natural Beauty Do I Bow' One ironic footnote to bin Laden's taking refuge in Abbottabad is the fact that the Saudi Arabian jihadist is just one of many foreigners who have been attracted to the town over its lifetime. The town was founded by a British officer in 1853 after the annexation of Punjab. Major James Abbott named the town after himself and later immortalized it in a poem expressing the beauty of its surroundings. The poem, written prior to Abbott's return to Britain eight years later, declares: Oh Abbottabad, we are leaving you now To your natural beauty do I bow Perhaps your winds' sound will never reach my ears My gift for you is a few sad tears. It is not known if the austere bin Laden was as moved by Abbottabad's beauty as many others have been. But the final gift of a few sad tears may be all he, too, leaves from a stay whose duration is not yet known.

written in Prague by Charles Recknagel, with contributions from RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal in Abbottabad The Death Of Osama Bin Laden Features & Analysis Google Maps Shows Where Osama Bin Laden Died [PICS] Google Maps Shows Where Osama Bin Laden Died [PICS] 5.5k 2011-05-02 02:03:36 UTC Google Maps has been updated with a pinpoint for "Osama bin Laden's Compound" in northern Pakistan. The terrorist, who was reported dead Sunday night, was killed during a carefully coordinated U.S. military and intelligence operation. The plan to kill bin Laden was put into action at Abbottabad, a city about 75 miles north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. While it's unlikely the Maps pinpoint is the exact location where bin Laden was found, it does tell us a lot about where he was hiding out. Far from being the cave-ridden rural landscape many had imagined, he was in a beautiful, urban area and was reportedly living in a mansion surrounded by other houses at the time of the raid. As elated crowds gather around the U.S.

to celebrate , many Google Maps and Google Places users are posting "reviews" to the Place page to express their own elation. At the time of this writing, 233 reviews had been posted. The sentiments range from macabre satisfaction to bad puns to simply, "OSAMA IS DEAD! USA! USA!" The town where bin Laden died is in the Orash Valley and is something of a center of tourism. Images of the area, some of which you can see below, show its educational institutions and beautiful scenery. While bin Laden was captured with the support of Pakistani authorities, we don't yet know what effects this operation and its result may have on U.S.-Pakistan relations. Abbottabad: Where Bin Laden Died Terrain Map of Abbottabad Pakistan City Reels After Bin Laden's Killing : NPR Pakistan City Reels After Bin Laden's Killing Embed Embed Pakistan City Reels After Bin Laden's Killing Pakistan City Reels After Bin Laden's Killing Embed Embed The compound where Osama bin Laden was captured and killed in a U.S. operation that marked a significant psychological triumph for the United States.

Sajid Mehmood/NPR hide caption toggle caption Sajid Mehmood/NPR The compound where Osama bin Laden was captured and killed in a U.S. operation that marked a significant psychological triumph for the United States. Sajid Mehmood/NPR I got my first glimpse of Osama bin Laden's compound while standing on a table in the bathroom of one of his neighbors. The military had stopped journalists from entering the area, so an accommodating (if frightened) resident led me to the rear of his home, and if I craned my neck, I could see the fortified bin Laden hideout some 200 yards in the distance. The Pakistani military had secured the area and draped a red tarp around the property. Neighbors' Night Of Terror Neighbors described the terrifying sounds of U.S. Blackhawk helicopters hovering just above the poplar trees that dot their backyards and oversee bin Laden's. One of the choppers ferrying a Navy SEAL counterterrorist unit crashed and was destroyed by the Americans in a thunderous explosion that residents say could be heard across the city. Abbottabad's endless rows of barracks and manicured brick buildings are a throwback to the British colonial era.

In fact, the normally tranquil garrison town nestled in the green hills of northwest Pakistan is named for English Maj. James Abbott. A two-hour drive from Islamabad, it now bears the distinction of being the final home and hideout of the world's most wanted terrorist. Article continues after sponsorship Compound Was A Curiosity Residents who lived near the secret bin Laden compound called it "a mysterious building" whose inhabitants mixed with no one. Nadeem Khan, who lives nearby, said he was "startled" to learn that bin Laden had encamped in a costly compound around the corner. Special Report "I never saw any movement around the house. When I asked people on the same street they said smuggler-types lived there," Khan said. "They would have no interaction with other people. We didn't see them coming or going." Equally perplexing for the residents is that Pakistan's equivalent of West Point is just up the road. Proximity To Military Academy The prestigious training center visited by Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, only nine days prior to the U.S. operation to take out bin Laden would likely have had constant security surveillance. "That's what's shocking," said Salman Sayeed, who lives and studies in Abbottabad.

