Breaking News!!!! Osama Bin Laden is dead

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Video of inside the OBL compound

http://abcnews.go.com/International/video/osama-bin-laden-dead-inside-pakistan-kill-site-13507839

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why are the guys speaking urdu and some other language?
oh wait, this video wasnt shot by americans right

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Dekhay janab baat bariee simple ha….and before I say anything let me assure everyone that I am also a Pakistani (born and raised) and care about my country more than anything else…

but if osama has been killed in that compound in Abbottabad (and that seems to be the case as it has been confirmed by Pakistani officials), then ISI and Pak Army need to answer some extremely serious questions…

there is absolutely no way anyone let alone osama can hide in that town without cooperation from the Pakistan military establishment…I have spent many months in Abbottabad and I am sure most of the guppies on this forum have visited the town at some point…we all know it is a military town…

whether ISI cooperated in osama’s killing or not is pointless because first, ISI needs to defend its position as to how osama reached there? If ISI has no plausible explanation, then it is obvious that ISI was supporting him….if ISI can however clearly show that osama came there only last week without any support from ISI officials and that he has been hiding all over the places in last 5 years blah blah blah only then one can look into possibility of ISI’s genuine cooperation with USA in killing osama…

Yes no other country has suffered more than Pakistan but we Pakistani citizens also want to know what is the real story? We are sick of conspiracy theories…we need to stand up and look into this issue objectively…because that is real patriotism, if you ask me..

To Indian posters, don’t try to score points! You guys know as much as we do that agencies in every country including india do a lot of ****ty stuff because they have long term strategic objectives to achieve for sake of national security….situation in pak however has become truly global and our agencies need to reassess their strategic objectives…

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Wow i am speechless at the all the "conspiracy" theories. We need to stop with the conspiracy theories and accept the reality. Whether its a cricket match or a political upset, we have a theory for everything.

Having said that, I think this is mixed news for us. Yes, good riddance...but there is a very uphilll battle awaiting us. Lots of unanswered questions.

  1. What baffles me is, how is the worlds most wanted terrorist hiding in Pakistani military base backyard, without ISI knowing about it? It wasn't a cave in a mountain...it was a luxurious compound. How is it possible that USA was able to find this clue, but ISI wasn't? I understand that Obama did credit pakistan for some intelligence help but shouldn't it have been ISI that located bin laden and killed him?

  2. Why was this operation carried about by USA? Can you imagine pakistan troops coming to USA and collecting information about most wanted terrorist and also carrying out an operation on american soil; and then Zardari making a call to Obama to update him on the status? It should have been us that carried out the operation and we should have made the call to Obama, not the other way around

  3. What is a saudi born, sudan/afghan bred terrorist doing in Pakistan? How did he manage to get into the country after he was already labelled as the worlds most wanted terrorist? What does it say about the safety of the country?

  4. Why did he choose Pakistan? Was it because he was getting help from ISI or some top political powers in Pakistan? Why was he so confident that he would be safe in pakistan so as to choose pakistan as his safe haven?

I hope Zardari doesnt take any credit for this, and does not spin this off as a great achievement by Pakistan. I think people of Pakistan need lot of answers from ISI and pakistani political powers.

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sadly no reaction from the government, seems the government has also been killed as a result

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I do agree with you. But if we really want to fight terrorism then we first need to fight extremism that has occupied our land for last 25-30 years beginning with organizations like SSP, LJ, LET. We can't eliminate them by bombing, we need to arrest top leaders of these organizations and clean up the mess. If OBL was living here for last few months then clearly we are doomed for much longer, it simply means govt, ISI and everyone wants to stay in bed with these guys regardless of what they do around the country or world.

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The USA focused on this particular compound after analyzing intelligence passed on by the ISI itself. The ISI thought nothing of it. CIA analysts disagreed. So goes the official story.

Concerning the proximity, no agency in Pakistan has the responsibility of conducting random house-to-house searches, or has the capability of identifying and tracking arbitrary people. It's not reasonable to ask the CIA or ISI to locate the proverbial needle of a single individual within the venerable haystack of an entire country. OBL maintained a nigh zero footprint, and most likely grew comfortable where he was. In theory, he could have done the same within new york itself.

