Conventional long name	Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Native name	}}

}} ''Islāmī Jumhūrī-ye Pākistān'' |common_name=Pakistan |image_flag=Flag of Pakistan.svg |image_coat=Coat of arms of Pakistan.svg |symbol_type=State Emblem |image_map=Pakistan (orthographic projection).svg |map_caption=Area controlled by Pakistan in dark green; claimed but uncontrolled territory in light green |map_width=220px |national_motto= Unity, Discipline, Faith (Urdu: }}}}) ''Ittehad, Tanzeem, Yaqeen-e-Muhkam'' |national_anthem=''Qaumī Tarāna'' |official_languages=Urdu (National) English |regional_languages=Balochi, Pashto, Punjabi, Saraiki, Sindhi |demonym=Pakistani |capital=Islamabad |latd=33|latm=40|latNS=N|longd=73|longm=10|longEW=E |largest_city=Karachi |government_type=Federal Parliamentary republic |leader_title1=President |leader_name1=Asif Zardari (PPP) |leader_title2=Prime Minister |leader_name2=Yousaf Gillani (PPP) |leader_title3=Chief Justice |leader_name3=Iftikhar Chaudhry |leader_title4=Chair of Senate |leader_name4=Farooq Naek (PPP) |leader_title5=House Speaker |leader_name5=Fahmida Mirza (PPP) |legislature=Majlis-e-Shoora |upper_house=Senate |lower_house=National Assembly |sovereignty_type=Formation |established_event1=Pakistan Declaration |established_date1= 28 January 1933 |established_event2=Pakistan Resolution |established_date2=23 March 1940 |established_event3=Independence |established_date3=from the United Kingdom |established_event4=Declared |established_date4=14 August 1947 |established_event5=Islamic Republic |established_date5=23 March 1956 |area_km2=796,095 |area_sq_mi=307,374 |area_rank=36th |area_magnitude= |percent_water=3.1 |population_estimate=177,163,231 |population_estimate_year=September 2011 |population_estimate_rank=6th |population_census=132,352,279 |population_census_year=1998 |population_density_km2=214.3 |population_density_sq_mi=555 |population_density_rank=55th |GDP_PPP_year=2011 |GDP_PPP=$482.913 billion |GDP_PPP_rank= |GDP_PPP_per_capita=$2,851 |GDP_PPP_per_capita_rank= |GDP_nominal=$202.831 billion |GDP_nominal_rank= |GDP_nominal_year=2011 |GDP_nominal_per_capita=$1,197 |GDP_nominal_per_capita_rank= |HDI_year=2011 |HDI= 0.504 |HDI_rank=145th |HDI_category=low |Gini=31.2 |Gini_year=2005 |Gini_category=medium |currency=Pakistani Rupee (Rs.) |currency_code=PKR |time_zone=PST |utc_offset=+5 |time_zone_DST=PDT |utc_offset_DST=+6 |drives_on=left |cctld=.pk |calling_code=92 }}

Pakistan ( or ; }}) (), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (}}) is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan lies adjacent to Pakistan but is separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor. In addition, Oman is also located in maritime vicinity and shares a marine border with Pakistan. Pakistan is strategically situated between the important regions of South Asia, Central Asia and the greater Middle East.

The region forming modern Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures including the neolithic Mehrgarh and the bronze era Indus Valley Civilisation. Subsequently it was the recipient of Hindu, Persian, Indo-Greek, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Afghan and Sikh cultures through several invasions and/or settlements. As a result the area has remained a part of numerous empires and dynasties including the Indian empires, Persian empires, Arab caliphates, Mongol, Mughal, Durrani Empire (Afghan Empire), Sikh and British Empire. Pakistan gained independence from the British Empire in 1947, after a struggle for independence led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah that sought the partition of British India and a new independent state for the Muslim majority populations of the eastern and western regions of India. Initially a dominion, with the adoption of its constitution in 1956 Pakistan became an Islamic republic. In 1971, an armed conflict in East Pakistan resulted in the creation of Bangladesh.

Pakistan is a federal parliamentary republic consisting of four provinces and four federal territories. With a population exceeding 170 million people, it is the sixth most populous country in the world and has the second largest Muslim population after Indonesia. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a similar variation in its geography and wildlife. Its semi-industrialized economy is the 27th largest in the world in terms of purchasing power. Since gaining independence, Pakistan's history has been characterised by periods of military rule, political instability and conflicts with neighbouring India. The country faces challenging problems including terrorism, poverty, illiteracy and corruption.

Pakistan has the eighth largest standing armed force and is the only Muslim-majority nation to possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan is the first nuclear power country in the Muslim world, and the second in the South Asia, the first being India. It is designated as a major non-NATO ally of the United States and a strategic ally of China. It is a founding member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) and a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, Next Eleven economies and the G20 developing nations.

==Etymology== The name ''Pakistan'' means ''Land of (the) Pure'' in Urdu and Persian. It was coined in 1933 as ''Pakstan'' by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan movement activist, who published it in his pamphlet ''Now or Never''. The name is an acronym representing the "thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKSTAN—by which we mean the five Northern units of India viz: Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind, and Baluchistan". The letter 'i' was added to ease pronunciation and form the linguistically correct name.

History

Early period

The Indus region, which covers a considerable amount of Pakistan, was the site of several ancient cultures including the Neolithic era's Mehrgarh (7000-2500 BCE) and the bronze era Indus Valley Civilisation (2500–1500 BCE) at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.

The Vedic Civilization, dating from around 1700-1400 BCE flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, now Taxila in Punjab. The extent of the Swat and Cemetery H culture of the Rig Vedic people was in the Hindu Kush to Punjab region and the upper gangetic plains. The territory of the present-day Pakistan was once the seat of the ancient Hindu civilization, and the place of origin of the Rig Veda. Much of the area in which Hinduism originated is now in Pakistan, and the religion was well established in the region before the arrival of Islam in the 8th century AD. The city of Multan, which was once considered an important Hindu pilgrimage centre, was known to have had Hindu shrines.

Successive ancient empires and kingdoms ruled the region: the Achaemenid Persian empire around 543 BCE, the Greek empire founded by Alexander the Great in 326 BCE and the Mauryan empire founded by Chandragupta Maurya and extended by Ashoka the Great, until 185 BCE.

The Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria included Gandhara and Punjab from 184 BCE, and reached its greatest extent under Menander, establishing the Greco-Buddhist period with advances in trade and culture. The city of Taxila (Takshashila) became a major centre of learning in ancient times—the remains of the city, located to the west of Islamabad, are one of the country's major archaeological sites. Taxila is considered to be amongst the earliest universities and centers of higher education in the world.

Medieval age

The Rai Dynasty (c.489–632) of Sindh, at its zenith, ruled this region and the surrounding territories. In 712 CE, the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh and Multan in southern Punjab. The Pakistan government's official chronology states that "its foundation was laid" as a result of this conquest. This Arab and Islamic victory would set the stage for several successive Muslim empires in South Asia, including the Ghaznavid Empire, the Ghorid Kingdom, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. During this period, Sufi missionaries played a pivotal role in converting a majority of the regional Buddhist and Hindu population to Islam.

British colony

The gradual decline of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century provided opportunities for the Afghans, Balochis and Sikhs to exercise control over large areas until the British East India Company gained ascendancy over South Asia. The Indian Rebellion of 1857, also known as the ''Sepoy Mutiny'', was the region's last major armed struggle against the British Raj, and it laid the foundations for the largely non-violent freedom struggle led by the Indian National Congress in the twentieth century. In the 1920s and 1930s, a movement led by Congress leader Mahatma Gandhi engaged millions of protesters in mass campaigns of civil disobedience.

The All India Muslim League rose to popularity in the late 1930s amid fears of under-representation and neglect of Muslims in politics. On 29 December 1930, Allama Iqbal's presidential address called for an autonomous "state in northwestern India for Indian Muslims, within the body politic of India." Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah espoused the ''Two Nation Theory'' and led the Muslim League to adopt the ''Lahore Resolution'' of 1940, popularly known as the Pakistan Resolution. In early 1947, Britain announced the decision to end its rule in India. In June 1947, the nationalist leaders of British India—including Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs—agreed to the proposed terms of transfer of power and independence.

The modern state of Pakistan was established on 14 August 1947 (27 Ramadan 1366 in the Islamic Calendar), carved out of the two Muslim-majority wings in the eastern and northwestern regions of British India and comprising the provinces of Balochistan, East Bengal, the North-West Frontier Province, West Punjab and Sindh. The controversial, and ill-timed, division of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal caused communal riots across India and Pakistan—millions of Muslims moved to Pakistan and millions of Hindus and Sikhs moved to India.

Disputes arose over several princely states including in the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir, whose Hindu ruler had acceded to India following an invasion by Pashtun tribal militias, leading to the First Kashmir War in 1948.

Modern

From 1947 to 1956, Pakistan was a Dominion of Pakistan in the Commonwealth of Nations, as West-Pakistan claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Pakistan, considering itself to be the reorganized continuation of the country in the United Nations. It became a Parliamentary Republic in 1956, but the civilian rule was stalled by a coup d’état by then-Army Commander-in-Chief General Ayub Khan, who was the first Chief Martial Law Administrator and also the President during 1958–69, a period of internal instability and a second war with India in 1965. His successor, General Yahya Khan (1969–71), also an Army Commander, had to deal with a devastating cyclone—which caused 500,000 deaths in East-Pakistan—and also face a bitter civil war in 1971. Economic grievances and political dissent in East Pakistan led to violent political tension and military repression that escalated into a civil war. After nine months of guerrilla warfare between the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Indian backed Bengali Mukti Bahini militia, Indian intervention escalated into the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, and ultimately to the secession of East Pakistan as the independent state of Bangladesh.

Isolated and devastated, General Yahya Khan immediately surrendered his executive powers to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who became the first and to-date only civilian Chief Martial Law Administrator. Civilian rule resumed in Pakistan from 1972 to 1977 under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, until he was deposed and later sentenced to death in 1979 by General Zia-ul-Haq, who became the country's third military president and fourth Chief Martial Law Administrator. From the period of 1971 to 1977, Bhutto worked on uniting the remaining part of the country and taking initiatives to stabilizing the economy. As part of this policy, Bhutto inaugurated the country's first atomic power plant in Karachi, Sindh Province in 1972. Under Bhutto, Pakistan became first nuclear power country in the Muslim world, and also authorized the integrated nuclear weapons development the same year. After ''Smiling Buddha'' in 1974, India's first nuclear test, Bhutto intensified and accelerated the scientific research on nuclear weapons. By the 1978, this crash program had fully became mature, and Pakistan conducted a cold-test of a nuclear device (see ''Kirana-I'') in Kirana Hills in 1983, followed by another cold test (see ''Kahuta Test'') in 1984.

However, another serious liberation movement took place in Balochistan Province in 1974. In response, Bhutto launched an armed operation in the province and the rebellion was successfully quelled by the Pakistan Armed Forces in 1978. Bhutto was removed in a coup d'état led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Chief of Army Staff, in 1977. The Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the execution of Bhutto after he allegedly approved the murder of political opponent. In 1979, Bhutto was executed and General Zia-ul-Haq became the Chief Martial Law Administrator and President after Bhutto's execution. General Zia's martial law and military government lasted until 1988 when he died in a plane crash in 1988.

As military president, General Zia introduced the Islamic Sharia legal code, which increased religious influences on the civil service and the military. With the death of President Zia in a plane crash in 1988, Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was elected as the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan. Over the next decade, she fought for power with conservative leader Nawaz Sharif as the country's political and economic situation worsened. Pakistan got involved in the 1991 Gulf War and sent 5,000 troops as part of a U.S.-led coalition, specifically for the defence of Saudi Arabia.

Recent elections

Navaz Sharif secured an overwhelming victory over Benazir Bhutto in the 1997 parliamentary elections and sworned as Prime minister of Pakistan. Navaz Sharif became the second politically strongest Prime minister, only after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to have claimed and have achieved the exclusive mandate of all over the Pakistan, defeating Benazir Bhutto on a large scale margin. In 1998, tensions with India heightened, as Navaz Sharif ordered the nuclear tests in Balochistan in May 1998 (see ''Chagai-I'' and ''Chagai-II'') as a reaction to that of Indian nuclear tests (''Pokhran-II''). Military tensions in the Kargil conflict with India were followed by a Pakistani military coup d'état in 1999 in which General Pervez Musharraf assumed vast executive powers. In 2001, Musharraf became President after the controversial resignation of Rafiq Tarar. After the 2002 parliamentary elections, Musharraf transferred executive powers to the newly elected Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who was succeeded in the 2004 prime-ministerial election by Shaukat Aziz. On 15 November 2007, the National Assembly, for the first time in Pakistan's history, completed its tenure and new elections were called. The exiled political leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were permitted to return to Pakistan. However, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto during the election campaign in December led to postponement of elections and nationwide riots. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) won the largest number of seats in the elections held in February 2008 and its member Yousaf Raza Gillani was sworn in as Prime Minister. On 18 August 2008, Pervez Musharraf resigned from the presidency when threatened with impeachment, and was succeeded by current president Asif Ali Zardari. By the end of 2009, more than 3 million Pakistani civilians have been displaced by the on going conflict in North-West Pakistan between the government and Taliban militants.

Politics

Pakistan is a democratic parliamentary federal republic with Islam as the state religion. The first Constitution of Pakistan was adopted in 1956, but was suspended in 1958 by General Ayub Khan. The Constitution of 1973 – suspended in 1977, by Zia-ul-Haq, but re-instated in 1985  – is the country's most important document, laying the foundations of the current government.

The bicameral legislature comprises a 100-member Senate and a 342-member National Assembly. The President is the Head of state and the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and is elected by an electoral college. The prime minister is usually the leader of the largest party in the National Assembly. Each province has a similar system of government with a directly elected Provincial Assembly in which the leader of the largest party or alliance becomes Chief Minister. Provincial Governors are appointed by the President.

The Pakistani military has played an influential role in mainstream politics throughout Pakistan's history, with military presidents ruling from 1958–71, 1977–88 and from 1999–2008. The leftist Pakistan Peoples Party, led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, won support after the loss of East Pakistan but was overthrown amidst riots in 1977. Under the military rule of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, a politically nationalist insurgency in Balochistan was also bloodlessly quelled by military governor Rahimuddin. The 1990s were characterised by coalition politics dominated by the Pakistan Peoples Party and a rejuvenated Muslim League. Pakistan is an active member of the United Nations (UN) and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the latter of which Pakistan has used as a forum for ''Enlightened Moderation'', a plan to promote a renaissance and enlightenment in the Muslim world. Pakistan is also a member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO). In the past, Pakistan has had mixed relations with the United States; in the early 1950s, Pakistan was the United States' "most allied ally in Asia" and a member of both the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). After Sino-Indian War in 1962 Pakistan's closest strategic, military and economic ally is China. During the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, Pakistan was a major U.S. ally. But relations soured in the 1990s, when sanctions were imposed by the U.S. over Pakistan's refusal to abandon its nuclear activities. However, the American War on Terrorism, as an aftermath of 11 September 2001 attacks in New York, led to an improvement in US–Pakistan ties, especially after Pakistan ended its support of the Taliban regime in Kabul. Its positive side was evidenced by a major increase in American military aid, providing Pakistan $4 billion more in three years after the 9/11 attacks than before. On the other hand, Pakistan is presently burdened with nearly 3 million displaced civilians due to the ongoing Afghan war. , in contexts of the War on Terror, Pakistan was being referred to as part of the Greater Middle East by the US under the Bush administration.