"We were thinking all night: How come a person on the top list of the U.S. and Interpol is living so close to the military for one year, two years, God knows how many years? That's very shocking." Sayeed said the Pakistan military "probably knew" that bin Laden was there, "but they didn't want to make a chaos of it." They "probably had their own strategy," he said. Z. Shah Ahmed, a 37-year old resident, demurred when asked what he thought about the discovery that bin Laden lived just blocks from the sprawling military garrison, calling it "a very sensitive question" that he did not want to talk about. Collusion Or Incompetence? Pakistan has suffered from the impression that it is a nexus of global terrorist activity. Top U.S. officials have become increasingly vocal in their criticism that Pakistan failed to devise a clear path to eliminating militancy, further irritating U.S.-Pakistan relations. But the fact that bin Laden had inhabited a house within walking distance of the Pakistan Military Academy is certain to raise questions about what if anything the Pakistanis knew about the al-Qaida chief's presence in Abbottabad and when they knew it.

Defense analyst Hasan-Askari Rizvi said Monday's raid was "an embarrassment for the Pakistanis," who seem to have been left out of the loop, a development that retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood says could have "catastrophic" implications for Pakistan. U.S. Accomplished Its Mission, Now Go But many more Pakistanis are likely to see in the U.S. raid that apparently accorded no prior notice to Pakistan a violation of their sovereignty. Across the country a common chorus rose: Abbottabad resident Nadeem Khan said it is now time for the U.S. to end what many Pakistanis consider its occupation of Afghanistan. "The U.S. should pull out [of Afghanistan] because Osama bin Laden was their target. And they invaded Afghanistan to capture him," Khan said. Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. forces - May 02, 2011 - HISTORY.com Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. forces Share this: Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. forces Author Osama bin Laden killed by U.S.

forces URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, is killed by U.S. forces during a raid on his compound hideout in Pakistan. The notorious, 54-year-old leader of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network of Islamic extremists, had been the target of a nearly decade-long international manhunt. The raid began around 1 a.m. local time, when 23 U.S. Navy SEALs in two Black Hawk helicopters descended on the compound in Abbottabad, a tourist and military center north of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. One of the helicopters crash-landed into the compound but no one aboard was hurt. During the raid, which lasted approximately 40 minutes, five people, including bin Laden and one of his adult sons, were killed by U.S. gunfire. No Americans were injured in the assault. Afterward, bin Laden’s body was flown by helicopter to Afghanistan for official identification, then buried at an undisclosed location in the Arabian Sea less than 24 hours after his death, in accordance with Islamic practice.

Just after 11:30 p.m. EST on May 1 (Pakistan’s time zone is 9 hours ahead of Washington, D.C.), President Barack Obama, who monitored the raid in real time via footage shot by a drone flying high above Abbottabad, made a televised address from the White House, announcing bin Laden’s death. “Justice has been done,” the president said. After hearing the news, cheering crowds gathered outside the White House and in New York City’s Times Square and the Ground Zero site. Based on computer files and other evidence the SEALs collected during the raid, it was later determined that bin Laden was making plans to assassinate President Obama and carry out a series of additional attacks against America, including one on the anniversary of September 11, the largest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, which left nearly 3,000 people dead. Shortly after the 2001 attack, President George W. Bush declared bin Laden, who was born into a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia in 1957 and used his multi-million-dollar inheritance to help establish al Qaeda and fund its activities, would be captured dead or alive.

In December of that year, American-backed forces came close to capturing bin Laden in a cave complex in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora region; however, he escaped and would continue to elude U.S. authorities for years. A break in the hunt for bin Laden came in August 2010, when C.I.A. analysts tracked the terrorist leader’s courier to the Abbottabad compound, located behind tall security walls in a residential neighborhood. (U.S. intelligence officials spent the ensuing months keeping the compound under surveillance; however, they were never certain bin Laden was hiding there until the raid took place.) The U.S. media had long reported bin Laden was believed to be hiding in the remote tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border, so many Americans were surprised to learn the world’s most famous fugitive had likely spent the last five years of his life in a well-populated area less than a mile from an elite Pakistani military academy. After the raid, which the U.S. reportedly carried out without informing the Pakistani government in advance, some American officials suspected Pakistani authorities of helping to shelter bin Laden in Abbottabad, although there was no concrete evidence to confirm this.

Related Videos Pakistan row over future of Bin Laden's compound - BBC News BBC News Pakistan row over future of Bin Laden's compound By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad 22 July 2016 Image copyright Mohammad Zubair Khan Image caption Military authorities threw up a wall around the compound on Wednesday A row has erupted over what to do with the land in Pakistan's Abbottabad city where former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden lived and was killed. Local authorities want to construct a children's playground there, while the military wish to build a graveyard. The two sides have tussled over control of the land - and on Wednesday the military erected a wall around the site, surprising local authorities. Bin Laden was killed in a US raid on his compound at the site in May 2011. He had been living there in secret, in a three-storey building behind high walls, for several years before his death. The land has remained empty ever since.