Does it mean the entire pak military complex supported OBL? No. Does it mean there was a sympathizer in the area willing to cover for him. that probably had links to the ISI/PakMil. Yes, probably.

But, by the same token he well could have been in a Karach slum, or in some cave where the ISI officially thought he was.

[quote]

  1. Why was this operation carried about by USA? Can you imagine pakistan troops coming to USA and collecting information about most wanted terrorist and also carrying out an operation on american soil; and then Zardari making a call to Obama to update him on the status? It should have been us that carried out the operation and we should have made the call to Obama, not the other way around

[/quote]

Well, it was stated USA policy, and to be quite honest, it was an Obama-era policy to find and kill OBL wherever he was. This was a campaign promise, no less. So they were merely doing what they said they would.

On the pakistani side, it's a mess. Was the ISI/PakMil involved? If not, then how could they have a foreign helicopter hover over pak territory for some 40 mins, without any reaction? Never mind OBL, are our nuke facilities really safe? Is our military really competent, or are they an oligarchy passing themselves off as a military?

We can't know the answer to this, as Pakistan needs deniability of involvement to placate anti-US sentiment. Second, if the stories are indeed true, that pak was not involved, then propaganda aside it seems that Pakistan and America are in a state of a covert-war. Nothing either side will admit to, by definiion.

[quote]

  1. What is a saudi born, sudan/afghan bred terrorist doing in Pakistan? How did he manage to get into the country after he was already labelled as the worlds most wanted terrorist? What does it say about the safety of the country?

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Well, we can site 100's if not thousands of CIA contractors, and who knows who else, running around the country acting with impunity.

It stretches all belief to think that every foreigner acting in the nation is doing so for the betterment of Pakistan, while the ISI is hell bound on subverting the state. And we Pakistanis are accused of half-assed conspiracy theories.

One truth holds: Pakistan has a serious problem with foreign agents acting on it's soil, and needs a serious clean-up policy which will not discriminate. ALL actions on Pakistani soil MUST go through the Pak establishment, and any deviation from this policy should be met with deadly force. This applies to OBL types, and Raymond Davis types.

[quote]

  1. Why did he choose Pakistan? Was it because he was getting help from ISI or some top political powers in Pakistan? Why was he so confident that he would be safe in pakistan so as to choose pakistan as his safe haven?

[/quote]

I wouldn't dabble in wild-eyed conspiracy theories. The answer is obvious: the anti-soviet policies of the US and Pakistan during the 80's created an environment for such types to thrive and recruit. It is proving to be very difficult to unwind those policies. This point is directly related to the point above. Are elements of the ISI/PakMil/civilian population involved? Yes. Does that imply it's a defacto pak policy to support these types? Probably not.

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this is one thing i cannot beleive...24 hrs have been passed and pak govt and army are speechless...no speech for your poor nation this time mr prime minister gilani?

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Spot on Captian...it will be a long journey encompassing organizational, military, religious and ideological fronts….our poor public has been polluted religiously via fabricated syllabus, concocted history, unreal glory, and biased media in last 30 years and we need to undo all of that...to me that particular task would be the most difficult part as it would take time, political will and intellectual commitment…and we have none!!!..

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I disagree. It may be embarassing, but the point is, it takes two or three people to accomplish what had been done. It doesn't require the support of state aparatus to build a poorly defended compound sheltering one or two dozen people. Nor do the locals need be aware of what is going on inside.

[quote]

there is absolutely no way anyone let alone osama can hide in that town without cooperation from the Pakistan military establishment…I have spent many months in Abbottabad and I am sure most of the guppies on this forum have visited the town at some point…we all know it is a military town…

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Yes, but it defies belief to think that OBL was walking around freely.

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whether ISI cooperated in osama’s killing or not is pointless

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Wrong. It's everything. It's the difference between America and Pakistan being in a defacto state of war, or not.

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because first, ISI needs to defend its position as to how osama reached there?