On 18 February 2008, Pakistan held its general elections after Benazir Bhutto's assassination postponed the original date of 8 January 2008. The Pakistan Peoples Party won the majority of the votes and formed an alliance with the Pakistan Muslim League (N). They nominated and elected Yousaf Raza Gilani as Prime Minister. On 18 August 2008, Pervez Musharraf resigned as President of Pakistan amidst increasing calls for his impeachment. In the presidential election that followed, Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan People's Party won a landslide majority and became President of Pakistan.

Administrative divisions

Pakistan is a federation of four provinces, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a capital territory and a group of federally administered tribal areas. The government of Pakistan exercises ''de facto'' jurisdiction over the western parts of the disputed Kashmir region, organised as separate political entities; Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. The latter has been given a province-like status for self government by ''the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order'', 2009.

Prior to 2001, the sub-provincial tier of government was composed of 26 divisions with two further tiers (districts and tehsils) administered directly from the provincial level. The divisions were abolished in 2001 and a new three-tiered system of local government came into effect comprising districts, tehsils and union councils with an elected body at each tier.

There are currently 113 districts in Pakistan-proper, each with several tehsils and union councils. The tribal areas comprise seven tribal agencies and six small frontier regions detached from neighbouring districts while Azad Kashmir comprises ten and Gilgit-Baltistan seven districts respectively.

Provinces !! Territories
Balochistan (Pakistan)	Balochistan	Islamabad Capital Territory
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa	Federally Administered Tribal Areas including the Frontier Regions
Punjab (Pakistan)	Punjab	Azad Kashmir>Azad Jammu and Kashmir
Sindh	Gilgit-Baltistan

Military

The armed forces of Pakistan are the eighth-largest in the world. The three main services are the Army, Navy and the Air Force, supported by a number of paramilitary forces which carry out internal security roles and border patrols. The National Command Authority is responsible for exercising employment and development control of all strategic nuclear forces and organisations, and for Pakistan's nuclear doctrine. Pakistani defence forces has had close military relation with China and United States and predominantly imports military equipments from these two countries. The defence forces of China and Pakistan also organise joint military exercises.

The Pakistan Army came into existence after independence in 1947 and is currently headed by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. The Pakistan Army is "the heart of power" in Pakistan who "consistently meddled in politics," as well as "run secretive industrial conglomerates". It has an active force of 612,000 personnel and 513,000 men in reserve. Conscription may be introduced in times of emergency, but it has never been imposed.

Since independence, the Army has been involved in four wars with neighbouring India and several border skirmishes with Afghanistan. It maintained division and brigade strength presences in some of the Arab countries during the past Arab–Israeli Wars, and aided the Coalition in the first Gulf War. Other major operations undertaken by the Army include Operation Black Thunderstorm and Operation Rah-e-Nijat. Apart from conflicts, the Army has been an active participant in United Nations peacekeeping missions and played a major role in rescuing trapped American soldiers from Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993 in Operation Gothic Serpent.

The Pakistan military first saw combat in the First Kashmir War, gaining control of what is now Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In 1961, the army repelled a major Afghan incursion on Pakistan's western border. Pakistan and India were at war again in 1965 and in 1971. In 1973, the military quelled a Baloch nationalist uprising.

In the past, Pakistani personnel have volunteered to serve alongside Arab forces in conflicts with Israel. During the Six-Day War in 1967 and Yom Kippur War in October 1973 PAF pilots volunteered to go to the Middle East to support Egypt and Syria in a state of war against Israel, Air Force pilots shot down ten Israeli planes in the Six-Day War. During the Yom Kippur War 16 PAF pilots volunteered to leave for the Middle East in order to support Egypt and Syria but by the time they arrived Egypt had already agreed on a cease-fire.

During the Soviet–Afghan war, Pakistan shot down several intruding pro-Soviet Afghan aircraft and provided covert support to the Afghan mujahideen through the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

In 1999, Pakistan was involved in the Kargil War. Currently, the military is engaged in an armed conflict with extremist Islamic militants in the north-west of the country. Since 2004, Pakistani armed forces have engaged in fighting against Pakistani Taliban groups. Militant groups have engaged in suicide bombings in Pakistani cities, killing more than 3,000 civilians and armed personnel in 2009 alone.

Internationally the Pakistani armed forces contributed to United Nations peacekeeping efforts, with more than 10,700 personnel deployed in 2009, and are presently the largest contributor. Pakistan provided a military contingent to the UN-backed coalition in the first Gulf War. Pakistani troops were rushed to Makkah on the Saudi Government's request and Pakistani SSG commandos led the operation of the Grand Mosque Seizure.

Kashmir conflict

The Kashmir conflict (, ) is a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region, the northwesternmost region of South Asia.

India claims the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir and as of 2010, administers approximately 43% of the region, including most of Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, Ladakh, and the Siachen Glacier. India's claim is contested by Pakistan, which controls approximately 37% of Kashmir, namely Azad Kashmir and the northern areas of Gilgit and Baltistan. China controls 20% of Kashmir, including Aksai Chin, which it occupied following the brief Sino-Indian War of 1962, and the Trans-Karakoram Tract (also known as the Shaksam Valley), which was ceded by Pakistan in 1963.

India has officially stated that it believes that Kashmir is an integral part of India, though the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, stated after the 2010 Kashmir Unrest that his government is willing to grant autonomy within the purview of Indian constitution to Kashmir if there is consensus on this issue. Pakistan says that Kashmir is a disputed territory whose final status must be determined by the people of Kashmir. China states that Aksai Chin is a part of China and does not recognize the addition of Aksai Chin to the Kashmir region. Certain Kashmiri independence groups believe that Kashmir should be independent of both India and Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have fought at least three wars over Kashmir, including the Indo-Pakistani Wars of 1947, 1965 and 1999. India and Pakistan have also been involved in several skirmishes over the Siachen Glacier.

Geography

Pakistan covers an area of , approximately equalling the combined land areas of France and the United Kingdom. It is the 36th largest nation by total area although this ranking varies depending on how the disputed territory of Kashmir is counted. Apart from the coastline along the Arabian Sea, Pakistan's land borders a total of — with Afghanistan, with China, with India and with Iran. The territory it controls mostly lies between latitudes 23° and 37° N (a small area is north of 37°), and longitudes 61° and 78° E (a small area is west of 61°).

Geologically, Pakistan overlaps with the Indian tectonic plate in its Sindh and Punjab provinces, while Balochistan and most of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa lie within the Eurasian plate which mainly comprises the Iranian plateau. Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir lie mainly in Central Asia along the edge of the Indian plate and are hence prone to violent earthquakes.

The geography of Pakistan is a blend of landscapes varying from plains to deserts, forests, hills, and plateaus ranging from the coastal areas of the Arabian Sea in the south to the mountains of the Karakoram range in the north. Pakistan is divided into three major geographic areas: the northern highlands; the Indus River plain; and the Balochistan Plateau. The northern highlands of Pakistan contain the Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Pamir mountain ranges, which incorporate some of the world's highest peaks, including K2 () and Nanga Parbat (). The Balochistan Plateau lies to the West, and the Thar Desert in the East. An expanse of alluvial plains lies in Punjab and Sindh along the Indus river. The Indus River and its tributaries flow through the country from the Kashmir region to the Arabian Sea.

Climate

Pakistan's climate varies from tropical to temperate with arid conditions existing in the coastal south, characterised by a monsoon season with frequent flooding rainfall and a dry season with significantly lesser to no rainfall. There are four distinct seasons; a cool, dry winter from December through February; a hot, dry spring from March through May; the summer rainy season or southwest monsoon period, from June through September; and the retreating monsoon period of October and November. Rainfall can vary radically from year to year, and successive patterns of flooding and drought are common.

Flora and fauna

The diversity of landscapes and climates in Pakistan allows for a wide variety of trees and plants to flourish in this region. The forests range from coniferous alpine and subalpine trees such as spruce, pine, and deodar cedar in the extreme northern mountains, to deciduous trees such as the mulberry-type Shisham in the Sulaiman range in the majority of the country, to palms such coconut and date in South Punjab and Balochistan and all of Sindh. The western hills are home to juniper and tamarisk as well as coarse grasses and scrub plants. Mangrove forests form much of the coastal wetlands along the coast in the south.

Coniferous forests in most of the northern and north-western highlands are found at altitudes ranging from 1,000m to 4,000m. In the xeric regions of Balochistan, date palms and ephedra are common floral varieties. In most of Punjab and Sindh, the Indus plains support tropical and subtropical dry and moist broadleaf forestry as well as tropical and xeric shrublands. These forests are mostly mulberry, acacia, and Eucalyptus.

According to statistics, 2.5% or about of Pakistan was forested in 2000.

Similar to the vegetation, the animal life in Pakistan reflects the varied climatic regions of the land. The southern plains are home to crocodiles in the Indus while boars, deer, porcupines, and small rodents are found more commonly in the surrounding areas. The sandy scrublands of central Pakistan are home to a jackals, hyenas, wild cats, panthers, and leopards.

In the north, a wide variety of animals have found home in the mountainous regions including the Marco Polo sheep, Urial sheep, Markhor and Ibex goats, black and brown Himalayan bears, and the rare Snow Leopard. Another rare species is the blind Indus River Dolphin of which there are believed to be about 1,100 remaining, protected at the Indus River Dolphin Reserve in Sindh. There have been sightings of the rare Asiatic cheetahs in the southwestern deserts of Sindh and Balochistan.

Apart from crows, sparrows and myna, hawks, falcons, and eagles are the more commonly found birds in Pakistan. A lot of birds sighted within Pakistan are migratory as they make their way from Europe, Central Asia and India.

In recent years, the number of wild animals being killed for fur and leather trading led to a new law banning the hunting of wild animals and birds as well as the establishment of several wildlife sanctuaries and game reserves. The number of hunters have greatly dwindled since then.

Vast sections of the Indus flood plains have been cleared of natural vegetation to grow crops. Only animals like the jackal, mongoose, jungle cat, civet cat, scaly anteater, desert cat and the wild hare occur in these areas. Hog deer are found in riveine tracts. The crop residues and wild growth support reasonable populations of black and grey partridges.

The lack of vegetative cover, severity of climatic conditions, and the impact of grazing animals on the deserts have left wild animals in a precarious position. Chinkara is the only animal that can still be found in significant numbers in Cholistan. The blackbuck, once plentiful in Cholistan, has now been eliminated; efforts are being made to reintroduce them into the country. A small number of blue bulls are found along the Pakistan-Indian border, and in some parts of Cholistan. Grey partridge, species of sand grouse and the Indian courser are the main birds of the area. Peafowl occur in some areas in Cholistan. The Kohistan region of Pakistan, Palas Velley, also has a significant population of Western Tragopan.

Economy

Pakistan has a semi-industrialized economy. The growth poles of the Pakistani economy are situated along the Indus River. Diversified economies of Karachi and Punjab's urban centres, coexist with lesser developed areas in other parts of the country. Despite being a very poor country in 1947, Pakistan's economic growth rate has been better than the global average during the subsequent four decades, but imprudent policies led to a slowdown in the late 1990s.

Recently, wide-ranging economic reforms have resulted in a stronger economic outlook and accelerated growth especially in the manufacturing and financial services sectors. Since the 1990s, there has been great improvement in the foreign exchange position and rapid growth in hard currency reserves.

The 2005 estimate of foreign debt was close to US$40 billion. However, this has decreased in recent years with assistance from the International Monetary Fund and significant debt-relief from the United States. Pakistan's gross domestic product, as measured by purchasing power parity, is estimated to be $475.4 billion while its per capita income stands at $2,942. The poverty rate in Pakistan is estimated to be between 23% and 28%.

GDP growth was steady during the mid-2000s at a rate of 7%; however, slowed down during the Economic crisis of 2008 to 4.7%. A large inflation rate of 24.4% and a low savings rate, and other economic factors, continue to make it difficult to sustain a high growth rate. Pakistan's GDP is US$167 billions, which makes it the 48th-largest economy in the world or 27th largest by purchasing power adjusted exchange rates. Today, Pakistan is regarded as to having the second largest economy in South Asia.

The structure of the Pakistani economy has changed from a mainly agricultural base to a strong service base. Agriculture now only accounts for roughly 20% of the GDP, while the service sector accounts for 53% of the GDP. Significant foreign investments have been made in several areas including telecommunications, real estate and energy. Other important industries include apparel and textiles (accounting for nearly 60% of exports), food processing, chemicals manufacture, and the iron and steel industries. Pakistan's exports in 2008 amounted to $20.62 billion (USD). Pakistan is a rapidly developing country.

However, the economic crisis of 2008 led Pakistan to seek more than $100 billion in aid in order to avoid possible bankruptcy. This was never given to Pakistan and it had to depend on a more aggressive fiscal policy, backed by the IMF. A year later, Asian Development Bank reported that the Pakistan economic crisis was easing. Furthermore it is projected that in 2010 Pakistan economy would grow at least 4% and could grow more with strong international economic recovery.

Tourism

Despite being once listed as one of the most dangerous countries in the world by ''The Economist'', tourism is still a growing industry in Pakistan because of its diverse cultures, peoples and landscapes. The variety of attractions ranges from the ruins of ancient civilisations such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Taxila, to the Himalayan hill-stations, that attract those interested in field and winter sports. Pakistan also has five out of fourteen mountain peaks of height over , that attract adventurers and mountaineers from around the world, especially to K2. From April to September, domestic and international visitors to these areas bring tourist income to the local people.

In Balochistan there are many caves for cavers and tourists to visit especially the Juniper Shaft Cave, the Murghagull Gharra cave, Mughall saa cave, and Pakistan's naturally decorated cave, the Mangocher Cave. Pakistan is a member country of the Union International de Spéléologie (UIS).

The northern parts of Pakistan are home to several historical fortresses, towers and other architecture including the Hunza and Chitral valleys, the latter being home to the Kalash, a small pre-Islamic Animist community. Punjab is also the site of Alexander's battle on the Jhelum River. The historic city of Lahore is considered Pakistan's cultural centre and has many examples of Mughal architecture such as the Badshahi Masjid, Shalimar Gardens, Tomb of Jahangir and the Lahore Fort. The Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) also helps promote tourism in the country. However, tourism is still limited because of the lack of proper infrastructure and the worsening security situation in the country. The recent militancy in Pakistan's scenic sites, including Swat in Khybar Pakhtoon Kawa province, have dealt a massive blow to the tourism industry. Many of the troubles in these tourist destinations are also blamed on the frail travel network, tourism regulatory framework, low prioritisation of the tourism industry by the government, low effectiveness of marketing and a constricted tourism perception. After these areas were being cleared off the militant groups in late 2009, the government, with financial support from the USAID, started a campaign to reintroduce tourism in Swat valley. Pakistan receives 500,000 tourists annually, with almost half of them heading to northern Pakistan.

Transport

[[Image:Karachi port and harbour aerial.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Karachi Port and Naval bases, by adib .|The Karachi Port is the largest port in the country and one of South Asia's busiest.]] Rail services in Pakistan are provided by the state-run Pakistan Railways, under the supervision of the Ministry of Railways. Pakistan Railways provides an important mode of transportation in Pakistan, catering to the large-scale movement of people and freight. The railway network comprises 8,163 km of which 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) (broad gauge) forms 7,718 km including 293 km of electrified track. Pakistan Railways carry 65 million passengers annually and daily operates 228 mail, express and passenger trains. Pakistan Railways also operate special trains for various occasions. The Freight Business Unit with 12000 personnel operates over 200 freight stations on the railway network. Pakistan has also planned or had many Mass Transit Systems. The Karachi Circular Railway, which opened in the early 1940s, is the only functioning Mass Transit System in Pakistan . In 1976, Karachi was slated to begin work on an underground metro system, but plans have been put on hold since. The Lahore Metro is another proposal still in planning and is scheduled to be completed by 2020. Pakistan has been successful in foreign trade by rail. Pakistan has successfully traded with countries such as Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Turkmenistan and China.