No trespassing The grounds cover an area of 3,530 sq m (38,000 sq ft), with an estimated market value of over $285,000 (£218,000) Image copyright Reuters Image caption Bin Laden's compound in 2012, before it was completely demolished After Bin Laden's death, the land was handed over to the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province which tore down the structure and its boundary wall, apparently to prevent the place from becoming a site of pilgrimage for jihadists and their sympathisers. Since then the land has been lying unutilised amid a growing neighbourhood. Now, the local government and military authorities are in a dispute over how to use the land - and who should control its future. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Soldiers cleared debris from Bin Laden's compound after the US raid in May 2011 The military-run Cantonment Board of Abbottabad (CBA) moved to occupy the area in May, erecting a rope-fence around it. But they removed it after the provincial authorities intervened.

Cantonment boards are military-run organisations tasked with managing and regulating private and public construction in areas falling within the jurisdiction of military districts in major cities. The CBA tried again this week, however, and this time they were more decisive - building a one metre (three ft) wall around the sprawling grounds, and catching the local government by surprise. Image caption Until recently, locals used a well located in what was bin Laden's compound for drinking water Playground or graveyard? A member of the CBA council, Bashir Khan, said the military had decided to convert the land into a cemetery . "It is needed because there is no graveyard nearby for the local population," he told the BBC. But KP Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani dismissed the plan, saying the grounds were in the middle of a populated area and "not fit for a graveyard". "Besides, the cantonment authorities have built the wall on land that belongs to the provincial government," Mr Ghani said, adding that the CBA had said they built the wall "to prevent encroachments". The provincial government hoped to turn the land into a playground for children, Mr Ghani said. "In addition to a playground, the place can be used for funeral prayers as well.

The people of the area have neither a playground nor a place for funeral prayers nearby." The dispute looks set to continue - and local residents have their own ideas too, with some demanding that the land should be used to build a girls' school. Meanwhile, some other military officials have mooted plans to build a revenue-generating amusement park on the land. What everyone seems to agree on is that any project should be chosen with care so it could not be easily associated with the name of Bin Laden - something which could become a source of continuing embarrassment for the military. "A graveyard would be the safest bet, as nobody would like to call it the 'Bin Laden graveyard'," says one Abbottabad journalist who has been following the story. Opinion: Pakistan sheltered Bin Laden? Prove it - CNN.com Opinion Pakistan sheltered Bin Laden? Prove it By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst Updated 10:18 AM ET, Fri March 21, 2014 Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.

Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Vice President Joe Biden, left, President Barack Obama, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, second from right, watch the mission to capture Osama bin Laden from the Situation Room in the White House on May 1, 2011. Click through to see reactions from around the world following the death of the al Qaeda leader. Hide Caption 1 of 13 Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden President Obama edits his remarks in the Oval Office prior to making a televised statement announcing bin Laden's death. Hide Caption 2 of 13 Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Servicemen cheer from a lamp post as thousands of people gather at Ground Zero in New York City. Hide Caption 3 of 13 Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Crowds celebrate with NYPD officers in New York's Times Square early on May 2, 2011, after the death of Osama bin Laden. Hide Caption Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Revelers gather at the fence on the north side of the White House. Hide Caption Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Afghans watch television coverage in Kabul announcing the killing of bin Laden.

Hide Caption 6 of 13 Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden U.S. Marines watch the announcement of bin Laden's death at Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Hide Caption Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Times Square is filled shortly after the announcement of bin Laden's death. Hide Caption Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Students gather to celebrate at the fence on the north side of the White House. Hide Caption Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden A passer-by looks at newspaper headlines in front of the Newseum in Washington. Hide Caption 10 of 13 Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Danielle LeMack, left, Carie LeMack and Christie Coombs, who lost relatives on 9/11, pause during a ceremony to honor the victims on May 2, 2011, at the Garden of Remembrance in Boston. Hide Caption 11 of 13 Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden A visitor photographs the fence overlooking the crash site of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on May 2, 2011.

Hide Caption Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden Pakistani media and residents gather outside the bin Laden hideout on May 3, 2011. Hide Caption Peter Bergen: NYT article says Pakistan knew bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad He says reporter Carlotta Gall is a respected authority, but there's no evidence Bergen: Why would many high-level U.S. intelligence officials deny Pakistan's knowledge? Bergen: If Obama administration has information showing Pakistan knew, it must release it The New York Times magazine is running a bombshell story alleging that the Pakistanis knew all along that Osama bin Laden was living for years in his longtime hiding place in the northern Pakistan city of Abbottabad, where he was killed by a U.S. Navy SEAL team on May 2, 2011. The Times story, titled "What Pakistan Knew About bin Laden," will carry weight: It was written by Carlotta Gall, the dean of the correspondents who have covered Afghanistan and Pakistan since that fateful day in 2001, when al Qaeda's four hijacked planes crashed through America's comfortable sense that vast oceans insulated it from its enemies.

