Bin Laden probably spent his last days watching cricket, and dodging cricket balls that his neighbours often used to throw deliberately into his compound. The residents wouldn’t return the ball. They would pay them a hundred rupees to buy a new one.
“There was a rumour in the neighbourhood that the man who lived there was Baitullah Mehsud’s nephew,” said Danial, a neighbour. “On two occasions, I hit the ball and it went into his compound. But there was no one there, or they didn’t open,” he said. “I think there was a $20 million reward for bin Laden. I couldn’t have imagined it was him or I would have turned him in myself.”
The heavily fortified compound was called “Waziristan Haveli”. It housed conservative Pashtuns in a Hazara-dominated neighbourhood. The mysterious house, only a quarter of a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy, had walls up to sixteen feet high, with barbed wires, and was deliberately built to look old and rugged.
The local patwari (land registrar) said Arshad Khan, a Pashtun from Charsaddah, had bought the 7 kanals and 5 marlas plot in 2004 for about Rs 5 million, at least 25 percent more than the value of property in that locality. Bilal Town is a recently developed neighbourhood, locals say. A lot of people moved to the area after the 2005 earthquake.
Arshad, who is now believed to be one of the couriers of Osama bin Laden, bought the plot from Qazi Mahfoozul Haq, who lectures at the Frontier Medical College in Abbottabad and runs a small private clinic. “He looked like a simple man. He said he needed the place for his uncle,” he told TFT. The identity cards owned by Arshad, who died in the US raid, and his accomplice Nadeem Khan were fake. It is likely that they belonged not to Charsaddah but to some place in FATA.
The contractor who built the compound, and was also a neighbour, was picked up by the armed forces. Shabraiz Khan’s son confirmed that he was close to Arshad and had helped build the house.
Sherdil Khan, who delivers newspapers in the neighbourhood, said one of his clients was an army officer who lives only 200 yards from the compound. The medical corps officer had recently built two watchtowers that overlooked the compound, he said. The locals said the major had moved in eight months ago after he was posted from Peshawar to Abbottabad. He could not be reached for comment. But the land registrar confirmed some land in the compound belonged to the serving military officer.
Sherdil Khan said it had been “a mysterious place, and the inhabitants hardly ever came out”. But “I cannot imagine that a high value target like OBL could have lived there.”
The only person in the neighbourhood who had actually been in the compound is the 11-year-old Asra Amjad, who said OBL’s courier had gifted her two rabbits. “It was a strange house,” she said. “The inhabitants spoke Pashtu, mostly.” A red Suzuki van that carried a goat to the compound every day is missing, locals say.
Who lived in the compound?
Locals say Arshad Khan and Nadeem Khan lived in the house “with lots of children”. Accounts vary on whether there were five children or seven. Osama bin Laden, his younger wife and sons, and the wives of the couriers also lived in the house.
Osama’s family was moved to a safehouse in Rawalpindi after the American raid and is being questioned by the ISI, which has declined, according to sources, to share new intelligence with the US. After ISI chief Gen Pasha’s visit to Washington following the raids, a senior US administration official said, “Kayani and Pasha have a lot of explaining to do. There seems to be an understanding in the administration that the Pakistanis have not changed there old policy of using terrorism to advance their foreign policy. And we distinguish between the civilians and the armed forces of Pakistan.”
Intelligence and Capture:
Former president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf had said in his book ‘In the Line of Fire’ that a senior Al Qaeda operative was believed to be in Abbottabad. On page 258, he talks about a 2004 operation: “We were tipped off that someone important in Al Qaeda was living in a house there, and that someone else, also very important, someone we were looking for, was supposed to come and meet him. We did not know that the second someone was Abu Faraj Al Libbi, but we had enough information to attempt an interception. Our team members stationed themselves around the house in Abbottabad. When the expected visitor turned up, the person in the house came out to meet him. But as he approached, the visitor acted suspicious and tried to run away. There was an exchange of fire, and he was killed. The visitor was not Libbi. Later, when we arrested Libbi and interrogated him, we discovered his pattern: he would always send someone ahead as a decoy while he imself stayed behind to observe.”
Umar Patek, an Al Qaeda-linked Indonesian militant and the suspected co-planner of the 2002 Bali bombings, was also arrested in Abbottabad. Pakistani officials had kept Patek’s arrest on January 25 secret until last month, when the information was suddenly and inexplicably released. The revelation might have alarmed the bin Laden compound. But former CIA station chief Art Keller doesn’t think Umar had any intelligence value. “It was the phone calls traced by the ISI and handed over to the Americans that raised the red flags and sparked the investigations.”
Retired Air Vice Marshal Shahid N Khan, a former chief of PAF’s central command, said, “The Americans might have used the special air corridor given to them by Pakistan for earthquake relief operations.” There is debate in Pakistan on whether Pakistani intelligence might have assisted the US in killing Osama.
The helicopter that crashed inside the compound was a highly modified version of the H-60. The chopper might actually give us a clue. Aviation Week claims it was “a previously undisclosed, classified stealth helicopter”.
“Stealth technology on helicopters is not itself new,” it says, “but the fact that a previously unknown machine was used in this raid is yet another proof of the degree of importance that this mission had for US commanders.”
“There is no way he might have moved to Abbottabad without an understanding with the Pakistani ISI,” Art Keller said. “At best, it was wilful blindness on the part of the ISI. Or wilful blindness is a survival mechanism in Pakistan,” he said while talking to TFT.
A top NATO commander in Afghanistan said the Americans ran a highly clandestine operation with multiple advanced intelligence command centres to cordon-in Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad. The Pakistanis were kept in the dark, he said, because “we just not trust them”.
Reaction:
The reaction in Pakistan has been confusion mixed with anger and guilt. The streets remained remarkably quiet except a couple of peaceful processions of less than 500 people. The average Pakistani on the street refuses to believe that Osama was actually killed in the raid.
Former Red Mosque cleric Abdul Aziz told TFT he was ready to adopt bin Laden’s children. “This is as much of a murder as of my brother Ghazi,” he said. “Osama bin Laden is a hero for us and for every Muslim. If the Pakistani government doesn’t want to take care of the kids, there are many including me who would.” The Americans meanwhile want some answers. The developing perception is that bin Laden was being protected, either by the Pakistani establishment or by certain rogue elements within the armed forces.
The armed forces are under immense pressure and seem to have turned to the civil government for face-saving measures. The prime minister defended the ISI in his speech in parliament. He said a probe was being carried out and that the army would give an explanation to the public representatives.
“We understand the stance of Pakistan’s civilian governments,” a foreign
diplomat said. “But the incident seems to have raised important questions
about the role of the military.”
Ali Chishti is a writer based in Karachi. He can be reached at
akchishti@hotmail.com