During the 1990s, Pakistan began an ongoing project to rebuild all national highways throughout the country specifically to important financial, cargo and textile centres. The National Highway Authority or NHA is responsible for the maintenance of all national highways in Pakistan. The construction of motorways began in the early 1990s with the idea building a world class road network and to reduce the load off the heavily used national highways throughout the country. The first motorway to be completed was M2 in 1997 from Islamabad to Lahore. Later on, highways such as M1 from Peshawar to Islamabad, M3 from Pindi Bhattian to Faisalabad, M9 from Hyderabad to Karachi, Karachi Northern Bypass from Hyderabad to Karachi, and the Lahore Ring Road were completed.

The waterway network in Pakistan is in its infancy with Karachi being the only major city situated next to the Arabian Sea. Plans are being proposed for the development of the waterways in the country along the Indus River and through the Punjab as it would boost employment opportunities and the economic and social development in Pakistan. Pakistan has an estimated 139 airports, 10 of them international.

Science and technology

Research and development forms an integral part in Pakistan's economy. For the most of the 20th century, Scientific efforts were at the rising level in Pakistan, that brought international recognition in its achievements, and became a major component of Pakistan's foreign policy. Pakistan is the home of Professor Abdus Salam— Pakistan's only Nobel laureate in Physics, and pioneer of the electroweak theory for which he received such honor. In modern time, the work of Pervez Hoodbhoy, Ishfaq Ahmad, and Riazudding played a crucial development in particle and theoretical physics. Pakistan also produced the world class mathematicians such as Asghar Qadir and Raziuddin Siddiqui where their research played a crucial advancement in mathematical physics. Munir Ahmad Rashid became the first Pakistani mathematician to provide the another theoretical proof of ''Fermat's Last Theorem'' in 2008. Dr. Salimuzzaman Siddiqui was the first Pakistani scientist to bring the anthelmintic, antifungal, antibacterial, and antiviral constituents of the Neem tree to the attention of natural products chemists. He was preceded by Atta ur Rahman, UNESCO laureate, and Naveed Zaidi, organic chemist being the first scientist to developed first workable plastic magnet at room temperature. Each and every year, scientists from all over the world are invited by the Pakistan Academy of Sciences and the Pakistan Government to participate in International Nathiagali Summer College on Physics, one of the largest seminar in Physics and Mathematics.

Medical scientists from Pakistan also pioneered in neuroscience. Dr. Ayub Ommaya, the inventor of the Ommaya reservoir, was one of the leading scientist in the field of Neurosciences. Another medical scientist, Naweed Syed became the first scientist who managed to "connect brain cells to a silicon chip". Pakistan has produced prolific technologist such as dr. Umar Saif, a pioneer in ICTD technology and Munir A. Khan, a leading figure in nuclear power technology. Aerospace engineer W. J. M. Turowicz developed and supervised the launch of the ''Rehbar-I'' rocket from Pakistan soil, making Pakistan first South Asian country to launch the rocket in space. In 1990, Pakistan launched its first and ingeniously satellite, ''Badr-I'' from PR China, becoming first Muslim country and second South Asian country to have put the satellite in space. In 1972, with the opening inauguration of country's commercial nuclear power plant in Karachi, Pakistan became first nuclear power in the Islamic world, and second emerging nuclear power in South Asia, while her neighbor India became the first. In 1998, due to amid domestic and international pressure, Pakistan became first Muslim majority and seventh country in the world to successfully develop and test nuclear weapons. Pakistan's scientists have played an influential role in advancing the economical sciences such as Akhtar Hameed Khan, pioneer of microcredit and microfinance initiatives in developing world; Mahbub-ul-Haq, creator of the Human development theory and the founder of the Human Development Report; and Agha Hasan Abedi, founder of the BCCI.

Demographics

colspan="2" style="text-align:center; background:#cfb;"	Population in Pakistan
Year	Million
style="text-align:left;"	1971	62.5
	82.7
style="text-align:left;"	1990	108.0
style="text-align:left;"	2000	138.1
style="text-align:left;"	2004	152.1
style="text-align:left;"	2008	166.0

Population in Pakistan increased from 1990 to 2008 with 58 million and 54 % growth in population. The estimated population of Pakistan in 2010 was over 170 million making it the world's sixth most-populous country, behind Brazil and ahead of Bangladesh. In 1951 Pakistan had a population of 34 million. The population growth rate now stands at 1.6%. It is expected that by 2030, Pakistan will overtake Indonesia as the largest Muslim country in the world.

The majority of southern Pakistan's population live along the Indus River. By population size, Karachi is the largest city of Pakistan. In the northern half, most of the population live in an arc formed by the cities of Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat, Jhelum, Sargodha, Sheikhupura, Nowshera, Mardan and Peshawar. About 20% of the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day .

Life expectancy at birth is 63 years for females and 62 years for males compared to the healthy life expectancy at birth which was 54 years for males and 52 years for females in 2003. Expenditure on health was at 2% of the GDP in 2006. The mortality below 5 was at 97 per 1,000 live births in 2006. During 1990–2003, Pakistan sustained its historical lead as the most urbanised nation in South Asia, with city dwellers making up 36% of its population. Furthermore, 50% of Pakistanis now reside in towns of 5,000 people or more.

Pakistan is a multilingual country with more than sixty languages being spoken. English is the official language of Pakistan and used in official business, government, and legal contracts, and Punjabi has a plurality of native speakers. Urdu is the lingua franca and national language in Pakistan. Punjabi is the provincial language of Punjab. Saraiki is also spoken in the larger area of Punjab province. Pashto is the provincial language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Sindhi is the provincial language of Sindh and Balochi is the provincial language of Balochistan. The population comprises several main ethnic groups (2009):

# Punjabis (44.15%) 78.7 million # Pashtuns (15.42%) 27.2 million # Sindhis (14.1%) 24.8 million # Seraikis (10.53%) 14.8 million # Muhajirs (7.57%) 13.3 million # Balochs is (3.57%) 6.3 million # Others (4.66%) 11.1 million

Smaller ethnic groups, such as Kashmiris, Hindkowans, Kalash, Burusho, Brahui, Khowar, Ranghar, Meo, Balti, Shina, and Turwalis are mainly found in the northern parts of the country.

Pakistan's census does not include the registered 1.7 million Afghan refugees from neighbouring Afghanistan, who are mainly found in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) areas, with small numbers in the cities of Karachi and Quetta. Around 2 million refugees from Bangladesh, Iran, Africa, and other places are also found in Pakistan.

Religion

Pakistan is the second-most populous Muslim-majority country and also has the second-largest Shi'a population in the world. About 97% of the Pakistanis are Muslim. The majority are Sunni, with an estimated 5–20% Shi'a. 2.3% are Ahmadis, who are officially considered non-Muslims since a 1974 "anti-Ahmadi" constitutional amendment. There are also several Quraniyoon communities. Although the groups of Muslims usually coexist peacefully, sectarian violence occurs sporadically. The religious breakdown of the country is as follows:

Islam 173,000,000 (97%) (majority Sunni, 5–20% Shi'a and 2.3% Ahmadis,.

Hinduism 2,800,000 (1.6%) Christianity 2,800,000 (1.6%)

Sikhs Around 20,000 (0.001%)

The remaining are Parsis, Buddhists, Jews, Bahá'ís and Animists (mainly the Kalasha of Chitral).

Education

[[File:FBAS IIUI.jpg|thumb|alt=Ammar, http://web.archive.org/web/20070216010842/http://www.iiu.edu.pk/fas/uni_campus.htm, .|International Islamic University Islamabad.]]

According to the constitution of Pakistan, it is the state’s responsibility to provide free primary education. At the time of independence Pakistan had only one university, the University of the Punjab, founded in 1882 in Lahore. Pakistan now has more than 132 universities of which 73 are public universities and 59 are private universities.

Education in Pakistan is divided into five levels: primary (grades one through five); middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the Secondary School Certificate); intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary School Certificate); and university programmes leading to graduate and advanced degrees.

Pakistan also has a parallel secondary school education system in private schools, which is based upon the curriculum set and administered by the Cambridge International Examinations, in place of government exams. Some students choose to take the O level and A level exams through the British Council.

There are currently 730 technical & vocational institutions in Pakistan. The minimum qualifications to enter male vocational institutions, is the completion of grade 8, and for female is grade 5.

English medium education is to be extended, on a phased basis, to all schools across the country. Through various educational reforms, by the year 2015, the ministry of education expects to attain 100% enrolment levels amongst primary school aged children, and a literacy rate of 86% amongst people aged over 10.

Pakistan also has madrassahs that provide free Islamic education and also offer free boarding and lodging to students who come mainly from the poorer strata of society. After criticism over terrorists using them for recruiting purposes, efforts have been made to regulate them.

In 2004 only 46.6 percent of adult Pakistanis were literate. Male literacy was 60.6 percent, while female literacy was 31.5 percent. Literacy rates also vary regionally, and particularly by sex; for instance, in tribal areas female literacy is 3%. The government launched a nationwide initiative in 1998 with the aim of eradicating illiteracy and providing a basic education to all children. By 2013 all educational institutions in Sindh province of Pakistan will have to provide Chinese language courses. This initiative reflects China's growing role as a Superpower and Pakistan's close ties with China.

Culture

Pakistani society is largely hierarchical, with high regard for traditional Islamic values, although urban families have grown into a nuclear family system because of the socio-economic constraints imposed by the traditional joint family system. Recent decades have seen the emergence of a middle class in cities like Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Multan and Peshawar (now numbering at 30 million, with an average annual income of US$10,000, with another 17 million belonging to the upper and upper-middle classes that wish to move in a more centrist direction, as opposed to the northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan that remain highly conservative and dominated by centuries-old regional tribal customs. Increasing globalisation has resulted in ranking 46th on the A.T. Kearney/FP Globalization Index.

The variety of Pakistani music ranges from diverse provincial folk music and traditional styles such as Qawwali and Ghazal Gayaki to modern forms fusing traditional and western music, such as the synchronisation of Qawwali and western music by the world renowned Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In addition Pakistan is home to many famous folk singers such as the late Alam Lohar, who is also well known in Indian Punjab. However a majority of Pakistanis listen to Indian music produced by Bollywood and other Indian film industries. The arrival of Afghan refugees in the western provinces has rekindled Pashto and Persian music and established Peshawar as a hub for Afghan musicians and a distribution center for Afghan music abroad.

State-owned Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) and Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation were the dominant media outlets, but there are now numerous private television channels. Various American, European, and Asian television channels and films are available to the majority of the Pakistani population via private television networks, cable, and satellite television (43 million Pakistanis have satellite television). There are also small indigenous film industries based in Lahore and Peshawar (often referred to as Lollywood). While Bollywood films were banned from being played in public cinemas from 1965 until 2008 they have remained in popular culture.

Literature

The literature of Pakistan covers the literatures of languages spread throughout the country, namely Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, Pushto, Baluchi as well as English and Persian as well. Prior to the 19th century, the literature mainly consisted of lyric poetry and religious, mystical and popular materials. During the colonial age the native literary figures, under the influence of the western literature of realism, took up increasingly different topics and telling forms. Today, short stories enjoy a special popularity.

The national poet of Pakistan, Allama Muhammad Iqbal, suggested the creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. However, Iqbal had also wrote the Tarana-e-Hind which stated the belief of a strong united India. His book The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam is a major work of modern Islamic philosophy. The most well-known representative of the contemporary Urdu literature of Pakistan is Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Sufi poets Shah Abdul Latif, Bulleh Shah, Mian Muhammad Bakhsh and Khawaja Farid are also very popular in Pakistan. Mirza Kalich Beg has been termed the father of modern Sindhi prose.

Architecture

The Pakistani architecture of the areas now constituting Pakistan can be designated to four distinct periods—pre-Islamic, Islamic, colonial and post-colonial. With the beginning of the Indus civilisation around the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C., an advanced urban culture developed for the first time in the region, with large structural facilities, some of which survive to this day. Mohenjo Daro, Harappa and Kot Diji belong to the pre-Islamic era settlements. The rise of Buddhism and the Persian and Greek influence led to the development of the Greco-Buddhist style, starting from the 1st century CE. The high point of this era was reached with the culmination of the Gandhara style.

An example of Buddhist architecture is the ruins of the Buddhist monastery Takht-i-Bahi in the northwest province.

The arrival of Islam in today's Pakistan meant a sudden end of Buddhist architecture. However, a smooth transition to predominantly pictureless Islamic architecture occurred. The most important of the few completely discovered buildings of Persian style is the tomb of the Shah Rukn-i-Alam in Multan. During the Mughal era design elements of Islamic-Persian architecture were fused with and often produced playful forms of the Hindustani art. Lahore, occasional residence of Mughal rulers, exhibits a multiplicity of important buildings from the empire, among them the Badshahi mosque, the fortress of Lahore with the famous Alamgiri Gate, the colourful, still strongly Persian seeming Wazir Khan Mosque as well as numerous other mosques and mausoleums. Also the Shahjahan Mosque of Thatta in Sindh originates from the epoch of the Mughals. In the British colonial period, predominantly functional buildings of the Indo-European representative style developed from a mixture of European and Indian-Islamic components. Post-colonial national identity is expressed in modern structures like the Faisal Mosque, the Minar-e-Pakistan and the Mazar-e-Quaid.

Cuisine

Known for its richness and flavour, Pakistani cuisine is a blend of cooking traditions from regions of the subcontinent. Although there are great variations from one area to another, dishes from Sindh province, and the Punjab region are identical to north Indian cuisine due to the strong similarity of culture and ethnicity. These can be highly seasoned and very spicy. Chinese migrants living in Pakistan have adopted a distinct style of Pakistani taste blend of both Chinese and Pakistani cuisine. Some of the popular Pakistani-Chinese dishes include, chicken Manchurian, Chinese basmati rice, Chinese soup and chicken chowmein noodles.

Sports

The national sport of Pakistan is hockey, although cricket is the most popular game across the country. The national cricket team has won the Cricket World Cup once (in 1992), were runners-up once (in 1999), and co-hosted the games twice (in 1987 and 1996). Pakistan were runners-up in the inaugural 2007 ICC World Twenty20 held in South Africa and were the champions at the 2009 ICC World Twenty20 held in England. Lately however, Pakistani cricket has suffered heavily due to teams refusing to tour Pakistan because of terrorism fears. No teams have toured Pakistan since March 2009, when militants attacked the touring Sri Lankan cricket players.

Squash is another sport that Pakistanis have excelled in. Successful world-class squash players such as Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan have won the World Open several times during their careers. Other international players are Kiran Khan in Swimming and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi in Tennis. At international level, Pakistan has competed many times at the Olympics in field hockey, boxing, athletics, swimming, and shooting. Pakistan's Olympic medal tally stands at 10 (3 gold, 3 silver and 4 bronze) while the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games medal tally stands at 61 and 182 respectively. Hockey is the sport in which Pakistan has been most successful at the Olympics, with three gold medals in (1960, 1968, and 1984). Pakistan has also won the Hockey World Cup a record four times (1971, 1978, 1982, 1994).

Among others, Association football and Polo are the more prominent sports with regular national events held in different parts of the country. Boxing, Billiards, Snooker, Rowing, Kayaking, Caving, Tennis, Contract Bridge, Golf and Volley Ball are also actively participated and Pakistan has produced notable champions in these sports at regional and international levels. In Tennis doubles, Pakistan's Aisam-ul-haq Qureshi and India's Rohan Bopanna play together in many International tournaments portraying Indo-Pak friendship.