At great personal risk Gall has authoritatively covered the war in Afghanistan for the past 12 years. Indeed, I first met her during the civil war in Afghanistan during the mid-1990s when she was an aid worker, and I have met her many times since. I encouraged her (along with, I'm sure, many others) to write a book about her reporting in Afghanistan, as no Western reporter has more to say about what has transpired there since the fall of the Taliban. Peter Bergen during coverage of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 on location in Afghanistan The bin Laden story in the New York Times magazine is an extract from Gall's forthcoming book, "The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014." Gall makes two astonishing claims in her Times magazine piece. The first claim: An unnamed Pakistani official told her, based on what he had in turn heard from an unnamed senior U.S. official that "the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad." ISI is Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency.

The second claim: "The ISI actually ran a special desk assigned to handle bin Laden. It was operated independently, led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior. He handled only one person: bin Laden...the top military bosses knew about it, I was told." It is, of course, hard to prove negatives, but having spent around a year reporting intensively on the hunt for al Qaeda's leader for my 2012 book "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad," I am convinced that there is no evidence that anyone in the Pakistani government, military or intelligence agencies knowingly sheltered bin Laden. How did I arrive at this conclusion? JUST WATCHED MUST WATCH Admiral: Destroy Osama bin Laden photos 02:32 On three reporting trips to Pakistan I spoke to senior officials in Pakistan's military and intelligence service. They all denied that they had secretly harbored bin Laden. OK, you are thinking: "But they would say that, wouldn't they?" Well, what about the dozens of officials I spoke to in the U.S.

intelligence community, Pentagon, State Department and the White House who also told me versions of "the Pakistanis had no idea that bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad"? During the course of reporting for my book I spoke on the record to, among others, John Brennan, now the CIA director and then President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser; then CIA Director Leon Panetta and his chief of staff, Jeremy Bash; then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen; then Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. James Cartwright; then director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter; then senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Nick Rasmussen; then head of policy at the Pentagon, Michele Flournoy; Michael Vickers, who was then the civilian overseer of Special Operations at the Pentagon; Tony Blinken, who is now the deputy national security adviser; and Denis McDonough, who held that position before Blinken. These officials have collectively spent many decades working to destroy al Qaeda, and many are deeply suspicious of Pakistan for its continuing support for elements of the Taliban.

But all of them told me in one form or another that Pakistani officials had no clue that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. Indeed, an early debate between senior national security officials at the White House, once CIA intelligence established that bin Laden could be hiding in Abbottabad, was whether to mount a joint U.S.-Pakistani raid on bin Laden's suspected hideout. This plan was rejected because the officials were concerned that such a joint operation carried the risk that word would leak out about the bin Laden intelligence. This debate would have been moot if the Pakistanis already knew bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. And, by the way, if the U.S. government had any evidence that the Pakistanis were knowingly sheltering bin Laden, as Gall claims, why cover this up? In 2011, the relationship between the United States and Pakistan was at its lowest point ever. Early that year a CIA contractor killed two Pakistanis in broad daylight in the city of Lahore, and both countries were trading accusations about each other's perfidy. The tension was compounded by the fact that the CIA drone program in Pakistan was then at its height, which was deeply unpopular among Pakistanis. What did U.S.

officials have to lose by saying that bin Laden was being protected by the Pakistanis if it were true? The fact is that the senior Pakistani officials Gall alleges were harboring bin Laden were utterly surprised that al Qaeda's leader was living in Abbottabad. Based on the bewildered reactions of top Pakistani officials to the events on the night that bin Laden was killed, it was obvious to U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter and to U.S. officials monitoring communications in Pakistan that the Pakistanis had not had a clue about bin Laden's presence there. Finally, in the course of reporting my book I discovered that bin Laden was even hiding from some of the people living in his own compound; forget about letting officials in the Pakistani government in on the secret. One of the wives of the bodyguards protecting bin Laden didn't know that the tall stranger hiding on the compound was al Qaeda's leader. In fairness to Gall, I have heard from four current and former U.S. intelligence and military officials that some of the thousands of documents that U.S. Navy SEALs picked up at bin Laden's Abbottabad compound that haven't been publicly released could point to some kind of official Pakistani collusion.

If that is the case, the Obama White House should release any documents that are relevant so that the American public can be the judge if one of our allies was knowingly harboring bin Laden all along. So far there is no evidence that that is the case.

Question: In which Pakistan city was Osama Bin Laden killed in 2011?
Answer: Abbottabad