Attack on Osama analysis

 

“Osama bin Laden killed in fiery chopper raid on Pakistan mansion

May 2nd, 2011

By Nahal Toosi//thestar.com/

ABBOTTABAD, PAKISTAN—Four helicopters swooped in early Monday and killed Osama bin Laden in a fiery American raid on his fortress-like compound in a Pakistani town that is home to three army regiments.

His location raised pointed questions of whether Pakistani authorities knew the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted man.

“No Americans were harmed,” said U.S. President Barack Obama, according to theNew York Times.

“They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body” and buried it at sea.

Muslim tradition requires burial within 24 hours, but by doing it at sea, American authorities presumably were trying to avoid creating a shrine for his followers.

American officials said that Bin Laden was shot in the head after he tried to resist the assault force, and that one of his sons died with him, the Times reported.

The al Qaeda chief was living in a house in the town of Abbottabad that a U.S. official said was “custom built to hide someone of significance.” Abbottabad is around 100 kilometres from the capital Islamabad, far from the remote mountain caves along the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal border where most intelligence assessments had put bin Laden in recent years.

The house was close to the Kakul Military Academy, an army run institution where top officers train and one of several military institutions in the town.

A Pakistan intelligence official said the property where bin Laden was staying was 1,000 square metres and valued at $1 million.

Bin Laden went into hiding shortly after the Sept.11 attacks, so his communications with the outside world were handled by trusted couriers. U.S. spies have been monitoring many of those couriers for years, the CIA said on Sunday.

“One courier in particular had our constant attention,” a senior administration official said. “We identified him as both a protege of [Sept. 11 plotter] Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and [alleged al-Qaeda member] Abu Faraj al-Libi.”

The U.S. spy agency learned his name four years ago; two years later they pinpointed the general region where he was hiding. Still, it was not until August when they tracked him to the compound in Abbottabad.

CIA analysts spent the next several weeks examining satellite photos and intelligence reports to determine who might be living at the compound, and a senior U.S. official said that by September the CIA had determined there was a “strong possibility” that Bin Laden himself was hiding there.

“We were shocked by what we saw, an extraordinarily unique compound,” a CIA official said, according to the Times. “It has 12-to-18-foot walls, topped with barbed wire; internal walls sectioned off different areas of the compound; access was restricted by two security gates.”

The five-year-old compound even burned its own trash, to prevent anyone from snooping through the garbage, and had no phone or Internet connections to the outside, Al Jazeera English reported.

The house at the end of a narrow dirt road was roughly eight times larger than other homes in the area, but had no telephone or Internet connections, the New York Times reported.

The fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda second-in-command, was unclear Sunday night.

Critics have long accused elements of Pakistan’s security establishment of protecting bin Laden, though Islamabad has always denied this. Ties between the United States and Pakistan have hit a low point in recent months over the future of Afghanistan, and any hint of possible Pakistani collusion with bin Laden could hit them hard even amid the jubilation of getting American’s No. 1 enemy.

Obama called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan to tell him about the strike after it was set in motion, and his advisers called their Pakistani counterparts, the Times reported.

“They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations,” Obama said.

One Pakistani official said the choppers took off from a Pakistani air base, suggesting some co-operation in the raid. Obama said Pakistan had provided some information leading to the raid, but did not thank the country in his statement on bin Laden’s death.

On Sunday, the small team of American military and intelligence operatives poured out of helicopters for their attack on the heavily fortified compound, the Times reported.

American officials gave few details about the raid itself, other than to say that a firefight broke out shortly after the commandos arrived and that Bin Laden had tried to “resist the assault force.”

When the shooting had stopped, Bin Laden and three other men lay dead. One woman, whom an American official said had been used as a human shield by one of the Qaeda operatives, was also killed.

The Americans collected Bin Laden’s body and loaded it onto one of the remaining helicopters, and the assault force hastily left the scene.

Obama administration officials said that one of the helicopters went down during the mission because of mechanical failure, but that no Americans were injured.