See also

Commonwealth of Nations

References

Further reading

Ayres, Robert (1998), ''Turning Point: The End of the Growth Paradigm.'' James & James publishers, ISBN 1-85383-439-4

Fair, C. Christine, The Militant Challenge in Pakistan (''Asia Policy'', January 2011)

Farndon, John (1999), ''Concise encyclopaedia'', Dorling Kindersley Limited, ISBN 0-7513-5911-4

Ian, Talbot (1999). ''The Armed Forces of Pakistan''. Macmillan publishers, ISBN 0-312-21606-8

Rubinstein, W. D. (2004). ''Genocide: a history.'' Pearson Longman Publishers, ISBN 0-582-50601-8

Spear, Percival (2007), ''India, Pakistan and the West.'' Read books publishers, ISBN 1-4067-1215-9

Wink, Andre, Al Hind the Making of the Indo Islamic World, Brill Academic Publishers, 1 January 1996, ISBN 90-04-09249-8

Wolpert, Stanley. Jinnah of Pakistan. Oxford University Press, USA. May 1984. ISBN 0-19-503412-0

Yasmeen Niaz Mohiuddin, ''Pakistan: a global studies handbook.'' ABC-CLIO publishers, 2007, ISBN 1-85109-801-1

Masood Ashraf Raja. ''Constructing Pakistan: Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim National Identity'', 1857–1947, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19547811-2

External links

Key Development Forecasts

Category:Countries of the Indian Ocean Category:Developing 8 Countries member states Category:English-speaking countries and territories Category:Federal countries Category:Former British colonies Category:Hindustani-speaking countries and territories Category:Iranian Plateau Category:Islamic republics Category:Islamic states Category:Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations Category:Member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Category:Member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Category:Member states of the United Nations Category:Pashto-speaking countries and territories Category:South Asian countries Category:States and territories established in 1947

ace:Pakistan kbd:Пакистэн af:Pakistan als:Pakistan am:ፓኪስታን ang:Pacistan ar:باكستان an:Pakistán arc:ܦܐܩܣܛܐܢ roa-rup:Pakistan frp:Paquistan as:পাকিস্তান ast:Paquistán gn:Pakistán az:Pakistan bjn:Pakistan bn:পাকিস্তান zh-min-nan:Pakistan ba:Пакистан be:Пакістан be-x-old:Пакістан bh:पाकिस्तान bcl:Pakistan bo:པ་ཀི་སི་སྟན། bs:Pakistan br:Pakistan bg:Пакистан ca:Pakistan cv:Пакистан ceb:Pakistan cs:Pákistán cbk-zam:Pakistan cy:Pakistan da:Pakistan de:Pakistan dv:ޕާކިސްތާން nv:Eʼeʼaahjí Naakaii Dootłʼizhí Bikéyah dsb:Pakistan et:Pakistan el:Πακιστάν es:Pakistán eo:Pakistano ext:Paquistán eu:Pakistan fa:پاکستان hif:Pakistan fo:Pakistan fr:Pakistan fy:Pakistan ga:An Phacastáin gv:Yn Phakistaan gag:Pakistan gd:Pagastàn gl:Paquistán - پاکستان gan:巴基斯坦 gu:પાકિસ્તાન hak:Pâ-kî-sṳ̂-thán xal:Сарта Паксин Орн ko:파키스탄 ha:Pakistan haw:Pakitana hy:Պակիստան hi:पाकिस्तान hsb:Pakistan hr:Pakistan io:Pakistan ilo:Pakistan bpy:পাকিস্তান id:Pakistan ia:Pakistan ie:Pakistan iu:ᐸᑭᔅᑕᓐ os:Пакистан zu:IPakistani is:Pakistan it:Pakistan he:פקיסטן jv:Pakistan kl:Pakistan kn:ಪಾಕಿಸ್ತಾನ pam:Pakistan ka:პაკისტანი ks:پاکِستان csb:Pakistan kk:Пәкістан kw:Pakistan rw:Pakisitani ky:Пакистан sw:Pakistan kv:Пакистан ht:Pakistan ku:Pakistan la:Pakistania lv:Pakistāna lb:Pakistan lt:Pakistanas lij:Pakistan li:Pakistan ln:Pakistáni jbo:kisygu'e lmo:Pakistan hu:Pakisztán mk:Пакистан ml:പാകിസ്താൻ mt:Pakistan mi:Pakitāne mr:पाकिस्तान arz:باكستان ms:Pakistan mdf:Пакистан mn:Пакистан my:ပါကစ္စတန်နိုင်ငံ nah:Paquistan na:Pakistan nl:Pakistan nds-nl:Pakistan ne:पाकिस्तान ja:パキスタン nap:Pakistan pih:Pakistaan no:Pakistan nn:Pakistan nov:Pakistan oc:Paquistan mhr:Пакистан or:ପାକିସ୍ତାନ uz:Pokiston pa:ਪਾਕਿਸਤਾਨ pnb:پاکستان pap:Pakistan ps:پاکستان km:ប៉ាគីស្ថាន pms:Pakistan nds:Pakistan pl:Pakistan pt:Paquistão crh:Pakistan ro:Pakistan rmy:Pakistan qu:Pakistan rue:Пакістан ru:Пакистан sah:Пакистан se:Pakistan sa:पाकिस्तानम् sco:Pakistan sq:Pakistani scn:Pakistan si:පාකිස්ථානය simple:Pakistan sd:پاڪستان ss:IPhakhistani sk:Pakistan sl:Pakistan szl:Pakistan so:Bakistaan ckb:پاکستان sr:Пакистан sh:Pakistan su:Pakistan fi:Pakistan sv:Pakistan tl:Pakistan ta:பாக்கித்தான் kab:Pakistan roa-tara:Pakistan tt:Пакьстан te:పాకిస్తాన్ th:ประเทศปากีสถาน tg:Покистон tr:Pakistan tk:Päkistan udm:Пакистан bug:Pakistan uk:Пакистан ur:پاکستان ug:پاكىستان vec:Pakistan vi:Pakistan vo:Pakistän fiu-vro:Pakistan wa:Pakistan zh-classical:巴基斯坦 war:Pakistan wo:Pakistaan wuu:巴基斯坦 yi:פאקיסטאן yo:Pakístàn zh-yue:巴基斯坦 diq:Pakıstan bat-smg:Pakėstans zh:巴基斯坦

name	Pakistan Observer
type	Daily newspaper
chiefeditor	Zahid Malik
foundation	1 November 1988
language	English
headquarters	Islamabad, Pakistan
oclc	17883609
website	pakobserver.net }}

The ''Pakistan Observer'' is an English-language daily newspaper published in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Origins

The newspaper was started on 1 November 1988.

Circulation and publication

Although not in the league of ''Dawn'' or ''The News International''  – Pakistan's two other widely read English-language newspapers – it is popular among its readers. It is published from Pakistan's major cities, including its metropolis. It has been continuously published ever since it was started in 1988.

Editor

Its editor-in-chief is Zahid Malik.

See also

List of newspapers in Pakistan

External links

pakobserver.net, newspaper's official website

Profile of Pakistan Observer at APNS

Category:English-language newspapers published in Pakistan Category:Media in Islamabad Category:Publications established in 1988

ur:پاکستان اوبزرور

Name	Osama bin Laden
Birth date	March 10, 1957
Birth place	Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Death date	May 02, 2011
Death place	Abbottabad, Pakistan
Placeofburial	North Arabian Sea
Religion	Sunni Islam (Qutbism)
Years active	1979–2011
Death cause	Ballistic trauma
Successor	Ayman Al-Zawahiri
Spouse(s)	Najwa GhanhemKhadijah SharifKhairiah SabarSiham SabarAmal Ahmed al-Sadah
Children
Allegiance	Al-Qaeda
Serviceyears	1988–2011
Battles	Soviet war in AfghanistanWar on Terror: War in Afghanistan *Battle of Tora Bora War in North-West Pakistan *Operation Neptune Spear }}

}} Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (; , ''''; March 10, 1957 May 2, 2011) was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.

Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, with a bounty by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

After being placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list, bin Laden remained in hiding during three U.S. presidential administrations. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives in a covert operation ordered by United States President Barack Obama. Shortly after his death, bin Laden's body was buried at sea. Al-Qaeda acknowledged his death on May 6, 2011, vowing to retaliate.

Early life and education

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a son of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a billionaire construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi royal family, and Mohammed bin Laden's tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas (then called Alia Ghanem). In a 1998 interview, bin Laden gave his birth date as March 10, 1957.

Mohammed bin Laden divorced Hamida soon after Osama bin Laden was born. Mohammed recommended Hamida to Mohammed al-Attas, an associate. Al-Attas married Hamida in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and they are still together. The couple had four children, and bin Laden lived in the new household with three half-brothers and one half-sister. The bin Laden family made $5 billion in the construction industry, of which Osama later inherited around $25–30 million.

Bin Laden was raised as a devout Wahhabi Muslim. From 1968 to 1976, he attended the élite secular Al-Thager Model School. He studied economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz University. Some reports suggest he earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979, or a degree in public administration in 1981. One source described him as "hard working", another said he left university during his third year without completing a college degree. At university, bin Laden's main interest was religion, where he was involved in both "interpreting the Quran and jihad" and charitable work. Other interests included writing poetry; reading, with the works of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle said to be among his favorites; black stallions; and association football, in which he enjoyed playing at centre forward and followed the fortunes of Arsenal F.C.

Personal life

In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married Najwa Ghanem at Latakia, Syria; they were divorced before September 11, 2001. Bin Laden's other known wives were Khadijah Sharif (married 1983, divorced 1990s), Khairiah Sabar (married 1985), Siham Sabar (married 1987), and Amal al-Sadah (married 2000). Some sources also list a sixth wife, name unknown, whose marriage to bin Laden was annulled soon after the ceremony. Bin Laden fathered between 20 and 26 children with his wives. Many of bin Laden's children fled to Iran following the September 11 attacks and Iranian authorities reportedly continue to control their movement.

Bin Laden's father Mohammed died in 1967 in an airplane crash in Saudi Arabia when his American pilot misjudged a landing. Bin Laden's eldest half-brother, Salem bin Laden, the subsequent head of the bin Laden family, was killed in 1988 near San Antonio, Texas, in the United States, when he accidentally flew a plane into power lines.

The FBI described bin Laden as an adult as tall and thin, between 6 ft 4 in and 6 ft 6 in (193–198 cm) in height and weighing about 165 pounds (75 kg). Interviewer Lawrence Wright, on the other hand, described him as quite slender, but not particularly tall. Bin Laden had an olive complexion and was left-handed, usually walking with a cane. He wore a plain white turban and he had stopped wearing the traditional Saudi male headdress. Bin Laden was described as soft-spoken and mild-mannered in demeanor.

Name

There is no universally accepted standard for transliterating Arabic words and Arabic names into English; bin Laden's name is most frequently rendered "Osama bin Laden". The FBI and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as other U.S. governmental agencies, have used either "Usama bin Laden" or "Usama bin Ladin", both of which may be abbreviated as "UBL". Less common renderings include "Ussamah bin Ladin" and, in the French-language media, "Oussama ben Laden". Other spellings include "Binladen" or, as used by his family in the West, "Binladin". The decapitalization of ''bin'' is based on the convention of leaving short prepositions and articles uncapitalized in surnames; however, ''bin'' means "son of" and is not, strictly speaking, a preposition or article. The spellings with ''o'' and ''e'' come from a Persian-influenced pronunciation also used in Afghanistan, where bin Laden spent many years.

Osama bin Laden's full name, Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of Awad, son of Laden". "Mohammed" refers to bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Laden; "Awad" refers to his grandfather, Awad bin Aboud bin Laden, a Kindite Hadhrami tribesman; "Laden" refers not to bin Laden's great-grandfather, who was named Aboud, but to a more distant ancestor.

The Arabic linguistic convention would be to refer to him as "Osama" or "Osama bin Laden", not "bin Laden" alone, as "bin Laden" is a patronymic, not a surname in the Western manner. According to bin Laden's son Omar bin Laden, the family's hereditary surname is "al-Qahtani" (, ''āl-Qaḥṭānī''), but bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Laden never officially registered the name.

Osama bin Laden had also assumed the ''kunyah'' "Abū ʿAbdāllāh" ("father of Abdallah"). His admirers have referred to him by several nicknames, including the "Prince" or "Emir" (الأمير, ''al-Amīr''), the "Sheik" (الشيخ, ''aš-Šayḫ''), the "Jihadist Sheik" or "Sheik al-Mujahid" (شيخ المجاهد, ''al-Muǧāhid Šayḫ''), "Hajj" (حج, ''Ḥaǧǧ''), and the "Director". The word ''ʾusāmah'' (أسامة) means "lion", earning him the nicknames "Lion" and "Lion Sheik".

Beliefs and ideology

According to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who led the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader was motivated by a belief that U.S. foreign policy has oppressed, killed, or otherwise harmed Muslims in the Middle East, condensed in the phrase "They hate us for what we do, not who we are."

Bin Laden also said only the restoration of Sharia law would "set things right" in the Muslim world, and that alternatives such as "pan-Arabism, socialism, communism, democracy" must be opposed. This belief, in conjunction with violent jihad, has sometimes been called Qutbism after being promoted by Sayyid Qutb. Bin Laden believed that Afghanistan, under the rule of Mullah Omar's Taliban, was "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world. Bin Laden consistently dwelt on the need for violent jihad to right what he believed were injustices against Muslims perpetrated by the United States and sometimes by other non-Muslim states, the need to eliminate the state of Israel, and the necessity of forcing the United States to withdraw from the Middle East. He also called on Americans to "reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury", in an October 2002 letter.

Bin Laden's ideology included the idea that innocent civilians, including women and children, are legitimate targets of jihad. Bin Laden was anti-Semitic, and delivered warnings against alleged Jewish conspiracies: "These Jews are masters of usury and leaders in treachery. They will leave you nothing, either in this world or the next." Shia Muslims have been listed along with "heretics, [...] America, and Israel" as the four principal "enemies of Islam" at ideology classes of bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization.

Bin Laden opposed music on religious grounds, and his attitude towards technology was mixed. He was interested in "earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants" on the one hand, but rejected "chilled water" on the other.

His viewpoints and methods of achieving them had led to him being designated as a terrorist by scholars, journalists from ''The New York Times'', the BBC, and Qatari news station Al Jazeera, analysts such as Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer, Marc Sageman, and Bruce Hoffman and he was indicted on terrorism charges by law enforcement agencies in Madrid, New York City, and Tripoli.

Bin Laden's overall strategy against much larger enemies such as the Soviet Union and United States was to lure them into a long war of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender. He believed this would lead to economic collapse of the enemy nation. Al-Qaeda manuals clearly outline this strategy.

Militant activity

Mujahideen in Afghanistan

After leaving college in 1979, bin Laden went to Pakistan and joined Abdullah Azzam to take part in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. During Operation Cyclone from 1979 to 1989, the United States provided financial aid and weapons to the mujahideen leaders through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Bin Laden met and built relations with Hamid Gul, who was a three-star general in the Pakistani army and head of the ISI agency. Although the United States provided the money and weapons, the training of militant groups was entirely done by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.

By 1984, bin Laden and Azzam established Maktab al-Khidamat, which funneled money, arms and fighters from around the Arab world into Afghanistan. Through al-Khadamat, bin Laden's inherited family fortune paid for air tickets and accommodation, paid for paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihadi fighters. Bin Laden established camps inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and used it to train volunteer fighters against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. It was during his time in Pakistan that he began wearing camouflage-print jackets and carrying a Russian-made assault rifle.