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LOL...a helicopter flew around for 40 mins in A MILITARY TOWN without a reaction from the pak military, and we quesiton how OBL go there? Jokes aside....ganted, had the ISI been involved with the mission, it would explain the lack of action by the Pak side. But, would anyone question a car with tinted windows carrying some people into the compound? All it establishes is that people are in. And unless one is keeping tabs, nobody would likely notice people going in and out.

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Yes no other country has suffered more than Pakistan but we Pakistani citizens also want to know what is the real story? We are sick of conspiracy theories…we need to stand up and look into this issue objectively…because that is real patriotism, if you ask me..

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I'm sorry, but the narrative of ISI (the organization) had a policy of defending and protecting OBL IS a weak and silly conspiracy theory itself. Are there moles in the organization? Most probably, but then, we need to root these guys out just as much as we need to root the guys out that organized Raymond Davis' release, and allow CIA operatives to run around the country unchecked. NO FOREIGNERS OPERATING ON PAK SOIL, period.

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according to wikileaks americans knew from 2003 that osama was in abbotabad; why did they wait for 8 years before carrying out the operation?

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Key al Qaeda operative lived in Abbottabad in 2003

By Reuters / Saba Imtiaz
Published: May 2, 2011

**While Express News reporters have been told by locals that they are upset at the new-found notoriety of Abbottabad, it has been home to at least one key operative in the past al Qaeda operational chief Abu Faraj al Libbi. **

Al Libbi was captured in Mardan in May 2005 by Pakistani forces and had a long-term association with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri.

According to his assessment file released by WikiLeaks, “In July 2003, detainee received a letter from Osama bin Laden’s designated courier, Maulawi Abd al Khaliq Jan, requesting detainee take on the responsibility of collecting donations, organizing travel, and distributing funds to families in Pakistan. Osama bin Laden stated detainee would be the official messenger between UBL and others in Pakistan. In mid-2003, Abu Faraj al Libbi moved his family to Abbottabad and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar.”

According to a transcript of his combatant status review tribunal hearing, he had travelled to Raiwind in 2003 to meet with representatives of Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin and Taliban officials. They discussed operations against the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Umar Patek, who was wanted in the 2002 bombings of nightclubs in Bali that killed over 200 people, was also arrested in Abbottabad, according to an Associated Press report. He had sought refuge there with a family.

According to the AP report, “officials did not say how or why Patek ended up there, but his arrest followed the detention of an alleged Al Qaeda facilitator in the town called Tahir Shehzad, who worked as a clerk at the town’s post office, a squat building just across the road from the British-era St Luke’s Church. Tahir had been under surveillance since last year when he was spotted in Abbottabad with an Arab terror suspect, said an intelligence official.”

Eight years after Abu Faraj Ali Libbi lived in Abbottabad, Osama bin Laden was found living in the same area, a hilly resort popular with tourists from within Pakistan and a retirement spot for many.

According to Reuters, the location Osama bin Laden lived in was discovered in August 2010.

“When we saw the compound where the brothers lived, we were shocked by what we saw: an extraordinarily unique compound,” a senior administration official told Reuters.

“The bottom line of our collection and our analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound harboured a high-value terrorist target. The experts who worked this issue for years assessed that there was a strong probability that the terrorist who was hiding there was Osama bin Laden,” another administration official said.

The building, about eight times the size of other nearby houses, sat on a large plot of land that was relatively secluded when it was built in 2005. When it was constructed, it was on the outskirts of Abbotabad’s centre, at the end of a dirt road, but some other homes have been built nearby in the six years since it went up, officials said.

Intense security measures included 12- to 18-foot outer walls topped with barbed wire and internal walls that sectioned off different parts of the compound, officials said. Two security gates restricted access, and residents burned their trash, rather than leaving it for collection as did their neighbours, officials said.

Few windows of the three-story home faced the outside of the compound, and a terrace had a seven-foot privacy wall, officials said.
“It is also noteworthy that the property is valued at approximately $1 million but has no telephone or Internet service connected to it,” an administration official said. “The brothers had no explainable source of wealth.”