It was 3:50 on Sunday afternoon when Obama received the news that Bin Laden had tentatively been identified, most likely after a series of DNA tests. CNN reported early Monday morning that DNA analysis was continuing but said there had been a positive photo identification.

The Qaeda leader’s body was flown to Afghanistan, the country where he made his fame fighting and killing Soviet troops during the 1980s.

From there, American officials said, the body was buried at sea.

Pakistan’s intelligence agency and the CIA have co-operated in joint raids before against al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan on several occasions since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. But U.S. and Pakistani officials indicated that this mission was too important to let anyone know more than a few minutes in advance.

Pakistan’s foreign office hailed the death as a breakthrough in the international campaign against militancy, and noted al-Qaeda “had declared war on Pakistan” and killed thousands of Pakistani civilians and security officers.

It stressed that the operation to kill bin Laden was an American one, and did not mention any concerns that Pakistani officials may have been protecting bin Laden in some way. Domestically, the government may yet face criticism by political opponents and Islamists for allowing U.S. forces to kill bin Laden on its soil.

“The sorrow is deep,” a poster on Ana Muslim (I Am Muslim), a pro-jihadi web forum wrote, according to ABC News, “for this is Osama and not just anyone. More valuable to us than our sons, may Allah rest his soul.”

“Another lion will take Osama’s place,” wrote one poster, reassuring his comrades. “We are all Osama.”

Pakistani officials said a son of bin Laden and three other people were killed. Other unidentified males were taken by helicopter away from the scene, while four children and two woman were arrested and left in an ambulance, the official said.

A witness and a Pakistani official said bin Laden’s guards opened fire from the roof of the compound in the small northwestern town of Abbottabad, and one of the choppers crashed. However U.S. officials said no Americans were hurt in the operation. The sound of at least two explosions rocked Abbottabad as the fighting raged.

It was not known how long bin Laden had been in Abbottabad, which is less than half a day’s drive from the border region with Afghanistan.

Locals said large Landcruisers and other expensive cars were seen driving into the compound, which is in a regular middle-class neighbourhood of dirt covered, litter-strewn roads and small shops. Cabbage and other vegetables are planted in empty plots in the neighbourhood.

Salman Riaz, a film actor, said that five months ago he and a crew tried to do some filming next to the house, but were told to stop by two men who came out.

“They told me that this is haram (forbidden in Islam),” he said.

Abbottabad resident Mohammad Haroon Rasheed said the raid happened about 1:15 a.m. local time.

“I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast,” he said. “In the morning when we went out to see what happened, some helicopter wreckage was lying in an open field.”

Qasim Khan, 18, who lives in a house just across the compound, said he saw two Pakistani men going in and coming out of the house often in the past several years. One of them was relatively a fat man with a beard, he said.

“I never saw anybody else with the two men but, some kids sometime would accompany them. I never saw any foreigner.”

Obama also called former U.S. president George W. Bush to tell him of the attack.

“This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001,” Bush said in a statement. “The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”

On March 14, Obama held the first of what would be five national security meetings in the course of the next six weeks to go over plans for the operation. The last was in Friday at 8:20 a.m.

Obama met with Thomas Donilon, the national security adviser; John O. Brennan, the counterterrorism adviser; and other senior aides in the Diplomatic Room at the White House, the Times reported.

The U.S. president was traveling to Alabama later that morning to witness the damage from last week’s tornadoes. But first he had to sign off on the final plan to send intelligence operatives into the compound where the administration believed that Bin Laden was hiding, the Times said.

Relations between Pakistan’s main intelligence agency and the CIA had been very strained in recent months. A Pakistani official has said that joint operations had been stopped as a result, and that the agency was demanding the Americans cut down on drone strikes in the border area.

In late January, a senior Indonesian al-Qaeda operative, Umar Patek, was arrested at another location in Abbottabad.

News of his arrest only broke in late March. A Pakistani intelligence official said its officers were led to the house where Patek was staying after they arrested an al-Qaida facilitator, Tahir Shahzad, who worked at the post office there.”