Formation and structuring of Al-Qaeda

By 1988, bin Laden had split from Maktab al-Khidamat. While Azzam acted as support for Afghan fighters, bin Laden wanted a more military role. One of the main points leading to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was Azzam's insistence that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming a separate fighting force. Notes of a meeting of bin Laden and others on August 20, 1988, indicate al-Qaeda was a formal group by that time: "Basically an organized Islamic faction, its goal is to lift the word of God, to make his religion victorious." A list of requirements for membership itemized the following: listening ability, good manners, obedience, and making a pledge (''bayat'') to follow one's superiors.

According to Wright, the group's real name was not used in public pronouncements because "its existence was still a closely held secret". His research suggests that al-Qaeda was formed at an August 11, 1988, meeting between "several senior leaders" of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abdullah Azzam, and bin Laden, where it was agreed to join bin Laden's money with the expertise of the Islamic Jihad organization and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as a hero of jihad, who along with his Arab legion "had brought down the mighty superpower" of the Soviet Union.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990, put the Saudi kingdom and the House of Saud at risk, with Iraqi forces on the Saudi border and Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism potentially inciting internal dissent. Bin Laden met with King Fahd, and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan, telling them not to depend on non-Muslim assistance from the United States and others, offering to help defend Saudi Arabia with his mujahideen. Bin Laden's offer was rebuffed, and after the Saudi monarchy invited the deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi territory, Bin Laden publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military. Bin Laden believed the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. Bin Laden's criticism of the Saudi monarchy led that government to attempt to silence him.

Shortly after Saudi Arabia invited U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia, bin Laden turned his attention to attacks on the West. On November 8, 1990, the FBI raided the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of al-Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed, discovering copious evidence of terrorist plots, including plans to blow up New York City skyscrapers. This marked the earliest discovery of al-Qaeda terrorist plans outside of Muslim countries. Nosair was eventually convicted in connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and later admitted guilt for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York on November 5, 1990.

Bin Laden continued to speak publicly against the Saudi government for harboring American troops, for which the Saudis banished him. He went to live in exile in Sudan, in 1992, in a deal brokered by Ali Mohamed.

Sudan and return to Afghanistan

In Sudan, bin Laden established a new base for mujahideen operations in Khartoum. He bought a house on Al-Mashtal Street in the affluent Al-Riyadh quarter and a retreat at Soba on the Blue Nile. During his time in the country he heavily invested in the infrastructure and in agriculture and businesses. He continued his verbal assault on King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, and in response, on March 5, 1994, Fahd sent an emissary to Sudan demanding bin Laden's passport. His family was persuaded to cut off his $7 million a year stipend. By now bin Laden was strongly associated with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), which made up the core of al-Qaeda. In 1995 the EIJ attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The attempt failed, and the EIJ was expelled from Sudan.

As a result of his dealings in and advocacy of violent extremist jihad, Osama bin Laden lost his Saudi citizenship in 1994 and was disowned by his billionaire family.

Sudan also began efforts to expel bin Laden. The 9/11 Commission Report states:

In late 1995, when Bin Laden was still in Sudan, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned that Sudanese officials were discussing with the Saudi government the possibility of expelling Bin Laden. CIA paramilitary officer Billy Waugh tracked down Bin Ladin in the Sudan and prepared an operation to apprehend him, but was denied authorization. U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney encouraged the Sudanese to pursue this course. The Saudis, however, did not want Bin Laden, giving as their reason their revocation of his citizenship. Sudan's minister of defense, Fatih Erwa, has claimed that Sudan offered to hand Bin Laden over to the United States. The Commission has found no credible evidence that this was so. Ambassador Carney had instructions only to push the Sudanese to expel Bin Laden. Ambassador Carney had no legal basis to ask for more from the Sudanese since, at the time, there was no indictment outstanding.

The 9/11 Commission Report further states:

In February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching officials from the United States and other governments, asking what actions of theirs might ease foreign pressure. In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered to expel Bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of these secret discussions, certainly by March. Saudi officials apparently wanted Bin Laden expelled from Sudan. They had already revoked his citizenship, however, and would not tolerate his presence in their country. Also Bin Laden may have no longer felt safe in Sudan, where he had already escaped at least one assassination attempt that he believed to have been the work of the Egyptian or Saudi regimes, or both.

In May 1996, under increasing pressure on Sudan, from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United States, bin Laden returned to Jalalabad, Afghanistan aboard a chartered flight, and there forged a close relationship with Mullah Mohammed Omar. When bin Laden left Sudan, he and his organization were significantly weakened, despite his ambitions and organizational skills.

In August, 1996, bin Laden declared war against the United States. This fatwā was first published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper. The fatwā is entitled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in Islam. The reference to occupation in the fatwā refers to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for the purpose of controlling air space in Iraq, known as Operation Southern Watch.

In Afghanistan, bin Laden and al-Qaeda raised money from "donors from the days of the Soviet jihad", and from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to establish more training camps for Mujahideen fighters.

Bin Laden effectively had hijacked Ariana Afghan Airlines, which ferried Islamic militants, arms, cash and opium through the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan as well as provided false identifications to members of bin Laden's terrorist network. Viktor Bout helped to run the airline, maintaining planes and loading cargo. Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, concluded that Ariana was being used as a "terrorist taxi service".

Early attacks and aid for attacks

It is believed that the first bombing attack involving bin Laden was the December 29, 1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden in which two people were killed.

It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justification for the killing of innocent people. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the killing of someone standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander will find their proper reward in death, going to ''Jannah'' (Paradise) if they were good Muslims and to ''Jahannam'' (hell) if they were bad or non-believers. The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.

In the 1990s bin Laden's al-Qaeda assisted jihadis financially and sometimes militarily in Algeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. In 1992 or 1993 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists and urge war rather than negotiation with the government. Their advice was heeded but the war that followed killed 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with Islamist surrender to the government.

Bin Laden funded the Luxor massacre of November 17, 1997, which killed 62 civilians, but outraged the Egyptian public. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing bin Laden to abandon his Nazim Jihad compound and move his operations to Tarnak Farms in the south.

Another successful attack was carried out in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped cement his alliance with the Taliban by sending several hundreds of Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between five and six thousand Hazaras overrunning the city.

In February 1998, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri co-signed a ''fatwa'' in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders which declared the killing of North Americans and their allies an "individual duty for every Muslim" to "liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Mecca) from their grip". At the public announcement of the fatwa bin Laden announced that North Americans are "very easy targets". He told the attending journalists, "You will see the results of this in a very short time."

Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri organized an al-Qaeda congress on June 24, 1998.

The 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. The attacks were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the attention of the United States public for the first time, and resulted in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list.

In December 1998, the Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist Center reported to President Bill Clinton that al-Qaeda was preparing for attacks in the United States of America, including the training of personnel to hijack aircraft.

At the end of 2000, Richard Clarke revealed that Islamic militants headed by bin Laden had planned a triple attack on January 3, 2000 which would have included bombings in Jordan of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman and tourists at Mount Nebo and a site on the Jordan River, the sinking of the destroyer USS ''The Sullivans'' in Yemen, as well as an attack on a target within the United States. The plan was foiled by the arrest of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sinking of the explosive-filled skiff intended to target the destroyer, and the arrest of Ahmed Ressam.

Yugoslav Wars

A former U.S. State Department official in October 2001 described Bosnia and Herzegovina as a safe haven for terrorists, after it was asserted that militant elements of the former Sarajevo government were protecting extremists, some with ties to Osama bin Laden. In 1997, ''Rzeczpospolita'', one of the largest Polish daily newspapers, reported that intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR Brigade suspected that a center for training terrorists from Islamic countries was located in the Bocina Donja village near Maglaj in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1992, hundreds of volunteers joined an "all-mujahedeen unit" called El Moujahed in an abandoned hillside factory, a compound with a hospital and prayer hall.

According to Middle East intelligence reports, bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world through his businesses in Sudan. Among them was Karim Said Atmani who was identified by authorities as the document forger for a group of Algerians accused of plotting the bombings in the United States of America. He is a former roommate of Ahmed Ressam, the man arrested at the Canadian-U.S. border in mid-December 1999 with a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making materials. He was convicted of colluding with Osama bin Laden by a French court.

A Bosnian government search of passport and residency records, conducted at the urging of the United States, revealed other former mujahideen who were linked to the same Algerian group or to other groups of suspected terrorists, and had lived in the area north of Sarajevo, the capital, in the past few years. Khalil al-Deek, was arrested in Jordan in late December 1999 on suspicion of involvement in a plot to blow up tourist sites; a second man with Bosnian citizenship, Hamid Aich, lived in Canada at the same time as Atmani and worked for a charity associated with Osama bin Laden. In its June 26, 1997, report on the bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, ''The New York Times'' noted that those arrested confessed to serving with Bosnian Muslims forces. Further, the captured men also admitted to ties with Osama bin Laden.

In 1999 it was revealed that bin Laden and his Tunisian assistant Mehrez Aodouni were granted citizenship and Bosnian passports in 1993 by the government in Sarajevo. This information was denied by the Bosnian government following the September 11 attacks, but it was later found that Aodouni was arrested in Turkey and that at that time he possessed the Bosnian passport. Following this revelation, a new explanation was given that bin Laden "did not personally collect his Bosnian passport" and that officials at the Bosnian embassy in Vienna, which issued the passport, could not have known who bin Laden was at the time.

During his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević presented FBI documents that verified bin Laden's al-Qaeda had a presence in the Balkans and aided the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was identified by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization shortly before the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Milošević had argued that the United States aided the terrorists which culminated in its backing of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War.

September 11, 2001 attacks

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After his denial, Osama bin Laden finally claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States in 2004. The attacks involved the hijacking of four commercial passenger aircraft, the subsequent destruction of those planes and the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, severe damage to The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the deaths of 2,974 people and the nineteen hijackers. In response to the attacks, the United States launched a War on Terror to depose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and capture al-Qaeda operatives, and several countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation to preclude future attacks. The CIA's Special Activities Division was given the lead in tracking down and killing or capturing bin Laden.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that classified evidence linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the September 11 attacks is clear and irrefutable. The UK Government reached a similar conclusion regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the September 11 attacks, although the government report notes that the evidence presented is not necessarily sufficient for a prosecutable case.

Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the attacks. On September 16, 2001, bin Laden read a statement later broadcast by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel denying responsibility for the attack.

In a videotape recovered by U.S. forces in November 2001 in Jalalabad, bin Laden was seen discussing the attack with Khaled al-Harbi in a way that indicates foreknowledge. The tape was broadcast on various news networks on December 13, 2001. The merits of this translation have been disputed. Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini stated: "This translation is very problematic. At the most important places where it is held to prove the guilt of bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic."

In the 2004 Osama bin Laden video, bin Laden abandoned his denials without retracting past statements. In it he stated he had personally directed the nineteen hijackers. In the 18-minute tape, played on Al-Jazeera, four days before the American presidential election, bin Laden accused U.S. President George W. Bush of negligence on the hijacking of the planes on September 11.

According to the tapes, bin Laden claimed he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center after watching the destruction of towers in Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Through two other tapes aired by Al Jazeera in 2006, Osama bin Laden announced, "I am the one in charge of the nineteen brothers. [...] I was responsible for entrusting the nineteen brothers [...] with the raids" (May 23, 2006). In the tapes he was seen with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, as they made preparations for the attacks (videotape broadcast September 7, 2006).

Identified motivations of the September 11 attacks include the support of Israel by the United States, presence of the U.S. military in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. enforcement of sanctions against Iraq.

Criminal charges

name	Usama Bin Laden
charge	* Murder of U.S. Nationals Outside the United States Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States Attack on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death
reward	$25 million
alias	* Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin the Prince the Emir Abu Abdallah Mujahid Shaykh Hajj the Director
birth date	1957
birth place	Saudi Arabia
death date	May 02, 2011
death place	Abbottabad, Pakistan
cause	Ballistic trauma
nationality	Saudi Arabian
gender	Male
height	6'4" to 6'6"
weight	Approximately 160 pounds
occupation	Unknown
added date	June 7, 1999
remove date	May 2, 2011
number	456
status	Killed/Captured }}

On March 16, 1998, Libya issued the first official Interpol arrest warrant against bin Laden and three other people. They were charged for killing Silvan Becker, agent of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in the Terrorism Department, and his wife Vera in Libya on March 10, 1994. Bin Laden was still wanted by the Libyan government at the time of his death. Osama bin Laden was first indicted by the United States on June 8, 1998, when a grand jury indicted Osama bin Laden on charges of killing five Americans and two Indians in the November 14, 1995, truck bombing of a U.S.-operated Saudi National Guard training center in Riyadh. Bin Laden was charged with "conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States" and prosecutors further charged that bin Laden is the head of the terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, and that he was a major financial backer of Islamic fighters worldwide. Bin Laden denied involvement but praised the attack. On November 4, 1998, Osama bin Laden was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on charges of ''Murder of U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States, and Attacks on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death'' for his alleged role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The evidence against bin Laden included courtroom testimony by former al-Qaeda members and satellite phone records, from a phone purchased for him by al-Qaeda procurement agent Ziyad Khaleel in the United States.

Bin Laden became the 456th person listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, when he was added to the list on June 7, 1999, following his indictment along with others for capital crimes in the 1998 embassy attacks. Attempts at assassination and requests for the extradition of bin Laden from the Taliban of Afghanistan were met with failure prior to the bombing of Afghanistan in October 2001. In 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton convinced the United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him.

Years later, on October 10, 2001, bin Laden appeared as well on the initial list of the top 22 FBI Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by the President of the United States George W. Bush, in direct response to the September 11 attacks, but which was again based on the indictment for the 1998 embassy attack. Bin Laden was among a group of thirteen fugitive terrorists wanted on that latter list for questioning about the 1998 embassy bombings. Bin Laden remains the only fugitive ever to be listed on both FBI fugitive lists.

Despite the multiple indictments listed above and multiple requests, the Taliban refused to extradite Osama bin Laden. They did however offer to try him before an Islamic court if evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the September 11 attacks was provided. It was not until eight days after the bombing of Afghanistan began in October 2001 that the Taliban finally did offer to turn over Osama bin Laden to a third-party country for trial in return for the United States ending the bombing. This offer was rejected by President Bush stating that this was no longer negotiable, with Bush responding "there's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."

On June 15, 2011, federal prosecutors of the United States of America officially dropped all criminal charges against Osama Bin Laden following his death in May.

Attempted capture by the United States

Clinton administration

Capturing Osama bin Laden had been an objective of the United States government since the presidency of Bill Clinton. Shortly after the September 11 attacks it was revealed that President Clinton had signed a directive authorizing the CIA (and specifically their elite Special Activities Division) to apprehend bin Laden and bring him to the United States to stand trial after the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Africa; if taking bin Laden alive was deemed impossible, then deadly force was authorized. On August 20, 1998, 66 cruise missiles launched by United States Navy ships in the Arabian Sea struck bin Laden's training camps near Khost in Afghanistan, narrowly missing him by a few hours. In 1999 the CIA, together with Pakistani military intelligence, had prepared a team of approximately 60 Pakistani commandos to infiltrate Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden, but the plan was aborted by the 1999 Pakistani coup d'état; in 2000, foreign operatives working on behalf of the CIA had fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of vehicles in which bin Laden was traveling through the mountains of Afghanistan, hitting one of the vehicles but not the one in which bin Laden was riding.

In 2000, prior to the September 11 attacks, Paul Bremer characterized the Clinton administration as "correctly focused on bin Laden", while Robert Oakley criticized their "obsession with Osama".