U.S. analysts realized that a third family lived there in addition to the two brothers, and the age and makeup of the third family matched those of the relatives – including his youngest wife – they believed would be living with Bin Laden.

“Everything we saw, the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers’ background and their behaviour and the location of the compound itself was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected Bin Laden’s hide-out to look like,” another Obama administration official said.

A small US team conducted a helicopter raid on the compound on Sunday afternoon, officials said. After 40 minutes of fighting, Bin Laden and an adult son, one unidentified woman and two men – identified as the courier and his brother – were dead, officials said.

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President Obama said last night that

**“our cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden.” **

I’ll take Obama’s words over any Indian Guppy’s rant any given day :chai:

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that is where the guy is found:

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There is no mention of any “co-operation” in the Operation itself. The Pakistani Foreign Office only mentions the co-operation with various countries in sharing intelligence. Nothing about the Pakistani Security forces being part of this particular Operation i.e. the Whole Operation was an absolutely, completely and entirely a US Operation.

Pakistan says US conducted operation

Updated at 13:08 PST Monday, May 02, 2011

http://old.thenews.com.pk/updates_pics/5-2-2011_15015_l.jpg

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday confirmed the death of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in an “intelligence-driven military operation” conducted by the US army, in the early hours at Abbottabad.

A statement from the Foreign Office said the most wanted terrorist mastermind was killed in an operation “conducted by the US forces in accordance with declared US policy that Osama bin Ladin will be eliminated in a direct action by the US forces, wherever found in the world.”

The Foreign Office termed it “a major setback to terrorist organizations around the world.” The statement said President Obama telephoned President Zardari on the successful US operation which resulted in killing of Osama bin Ladin.

Osama bin Ladin’s death illustrates the resolve of the international community including Pakistan to fight and eliminate terrorism.

The Foreign Office statement said al-Qaeda had declared war on Pakistan. Scores of Al-Qaeda sponsored terrorist attacks resulted in deaths of thousands of innocent Pakistani men, women and children.

Almost, 30,000 Pakistani civilians lost their lives in terrorist attacks in the last few years. More than 5,000 Pakistani security and armed forces officials have been martyred in Pakistan’s campaign against Al-Qaeda, other terrorist organizations and affiliates.

Pakistan has played a significant role in efforts to eliminate terrorism.
“We have had extremely effective intelligence sharing arrangements with several intelligence agencies including that of the US. We will continue to support international efforts against terrorism.”

“It is Pakistan’s stated policy that it will not allow its soil to be used in terrorist attacks against any country. Pakistan’s political leadership, parliament, state institutions and the whole nation are fully united in their resolve to eliminate terrorism,” the statement said.

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I just quoted Obama's words. I did not know that you are more knowledgeable than him. If you insist, let me post the whole para about the Pakistan in Obama's speech

"Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding. Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people. Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations. And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates."

of course whole operation last night was conducted by American personals but It hard to believe that it was done without intelligence from Pakistani institutions and without their knowledge. Pakistan Army and Govt will distance its self from it publicly for political reason one would think.

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^ I am sure there was some cooperation, but the extent is not know at this time. Putting all the pieces together it seems the cooperation was limited to Pakistan allowing US helicopters to fly uninterrupted into Abbotabad, carry out their operations and leave.

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oh really? If you just scroll up and re-read your posts and our other Indian friend's post, you will come to know it inside out. Such information rich are the posts up there....

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maybe, but not all nefarious agendas are created equal. instead of dismissing this as just part of the job profile, you should be more concerned about whether the ISI's "strategic objectives" are the same as your government's and are in line with the best interests of its people.

in any case, RAW and other intelligence agencies are also subject to scrutiny and criticism. if they were to screw up in similarly colossal fashion there would be similar levels of criticism. the fact that all intelligence agencies may be up to funny business is not a good reason for people not to point fingers at pakistan in the wake of a failure/crime of this magnitude.

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Not sure what you are referring to, but I stand by all my past posts and this last one. Let me repeat - the "cooperation" was probably just limited to Pak allowing the Americans to fly into Abbotabad, clean up and fly out.