Bush administration

Immediately after the September 11 attacks, U.S. government officials named bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization as the prime suspects and offered a reward of $25 million for information leading to his capture or death. On July 13, 2007, this figure was doubled to $50 million. The Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association offered an additional $2 million reward.

According to ''The Washington Post'', the U.S. government concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the Battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan in late 2001, and according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge, failure by the United States to commit enough U.S. ground troops to hunt him led to his escape and was the gravest failure by the United States in the war against al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the Battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border.

''The Washington Post'' also reported that the CIA unit composed of their special operations paramilitary forces dedicated to capturing bin Laden was shut down in late 2005. Bush had previously defended this scaling back of the effort several times, saying, "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

U.S. and Afghanistan forces raided the mountain caves in Tora Bora between August 14–16, 2007. The military was drawn to the area after receiving intelligence of a pre-Ramadan meeting held by al-Qaeda members. After killing dozens of al-Qaeda and Taliban members, they did not find either Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Obama administration

On October 7, 2008, in the second presidential debate, on foreign policy, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged, "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority." Upon being elected, then President-elect Obama expressed his plans to "renew U.S. commitment to finding al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to his national security advisers" in an effort to ratchet up the hunt for the terrorist. President Obama rejected the Bush administration's policy on bin Laden that "conflated all terror threats from al-Qaeda to Hamas to Hezbollah," replacing it with "with a covert, laserlike focus on al-Qaeda and its spawn."

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in December 2009 that officials had had no reliable information on bin Laden's whereabouts for years. One week later, General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said in December 2009 that al-Qaeda will not be defeated unless its leader, Osama bin Laden, is captured or killed. Testifying to the U.S. Congress, he said bin Laden had become an "iconic figure, whose survival emboldens al-Qaeda as a franchising organization across the world", and that Obama's deployment of 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan meant that success would be possible. "I don't think that we can finally defeat al-Qaeda until he's captured or killed", McChrystal said of bin Laden. "Killing or capturing bin Laden would not spell the end of al-Qaeda, but the movement could not be eradicated while he remained at large."

In April 2011, President Obama ordered a covert operation to kill or capture bin Laden. On May 1, 2011, the White House announced that U.S. Navy SEALs had carried it out, killing him in his Abbottabad, Pakistan compound.

Activities and whereabouts after the September 11 attacks

While referring to Osama bin Laden in a CNN film clip on September 17, 2001, then President George W. Bush stated, "I want justice. There is an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted dead or alive'. Subsequently, bin Laden retreated further from public contact to avoid capture. Numerous speculative press reports were issued about his whereabouts or even death; some placed bin Laden in different locations during overlapping time periods. None were ever definitively proven. After military offensives in Afghanistan failed to uncover his whereabouts, Pakistan was regularly identified as his suspected hiding place. Some of the conflicting reports regarding bin Laden’s continued whereabouts and mistaken claims about his death follow:

In December 11, 2005, a letter from Atiyah Abd al-Rahman to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi indicated that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership were based in the Waziristan region of Pakistan at the time. In the letter, translated by the United States military's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, "Atiyah" instructs Zarqawi to "send messengers from your end to Waziristan so that they meet with the brothers of the leadership [...] I am now on a visit to them and I am writing you this letter as I am with them..." Al-Rahman also indicates that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are "weak" and "have many of their own problems." The letter has been deemed authentic by military and counterterrorism officials, according to The Washington Post. Al-Qaeda continued to release time-sensitive and professionally-verified videos demonstrating bin Laden's continued survival as recently as August 2007. In 2009, a research team led by Thomas W. Gillespie and John A. Agnew of UCLA used satellite-aided geographical analysis to pinpoint three compounds in Parachinar as bin Laden's likely hideouts. . In March 2009, the New York Daily News reported that the hunt for bin Laden had centered in the Chitral District of Pakistan, including the Kalam Valley. Author, Rohan Gunaratna, stated that captured al-Qaeda leaders had confirmed that bin Laden was hiding in Chitral. In the first week of December 2009, a Taliban detainee in Pakistan said he had information that bin Laden was in Afghanistan in 2009. The detainee reported that in January or February (2009) he met a trusted contact who had seen bin Laden in Afghanistan about 15 to 20 days earlier. However, on December 6, 2009, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that the United States had had no reliable information on the whereabouts of bin Laden in years. Pakistan's Prime Minister Gillani rejected claims that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. On Dec. 9, 2009 BBC News reported that U.S. Army General Stanley A. McChrystal, who served as Commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan from June 15, 2009 until June 23, 2010 emphasized the continued importance of the capture or killing of bin Laden, thus indicating that the U.S. high command believed that bin Laden was still alive On February 2, 2010, Afghan president, Hamid Karzai arrived in Saudi Arabia for an official visit. The agenda included discussion of a possible Saudi role in Karzai’s plan to reintegrate Taliban militants. During the visit an anonymous official of the Saudi Foreign Ministry declared that the kingdom had no intention of getting involved in peacemaking in Afghanistan unless the Taliban severed ties with extremists and expelled Osama bin Laden. On June 7, 2010, the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al Siyassa reported that bin Laden was hiding out in the mountainous town of Savzevar, in north eastern Iran. The Australian News,online edition published the claim on June 9. On June 9, The Australian News, online edition repeated the claim. On October 18, 2010, an unnamed NATO official suggested that bin Laden was "alive and well and living comfortably" in Pakistan, protected by elements of the country's intelligence services. A senior Pakistani official denied the allegations and said the accusations were designed to put pressure on the Pakistani government ahead of talks aimed at strengthening ties between Pakistan and the United States. On April 16, 2011, a leaked Al Jazeera report claimed that bin Laden had been captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Whereabouts just prior to his death

In July 2010, CIA operatives spotted Bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti driving through the streets of Peshawar, Pakistan. In August 2010, Al-Kuwaiti drives into a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. About 35 miles north of the capital, Islamabad, and just yards from a military academy. It was originally believed that bin Laden was hiding near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, but he was found away in a three-story mansion in Abbottabad at . Bin Laden's mansion was located southwest of the Pakistan Military Academy, the country's "West Point". Google Earth maps show that the compound was not present in 2001, but was present on images taken in 2005.

Death

Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1 a.m. local time by a United States special forces military unit. The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was ordered by United States President Barack Obama and carried out in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation by a team of United States Navy SEALs from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or informally by its former name, SEAL Team Six) of the Joint Special Operations Command, with support from CIA operatives on the ground. The raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was launched from Afghanistan. After the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden's body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death.

Critics accused Pakistan's military and security establishment of protecting bin Laden. For example, Mosharraf Zaidi, a leading Pakistani columnist, stated, "It seems deeply improbable that bin Laden could have been where he was killed without the knowledge of some parts of the Pakistani state." Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari denied that his country's security forces sheltered bin Laden, and called any supposed support for bin Laden by the Pakistani government "baseless speculation".

It was speculated that the issue might further strain U.S. ties with Pakistan. Bin Laden was killed in what some suggest was his residence for five years. It was an expensive compound located less than a mile from Pakistan's version of West Point, probably built for him and less than 100 kilometers' drive from the capital.

The Pakistani government's foreign office issued a statement that "categorically denies" any reports by the media that the country's leadership, "civil as well as military, had any prior knowledge of the U.S. operation against Osama bin Laden".

Pakistan's United States envoy, ambassador Husain Haqqani, promises a "full inquiry" into how Pakistani intelligence services failed to find bin Laden in a fortified compound, just a few hours drive from Islamabad, and stated that "obviously bin Laden did have a support system; the issue is, was that support system within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan?"

See also

Afghan civil war

Childhood, education and personal life of Osama bin Laden

Fatawā of Osama bin Laden

Islamic fundamentalism

Islamic mujahid movement

Islamic terrorism

Osama bin Laden in popular culture

Pakistan and state terrorism

The Golden Chain

War against Islam

Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad

References

;Footnotes ;Additional notes # The date according to Pakistan Standard Time (UTC+05:00). ;Bibliography }} }} }}

Further reading

}} }} }}

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (2006) – Compilation of Usama Bin Laden Statements 1994 – January 2004

External links

Osama bin Laden collected news and commentary at ''Dawn''

Full text: bin Laden's 'letter to America', ''The Observer'', November 24, 2002

Hunting Bin Laden, ''PBS Frontline'', (November 2002)

Young Osama, Steve Coll, ''The New Yorker'', December 12, 2005

How the World Sees Osama bin Laden, slideshow by ''Life''

The Osama bin Laden File from The National Security Archive, posted May 2, 2011

Category:1957 births Category:2011 deaths Category:20th-century criminals Category:21st-century criminals Category:Abdullah Yusuf Azzam Category:Afghan Civil War Category:Al-Qaeda founders Category:Al-Qaeda propagandists Category:Bin Laden family Category:Burials at sea Category:Civil engineers Category:Deaths by firearm in Pakistan Category:FBI Most Wanted Terrorists Category:FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives Category:Islamic terrorism Category:People from Abbottabad Category:People of the Soviet war in Afghanistan Category:People of the War in Afghanistan (2001–present) Category:Salafis Category:Saudi Arabia expatriates Category:Saudi Arabian expatriates in Pakistan Category:Saudi Arabian al-Qaeda members Category:Saudi Arabian anti-communists Category:Saudi Arabian poets Category:September 11 attacks Category:Stateless persons Category:War on Terror Category:People designated by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee

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name	Osama bin Laden
birth date	March 10, 1957
death date	May 02, 2011
placeofburial	North Arabian Sea
birth place	Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
death place	Abbottabad, Pakistan
allegiance	Al-Qaeda
battles	Soviet war in AfghanistanWar on Terror: War in Afghanistan * Battle of Tora Bora War in North-West Pakistan * Operation Neptune Spear
laterwork	}}

Osama bin Laden, head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1 a.m. local time by a United States special forces military unit. The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was ordered by United States President Barack Obama and carried out in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation by a team of United States Navy SEALs from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or informally by its former name, SEAL Team Six) of the Joint Special Operations Command, with support from CIA operatives on the ground. The raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was launched from Afghanistan. After the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden's body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death.

Al-Qaeda confirmed the death on May 6 with posts made on militant websites, vowing to avenge the killing. Bin Laden's killing was generally favorably received by U.S. public opinion; was welcomed by the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, and a large number of governments; but was condemned by some, including Fidel Castro of Cuba and Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas administration of the Gaza Strip. Legal and ethical aspects of the killing, such as his not being taken alive despite being unarmed, were questioned by others, including Amnesty International.

Locating bin Laden

The U.S. intelligence community effort to determine the current location of Osama bin Laden, which eventually resulted in the Abbottabad operation, began with a fragment of information unearthed in 2002, resulting in years of consequent investigation, followed by intensive multiplatform surveillance on the compound beginning in September 2010.

Identity of his courier

Identification of al-Qaeda couriers was an early priority for interrogators at CIA black sites and Guantanamo Bay detention camp, because bin Laden was believed to communicate through such couriers while concealing his whereabouts from al-Qaeda foot soldiers and top commanders. Bin Laden was known not to use phones, as the U.S. launched missile strikes against his bases in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 (Operation Infinite Reach) after tracking an associate's satellite phone.

By 2002, interrogators had heard uncorroborated claims about an al-Qaeda courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (sometimes referred to as Sheikh Abu Ahmed from Kuwait). In 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged operational chief of al-Qaeda, revealed under interrogation that he was acquainted with al-Kuwaiti but that he was not active in al-Qaeda.

In 2004, a prisoner named Hassan Ghul told interrogators that al-Kuwaiti was close to bin Laden as well as Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mohammed's successor Abu Faraj al-Libi. Ghul further revealed that al-Kuwaiti had not been seen in some time, which led U.S. officials to suspect he was traveling with bin Laden. When confronted with Ghul's account, Khalid Sheik Mohammed maintained his original story. Abu Faraj al-Libi was captured in 2005 and transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. He told CIA interrogators that bin Laden's courier was a man named Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti. Because both Mohammed and al-Libi had minimized al-Kuwaiti's importance, officials speculated that he was part of bin Laden's inner circle.

In 2007, officials learned al-Kuwaiti's real name, though they will not disclose the name nor how they learned it. Since the name Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan appears in the JTF-GTMO detainee assessment for Abu Faraj al-Libi released by WikiLeaks on April 24, 2011, there was speculation that the U.S. assault on the Abbottabad compound was expedited as a precaution. The CIA never found anyone named Maulawi Jan and concluded that the name was an invention of al-Libi .

A 2010 wiretap of another suspect picked up a conversation with al-Kuwaiti. CIA paramilitary operatives located al-Kuwaiti in August 2010 and followed him back to bin Laden's Abbottabad compound. The courier and a relative (who was either a brother or a cousin) were killed in the May 2, 2011 raid. Afterward, some locals identified the men as Pashtuns named Arshad and Tareq Khan. Arshad Khan was carrying an old, noncomputerized Pakistani identification card which said he was from Khat Kuruna, a village near Charsadda in northwestern Pakistan. Pakistani officials have found no record of an Arshad Khan in that area and suspect the men were living under false identities.

In June 2011, Pakistani officials revealed the courier's name as Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed from Pakistan's Swat Valley. He and his brother Abrar and their families were living at bin Laden's compound.

Bin Laden's compound

The CIA used surveillance photos and intelligence reports to determine the identities of the inhabitants of the Abbottabad compound to which the courier was traveling. In September 2010, the CIA concluded that the compound was custom-built to hide someone of significance, very likely bin Laden. Officials surmised that he was living there with his youngest wife.

Built in 2004, the three-story compound was located at the end of a narrow dirt road. Google Earth maps made from satellite photographs show that the compound was not present in 2001 but did exist on images taken in 2005. It is located northeast of the city center of Abbottabad. Abbottabad is about from the Afghanistan border on the far eastern side of Pakistan (about from India). The compound is southwest of the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA), a prominent military academy that has been compared with West Point in the United States and Sandhurst in Britain. Located on a plot of land eight times larger than those of nearby houses, it was surrounded by a 12-to-18-foot (3.7–5.5 m) concrete wall topped with barbed wire. There were two security gates, and the third-floor balcony had a seven-foot-high (2.1 m) privacy wall, tall enough to hide the bin Laden.

There was no Internet or landline telephone service to the compound, and its residents burned their trash, unlike their neighbors who set their garbage out for collection. Local residents called the building the ''Waziristan Haveli'', because they believed the owner was from Waziristan.

Intelligence gathering

The CIA led the effort to surveil and gather intelligence on the compound; other critical roles in the operation were played by other American government agencies, including the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), as well as the US Defense Department. According to ''The Washington Post'', "The [intelligence-gathering] effort was so extensive and costly that the CIA went to Congress in December [2010] to secure authority to reallocate tens of millions of dollars within assorted agency budgets to fund it, U.S. officials said."

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency rented a home in Abbottabad from which a team staked out and observed the compound over a number of months. The CIA team used informants and other techniques to gather intelligence on the compound. The safe house was abandoned immediately after bin Laden's death. The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency helped the Joint Special Operations Command create mission simulators for the pilots and analyzed data from an RQ-170 drone before, during and after the raid on the compound. The NGA also created three-dimensional renderings of the house, created schedules describing residential traffic patterns, and assessed the number, height and gender of the residents of the compound.

The design of Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad may have ultimately contributed to his discovery. A former CIA official involved in the manhunt told ''The Washington Post'', "The place was three stories high, and you could watch it from a variety of angles."

The CIA used a process called "red teaming" on the collected intelligence to independently review the circumstantial evidence and available facts of their case that bin Laden was living at the Abbottabad compound. An administration official stated, "We conducted red-team exercises and other forms of alternative analysis to check our work. No other candidate fit the bill as well as bin Laden did." This duplicate analysis was necessary because "Despite what officials described as an extraordinarily concentrated collection effort leading up to the operation, no U.S. spy agency was ever able to capture a photograph of bin Laden at the compound before the raid or a recording of the voice of the mysterious male figure whose family occupied the structure's top two floors."

Operation Neptune Spear

| caption=Map of Pakistan. Abbottabad is from the capital Islamabad, from Jalalabad Airfield, and from Bagram Airfield. Bagram is about from the North Arabian Sea.(''Straight line distances. Travel distances significantly more.'') | date= May 1–2, 2011 | place=Osama bin Laden's hideout compound, Abbottabad, Pakistan | coordinates= | result= Osama bin Laden killed | combatant1= | combatant2= al-Qaeda | commander1= Barack Obama William H. McRaven | commander2= Osama bin Laden (KIA) | strength1=796 helicopters1 Belgian Malinois | strength2=22 (including children) | casualties1=1 helicopter lost | casualties2=5 killed17 captured (3 injured) }} The official mission code name was ''Operation Neptune Spear''. Neptune's spear is the trident, which appears on Navy Special Warfare insignia, with the three prongs of the trident representing the operational capacity of SEALs on sea, air and land.

Objective

The Associated Press cited two U.S. officials as stating the operation was "a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender", but also that "it was clear from the beginning that whoever was behind those walls had no intention of surrendering". White House counterterrorism advisor John O. Brennan stated after the raid: "If we had the opportunity to take bin Laden alive, if he didn't present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that." CIA Director Leon Panetta stated on ''PBS NewsHour'': "The authority here was to kill bin Laden...Obviously under the rules of engagement, if he in fact had thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But, they had full authority to kill him."

However, a U.S. national security official, who was not named, told Reuters that "'this was a kill operation', making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan". Another source referencing a ''kill'' (rather than ''capture'') order states, "Officials described the reaction of the special operators when they were told a number of weeks ago that they had been chosen to train for the mission. 'They were told, "We think we found Osama bin Laden, and your job is to kill him",' an official recalled. The SEALs started to cheer."

Planning

The CIA briefed Vice Admiral William H. McRaven, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), about the compound in January 2011. McRaven said a commando raid would be fairly straightforward but he was concerned about the Pakistani response. He assigned a captain from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) to work with a CIA team at their campus in Langley, Virginia. The captain, named "Brian", set up an office in the printing plant in the CIA's Langley compound and, with six other JSOC officers, began to plan the raid.

In addition to a helicopter raid, planners considered bombing the compound with B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. They also considered a joint operation with Pakistani forces. Obama, however, decided that the Pakistani government and military could not be trusted to maintain operational security for the operation against bin Laden. "There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond," a senior adviser to the President told ''The New Yorker''.

President Obama met with the National Security Council on March 14 to review the options. The president was concerned that the mission would be exposed and wanted to proceed quickly. For that reason he also ruled out involving the Pakistanis. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other military officials expressed doubts as to whether bin Laden was actually in the compound, and whether a commando raid was worth the risk. At the end of the meeting the president seemed to be leaning toward a bombing mission. Two US Air Force officers were tasked with exploring that option further.

The CIA was unable to rule out the existence of an underground bunker below the compound. Presuming that one existed, 32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions would be required to destroy it. With that amount of ordnance, at least one other house was in the blast radius. Estimates were that up to a dozen civilians would be killed in addition to those in the compound. Furthermore it was unlikely there would be enough evidence remaining to prove that bin Laden was dead. Presented with this information at the next Security Council meeting on March 29, President Obama put the bombing plan on hold. Instead he directed Admiral McRaven to develop the idea of a helicopter raid.

McRaven assembled a team drawing from Red Squadron, one of four that make up DEVGRU. Red Squadron was coming home from Afghanistan and could be redirected without attracting attention. The team had language skills and experience with cross-border operations into Pakistan. Without being told the exact nature of their mission, the team performed two rehearsals in the U.S. on April 10 in North Carolina and April 18 in Nevada.

Planners believed the SEALs could get to Abbottabad and back without being challenged by the Pakistani military. The helicopters to be used in the raid were designed to be quieter and less visible on radar. Since the U.S. had helped equip and train the Pakistanis, their defensive capabilities were known. Furthermore the U.S. had supplied F-16 Fighting Falcons to Pakistan on the condition they were kept at a Pakistani military base under 24-hour U.S. surveillance. The U.S. would know immediately if the Pakistanis scrambled their jets.

If bin Laden surrendered he would be held near Bagram Air Base. If the SEALs were discovered by the Pakistanis in the middle of the raid, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen would call Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and try to negotiate their release.

When the Security Council met again on April 19, President Obama gave provisional approval for the helicopter raid. But he worried that the plan for dealing with the Pakistanis was too uncertain. Obama asked Adm. McRaven to equip the team to fight its way out if necessary.

McRaven and the SEALs left for Afghanistan to practice at a one acre full-scale replica of the compound built on a restricted area of Bagram known as Camp Alpha. The team departed the U.S. from Naval Air Station Oceana on April 26 in a C-17 aircraft, refueled on the ground at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, landed at Bagram Air Base, then moved to Jalalabad on April 27.

On April 28 Admiral Mullen explained the final plan to the Security Council. To bolster the "fight your way out" scenario, Chinook helicopters with additional troops would be positioned nearby. Obama said he wanted to speak directly to Admiral McRaven before he gave the order to proceed. The president asked if McRaven had learned anything since arriving in Afghanistan that caused him to lose confidence in the mission. McRaven told him the team was ready and that the next few nights would have little moonlight over Abottabad, good conditions for a raid.

On April 29 at 8:20 a.m., Obama conferred with his advisers in the Diplomatic Reception Room and gave the final go-ahead. The raid would take place the following day. That evening the president was informed that the operation would be delayed one day due to cloudy weather. On April 30 Obama called McRaven one more time to wish the SEALs well and to thank them for their service.

The president went out for a round of golf on May 1 but did not finish. At 1:22 p.m., Panetta, acting on the president's orders, directed McRaven to move forward with the operation. Shortly after 3 p.m., the president joined national security officials in the Situation Room to monitor the raid. They watched night-vision images taken from a drone while Panetta, appearing in a corner of the screen from CIA headquarters, narrated what was happening. A video link with Panetta at CIA headquarters, and McRaven in Afghanistan, were set up in situation room. In an adjoining office was the live drone feed presented on a laptop computer operated by Brigadier General Marshall Webb, assistant commander of JSOC. Two other command centers monitored the raid from the Pentagon and the American embassy in Islamabad.

Execution of the operation

Approach and entry

The raid was carried out by approximately two dozen helicopter-borne United States Navy SEALs from the Red Squadron of the Joint Special Operations Command's United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU). For legal reasons (namely that the U.S. is not at war with Pakistan), the military personnel assigned to the mission were temporarily transferred to the control of the civilian Central Intelligence Agency. The DEVGRU SEALs operated in two teams and were reportedly equipped with Heckler & Koch 416 carbine military assault rifles (with attached suppressors), night-vision goggles, body armor and handguns.

According to ''The New York Times'', a total of "79 commandos and a dog" were involved in the raid. The military working dog was a Belgian Malinois named Cairo. According to one report, the dog was tasked with tracking "anyone who tried to escape and to alert SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces". The dog was also to be used to help deter any Pakistani ground response to the raid and to help look for any hidden rooms or hidden doors in the compound. Additional personnel on the mission included a language translator, the dog handler, helicopter pilots, "tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers".

The SEALs flew into Pakistan from a staging base in the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan after originating at Bagram Air Base in northeastern Afghanistan. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), an airborne US Army Special Operations Command unit also known as the Night Stalkers, provided the two modified Black Hawk helicopters that were used for the raid itself, as well as four much larger Chinook heavy-lift helicopters that were employed as backups.

The Black Hawks appear to have been never-before-publicly-seen "stealth" versions of the helicopter that fly more quietly while being harder to detect on radar than conventional models; due to the weight of the extra stealth equipment on the Black Hawks, cargo was "calculated to the ounce, with the weather factored in."

Two of the Chinooks were kept on standby on the ground "in a deserted area roughly two-thirds of the way" between Jalalabad and Abbottabad, contained two additional SEAL teams consisting of approximately 24 DEVGRU operators along with Army Rangers for a backup "quick reaction force" (QRF). The Chinooks were equipped with M134 Miniguns and extra fuel for the Black Hawks. Their mission was to interdict any Pakistani military attempts to interfere with the raid. The other two Chinooks, holding 25 more SEALs from DEVGRU, were stationed just across the border in Afghanistan in case reinforcements were needed during the raid.

The 160th SOAR helicopters were supported by multiple other aircraft, including fixed-wing fighter jets and drones. According to CNN, "the Air Force also had a full team of combat search-and-rescue helicopters available".

The raid was scheduled for a time with little moonlight so the helicopters could enter Pakistan "low to the ground and undetected". The helicopters used hilly terrain and nap-of-the-earth techniques to reach the compound without appearing on radar and alerting the Pakistani military. The flight from Jalalabad to Abbottabad took about 90 minutes.

According to the mission plan, the first helicopter would hover over the compound's yard while its full team of SEALs fast-roped to the ground. At the same time, the second helo would fly to the northeast corner of the compound and deploy the translator, the dog, and four SEALs to secure the perimeter. The second helo would then hover over the house and the team leader and six SEALs would fast-rope onto the roof. The team in the courtyard was to enter the house from the ground floor.

As they hovered above the target, however, the first helicopter suffered a hazard known as a vortex ring state aggravated by higher than expected air temperature ("a so-called 'hot and high' environment") and the high compound walls, "which blocked rotor downwash from diffusing" causing the tail to "graze one of the compound's walls" and "breaking a rotor". The helicopter "rolled onto its side" and the pilot quickly buried the aircraft's nose "to keep it from tipping over." None of the SEALs, crew and pilots on the helicopter were seriously injured in the soft crash landing. The other helicopter then landed outside the compound and the SEALs scaled the walls to get inside. The SEALs proceeded to blow their way through walls and doors with explosives.

Killing

The SEALs encountered the residents in the compound's guest house, in the main building on the first floor where two adult males lived, and on the second and third floors where bin Laden lived with his family. The second and third floors were the last section of the compound to be cleared. There were reportedly "small knots of children...on every level, including the balcony of bin Laden's room".

In addition to Osama bin Laden, three other men and a woman were killed in the operation. The individuals killed were bin Laden's adult son (likely Khalid, possibly Hamza), bin Laden's courier (Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti), al-Kuwaiti's brother Abrar, and Abrar's unarmed wife Bushra.

Al-Kuwaiti opened fire on the first team of SEALs with an AK-47 from behind the guesthouse door, and a firefight took place between him and the SEALs, in which al-Kuwaiti was killed. The courier's male relative Abrar was shot and killed, before he could reach a weapon found lying nearby, by the SEALs' second team on the first floor of the main house. A woman near him, later identified as the Abrar's wife Bushra was also shot and killed. Bin Laden's young adult son rushed towards the SEALs on the staircase of the main house, and was shot and killed by the second team. An unnamed U.S. senior defense official stated that only one of the five people killed was armed.

The SEALs encountered bin Laden on the second or third floor of the main building. Bin Laden was "wearing the local loose-fitting tunic and pants known as a ''kurta paijama''", which were later found to have €500 and two phone numbers sewn into the fabric.

Bin Laden peered over the third floor ledge at the Americans advancing up the stairs, and then retreated into his room as a SEAL fired a shot at him, but missed. The SEALs quickly followed him into his room.

Inside the bedroom, two of bin Laden's wives stood in front of him, shielding him. One of them, Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, screamed at the SEALs in Arabic and motioned as if she were about to charge. One of the SEALs shot her in the leg, then grabbed both women and shoved them aside. A second SEAL entered the room and shot bin Laden in the chest. As bin Laden, wearing a tan shalwar kameez and a prayer cap, fell backward, the second SEAL shot him in the head. Immediately, the SEAL reported on the radio, "For God and country—Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo," then, "Geronimo E.K.I.A." (enemy killed in action.) In the White House Situation Room, Obama commented, "We got him."

There were two weapons near bin Laden in his room, including an AK-47 assault rifle and a Russian-made semi-automatic Makarov pistol, but according to his wife Amal, he was shot before he could reach his AK-47. According to the Associated Press the guns were on a shelf next to the door and the SEALs did not see them until they were photographing the body.

Bin Laden's 12-year-old daughter Safia was struck in her foot or ankle by a piece of flying debris. The Pakistani wife of one of the men killed was also injured.

As the SEALs encountered women and children during the raid, they restrained them with plastic handcuffs or zip ties. After the raid was over, U.S. forces moved the surviving residents outside "for Pakistani forces to discover". The interpreter questioned the women and children, none of whom confirmed that bin Laden was present. The injured Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah continued to harrangue the raiders in Arabic.

While bin Laden's body was taken by U.S. forces, the bodies of the four others killed in the raid were left behind at the compound and later taken into Pakistani custody.

Wrap-up

The raid was intended to take 30 minutes. All told, the time between the team's entry in and exit from the compound was 38 minutes. According to the Associated Press, the military offensive aspect of the raid was completed in the first 15 minutes.

Time in the compound was spent neutralizing defenders; "moving carefully through the compound, room to room, floor to floor" securing the women and children; clearing "weapons stashes and barricades", including a false door, three AK-47s, and two pistols; and searching the compound for information. U.S. personnel recovered computer hard drives, documents, DVDs, thumb drives, and "electronic equipment" from the compound for later analysis.

The helicopter that had made the emergency landing was damaged, and unable to fly the team out. It was consequently destroyed to safeguard its classified equipment, including an apparent stealth capability. After they moved the women and children to a secure area, U.S. forces "improvise[d] by packing the helicopter with explosives and blowing it up". The assault team called in a backup helicopter to replace the one that was lost. While the official Department of Defense narrative did not mention the airbases used in the operation, later accounts indicated that the helicopters returned to Bagram Airfield. The body of Osama bin Laden was then flown from Bagram to the aircraft carrier in a V-22 Osprey (a tiltrotor aircraft) escorted by two U.S. Navy F/A-18s fighter jets.

According to U.S. officials, bin Laden was buried at sea because no country would accept his remains. Before disposing of the body, the U.S. called the Saudi government, who approved of dumping the body in the ocean. Muslim religious rites were performed aboard the ''Carl Vinson'' in the North Arabian Sea within 24 hours of bin Laden's death. Preparations began at 10:10 a.m. local time and at-sea burial was completed at 11 a.m. The body was washed, wrapped in a white sheet and placed in a weighted plastic bag. An officer read prepared religious remarks which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. Afterward, bin Laden's body was placed onto a flat board. The board was tilted upward on one side and the body slid off into the sea.

Pakistan-U.S. communication

According to Obama administration officials, U.S. officials did not share information about the raid with the government of Pakistan until it was over. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen called Pakistan's army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani at about 3 a.m. local time to inform him of the Abbottabad Operation.

According to the Pakistani foreign ministry, the operation was conducted entirely by the U.S. forces. Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials claimed that they were also present at what they called a joint operation; President Asif Ali Zardari flatly denied this assertion. Pakistan's foreign secretary Salman Bashir later confirmed that Pakistani military had scrambled F-16s after they became aware of the attack but that they reached the compound after American helicopters had left.

Identification of the body

U.S. forces used multiple methods to positively identify the body of Osama bin Laden: Measurement of the body: Both the corpse and bin Laden were ; SEALs on the scene did not have a tape measure to measure the corpse, so a SEAL of known height lay down next to the body and the height was approximated by comparison. Facial recognition software: A photograph transmitted by the SEALs to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for facial recognition analysis yielded a 90 to 95 percent likely match. In-person identification: One or two women from the compound, including one of bin Laden's wives, identified bin Laden's body. A wife of bin Laden also called him by name during the raid, inadvertently assisting in his identification by U.S. armed forces on the ground. DNA testing: The Associated Press and ''The New York Times'' reported that bin Laden's body could be identified by DNA testing using tissue and blood samples taken from his sister who had died of brain cancer. ABC News stated, "Two samples were taken from bin Laden: one of these DNA samples was analyzed, and information was sent electronically back to Washington, D.C., from Bagram. Someone else from Afghanistan is physically bringing back a sample." According to a senior US Defense Department official:

Inference: Per the same Defense official, from the initial review of the materials removed from the Abbottabad compound the Department "assessed that much of this information, including personal correspondence between Osama bin Laden and others, as well as some of the video footage...would only have been in his possession."

Local accounts

Beginning at 12:58 a.m. local time, Abbottabad resident Sohaib Athar sent a series of tweets describing the noise of helicopters hovering overhead—"a rare occurrence"—and several window-rattling blasts. By 1:44 a.m. all was quiet until a plane flew over the city at 3:39 a.m. Neighbors took to their roofs and watched as American special forces stormed the compound. One neighbor said, "I saw soldiers emerging from the helicopters and advancing towards the house. Some of them instructed us in chaste Pashto to turn off the lights and stay inside." Another man said he heard shooting and screams, then an explosion as a grounded helicopter was destroyed. The blast broke his bedroom window and left charred debris over a nearby field. A local security officer said he entered the compound shortly after the Americans left, before it was sealed off by the army. "There were four dead bodies, three male and one female and one female was injured," he said. "There was a lot of blood on the floor and one could easily see the marks like a dead body had been dragged out of the compound." Numerous witnesses reported that power, and possibly cellphone service, went out around the time of the raid and apparently included the military academy. Accounts differed as to the exact time the blackout occurred. One journalist concluded after interviewing several residents that it was a routine rolling blackout.

ISI reported after questioning survivors of the raid that there were 17 to 18 people in the compound at the time of the attack and that the Americans took away one person still alive, possibly a bin Laden son. The ISI also said that survivors included a wife, a daughter and eight to nine other children, not apparently bin Laden's. An unnamed Pakistani security official was quoted as reporting that one of bin Laden's daughters told Pakistani investigators that bin Laden had been shot dead in front of family members. The daughter also claimed that bin Laden was captured alive, then executed by American forces and dragged to a helicopter.

Compound residents

U.S. officials said there were 22 people in the compound. Five were killed, including Osama bin Laden. Pakistani officials gave conflicting reports suggesting up to 17 survivors. ''The Sunday Times'' subsequently published excerpts from a pocket guide, presumably dropped by the SEALs during the raid, containing pictures and descriptions of likely compound residents. The guide listed several adult children of bin Laden and their families who were not ultimately found in the compound. Because of a lack of verifiable information, some of what follows is thinly sourced. 5 adults dead: Osama bin Laden a.k.a Abu Hamza, 54; Khalid, his son by Siham (identified as Hamza in early accounts), 23; Arshad Khan, a.k.a. Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the courier, described as the "flabby" one by ''The Sunday Times'', 33; Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's brother Abrar, 30; and Bushra, Abrar's wife, age unknown. 4 surviving women: Khairiah, bin Laden's third, Saudi wife a.k.a. Um Hamza, 62; Siham, bin Laden's fourth, Saudi wife a.k.a. Um Khalid, 54; Amal, bin Laden's fifth, Yemeni wife, a.k.a. Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, 29 (injured); and an unidentified woman, either Arshad Khan's second, Pakistani wife, or Khalid's wife and coincidentally the Khan brothers' sister, age unknown (injured). 5 minor children of Osama and Amal: Safia, a daughter, 9 (injured); a son, 5; another son, age unknown; and infant twin daughters. 4 bin Laden grandchildren from an unidentified daughter killed in an airstrike in Waziristan. Two may be the boys, around 10, who spoke to Pakistani investigators. 4 children of Arshad Khan: Two sons, Abdur Rahman and Khalid, 6 or 7; a daughter, age unknown; and another child, age unknown.

Aftermath

Leaks of the news

At around 9:45 p.m. EDT, the White House announced that the president would be addressing the nation later in the evening. Anonymous government officials leaked details to the media, and by 11 p.m. numerous major news sources were reporting that bin Laden was dead.

U.S. presidential address

[[File:President Obama on Death of Osama bin Laden.ogv|thumb| President Obama's address (9:28) ''Also available:'' Audio only ]]

At 11:35 p.m., President Obama appeared on major television networks:

Good evening. 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-Qaeda, and a terrorist who was responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children...

President Obama remembered the victims of the September 11 attacks. He praised the ten-year-old war against al-Qaeda, which he said had disrupted terrorist plots, strengthened homeland defenses, removed the Taliban government, and captured or killed scores of al-Qaeda operatives. Obama said that when he took office he made finding bin Laden the top priority of the war. Bin Laden's death was the most significant blow to al-Qaeda so far but the war would continue. He reaffirmed that the United States was not at war against Islam. He defended his decision to conduct an operation within Pakistan. He said Americans understood the cost of war but would not stand by while their security was threatened. "To those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda’s terror," he said, "justice has been done."

Reactions

Within minutes of the official announcement, large crowds spontaneously gathered outside the White House, Ground Zero, the Pentagon and in New York's Times Square to celebrate. In Dearborn, Michigan, where there is a large Muslim and Arab population, a small crowd gathered outside the City Hall in celebration, many of them being of Middle Eastern descent. From the beginning to the end of Obama's speech, 5,000 tweets per second were sent on microblogging platform Twitter. Fans attending a nationally televised Major League Baseball game between two National League East rivals, the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets, at Citizens Bank Park initiated "U-S-A!" cheers in response to the news. In addition, at the conclusion of WWE Extreme Rules, a professional wrestling event which was occurring at the time, WWE Champion John Cena announced to the audience in attendance the capture and "compromised to a permanent end" of bin Laden, prompting chants while he exited the arena to the song "Stars and Stripes Forever".

The deputy leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said that, with bin Laden dead, western forces should now pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan; authorities in Iran made similar comments. Palestinian Authority leaders had contrasting reactions. Mahmoud Abbas welcomed bin Laden's death, while Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, condemned what he saw as the assassination of an "Arab holy warrior".

The 14th Dalai Lama was quoted by ''The Los Angeles Times'' as saying, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. ... If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures." This was widely reported as an endorsement of bin Laden's killing, but another journalist cited a video of the discussion to argue that the comment was taken out of context and the Dalai Lama only supports killing in self-defense.

A ''The New York Times''/CBS poll taken after bin Laden's death showed that 16 percent of Americans feel safer as the result of his death while six in ten Americans of those polled believe killing bin Laden likely would increase the threat of terrorism against the United States.

In India, Minister for Home Affairs P. Chidambaram said that bin Laden hiding "deep inside" Pakistan was a matter of grave concern for India and showed that "many of the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks, including the controllers and the handlers of the terrorists who actually carried out the attack, continue to be sheltered in Pakistan". He also called on Pakistan to arrest them, amidst calls for similar strikes being conducted by India against Hafeez Saeed and Dawood Ibrahim.

Conspiracy theories

The reports of bin Laden's death on May 1, 2011 are not universally accepted despite DNA testing confirming his identity, Bin Laden's 12-year-old daughter witnessing his death, and a May 6, 2011 al-Qaeda statement confirming his death. The swift burial of bin Laden's body at sea, speed of the DNA results, and the decision not to release pictures of the dead body formed the basis of conspiracy theories that bin Laden had not died in the raid. Some Internet blogs suggested that the U.S. government feigned the raid, and some Internet forums hosted debates over the alleged hoax.

Legality

Under U.S. law

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists. That resolution authorizes the US president to use "necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" he determines were involved in the September 11 attacks." The Obama administration justified its use of force by relying on that resolution, as well as international law set forth in treaties and customary laws of war.

John Bellinger III, who served as the U.S. State Department's senior lawyer during President George Bush's second term, said the strike was a legitimate military action and did not run counter to the U.S.' self-imposed prohibition on assassinations:

The killing is not prohibited by the long-standing assassination prohibition in executive order 12333 [signed in 1981], because the action was a military action in the ongoing U.S. armed conflict with al-Qaeda, and it is not prohibited to kill specific leaders of an opposing force. The assassination prohibition also does not apply to killings in self-defense.

Similarly, Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department, said in 2010 that "under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute 'assassination'."

David Scheffer, director of the Northwestern University School of Law Center for International Human Rights, said the fact that bin Laden had previously been indicted in 1998 in a US District Court for conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations was a complicating factor. "Normally when an individual is under indictment the purpose is to capture that person in order to bring him to court to try him ... The object is not to literally summarily execute him if he's under indictment." Scheffer and another expert opined that it was important to determine whether the mission was to capture bin Laden or to kill him. If the Navy SEALs were instructed to kill bin Laden without trying first to capture him, it "may have violated American ideals if not international law."

Under international law

In an address to the Pakistani parliament, Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said, "Our people are rightly incensed on the issue of violation of sovereignty as typified by the covert U.S. air and ground assault on the Osama hideout in Abbottabad. ... The Security Council, while exhorting UN member states to join their efforts against terrorism, has repeatedly emphasized that this be done in accordance with international law, human rights and humanitarian law." Former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf denied a report in ''The Guardian'' that his government made a secret agreement permitting U.S. forces to conduct unilateral raids in search of the top three al-Qaida leaders.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "The operation against bin Laden was justified as an act of national self-defense. It's lawful to target an enemy commander in the field." He called the killing of bin Laden "a tremendous step forward in attaining justice for the nearly 3,000 innocent Americans who were murdered on September 11, 2001." Commenting on the legality under international law, University of Michigan Law Professor Steven Ratner said, "A lot of it depends on whether you believe Osama bin Laden is a combatant in a war or a suspect in a mass murder." In the latter case, "you would only be able to kill a suspect if they represented an immediate threat".

Holder testified that bin Laden made no attempt to surrender, and "even if he had there would be a good basis on the part of those very brave Navy SEAL team members to do what they did in order to protect themselves and the other people who were in that building." According to Anthony Dworkin, an international law expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, if bin Laden was hors de combat (as his daughter is said to have alleged) that would have been a violation of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.

The UN Security Council released a statement applauding the news of bin Laden's death, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "very much relieved". Two United Nations Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement cautioning that, "Actions taken by States in combating terrorism, especially in high profile cases, set precedents for the way in which the right to life will be treated in future instances."

Handling of the body

Under Islamic tradition burial at sea is considered by some to be inappropriate when other, preferred forms of burial are available, and several prominent Islamic clerics criticized the decision. Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb, the head of Al-Azhar University, Egypt's seat of Sunni Muslim learning, said the disposal of the body at sea was an affront to religious and human values. Scholars like al-Tayeb hold that sea burials can only be allowed in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship, and that the regular practice should have occurred in this case—the body buried in the ground with the head pointing to Islam's holy city of Mecca.

A stated advantage of a burial at sea is that the site is not readily identified or accessed, thus preventing it from becoming a focus of attention or "terrorist shrine". ''The Guardian'' questioned whether bin Laden's grave would have become a shrine, as this is strongly discouraged in Wahhabism. Addressing the same concern Egyptian Islamic analyst and lawyer Montasser el-Zayat said that if the Americans wished to avoid making a shrine to bin Laden, an unmarked grave on land would have accomplished the same goal.

''The Guardian'' also quoted a U.S. official explaining the difficulty of finding a country that would accept the burial of bin Laden in its soil. A professor of Islamic Law at the University of Jordan stated burying at sea was permitted if there was nobody to receive the body and provide a Muslim burial, and that "it's neither true nor correct to claim that there was nobody in the Muslim world ready to receive bin Laden's body". On a similar note Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai's grand mufti, stated: "They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot say they did it according to Islam. If the family does not want him, it's really simple in Islam: you dig up a grave anywhere, even on a remote island, you say the prayers and that's it. Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances. This is not one of them." Khalid Latif, an imam who serves as a chaplain and the director of the Islamic Center of New York University, argued that the sea burial was respectful.

Leor Halevi, a professor at Vanderbilt University and the author of "Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society," explained that Islamic law does not prescribe ordinary funerals for those killed in battle, and pointed to controversy within the Muslim world over whether bin Laden was, as a "mass murderer of Muslims," entitled to the same respect as mainstream Muslims. At the same time, he suggested that the burial could have been handled with more cultural sensitivity. In an interview, Halevi explained that medieval Muslims were buried at sea when they died in the course of long voyages in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. He said that maritime burial is really unusual, but that "it's obvious" the U.S. intended "no slight."

Omar bin Laden, son of Osama, published a complaint on May 10, 2011, that the burial at sea deprived the family of a proper burial.

Release of photographs

CNN cited a senior U.S. official as saying three sets of photographs of bin Laden's body exist: Photos taken at a hangar in Afghanistan, described as the most recognizable and gruesome; photos taken from the burial at sea on the USS ''Carl Vinson'' before a shroud was placed around his body; and photos from the raid itself, which include shots of the interior of the compound as well as three of the others who died in the raid.

On May 4, Reuters published photos it said were taken by a Pakistan security official in the aftermath of the raid; the photos included images of the helicopter wreckage and three male dead bodies, none of whom appeared to be Osama bin Laden.

A source told ABC News that the photos taken by the military servicemen on the scene depict the physical damage done by a "high-caliber bullet". ''CBS Evening News'' reported that the photo shows that the bullet which hit above bin Laden's left eye blew out his left eyeball and blew away a large portion of his frontal skull, exposing his brain. CNN stated that the pictures from the Afghanistan hangar depict "a massive open head wound across both eyes. It's very bloody and gory." Senator Jim Inhofe, who viewed the photos, stated that the photos taken of the body on the ''Carl Vinson'', which showed bin Laden's face after much of the blood and material had been washed away, should be released to the public.

A debate on whether the military photos should or should not be released to the public has taken place. Those supporting the release argued that the photos should be considered public records, that the photos are necessary to complete the journalistic record, and that the photos would prove bin Laden's death and therefore prevent conspiracy theories that bin Laden is still alive. Those in opposition to a release of the photos expressed concern that the photos would inflame anti-American sentiment in the Middle East.

President Obama ultimately decided not to release the photos. In an interview set to air on May 4 on ''60 Minutes'', Obama stated that "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies. We don't need to spike the football", and that he was concerned with ensuring that "very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, or as a propaganda tool. That's not who we are." Among Republican members of Congress, Senator Lindsey Graham criticized the decision and stated that he wanted to see the photos released, while Senator John McCain and Representative Mike Rogers, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, supported the decision not to release the photos.

On May 11, select members of Congress (the congressional leadership and those who serve in a committee of intelligence, homeland security, judiciary, foreign relations, and military) were shown 15 bin Laden photos. In an interview with Eliot Spitzer, Senator Jim Inhofe said that three of the photos were of bin Laden alive for identification reference. Three other photos were of the sea burial ceremony.

The group Judicial Watch announced that they have filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain access to the photos. On May 9, the Department of Defense declined to process Judicial Watch's FOIA request, prompting a lawsuit. A FOIA request from the Associated Press has also been declined.

Role of Pakistan

Pakistan came under intense international scrutiny after the raid. The Pakistani government denied that it had sheltered bin Laden. It said it had been sharing information about the compound with the CIA and other intelligence agencies since 2009. After the raid reports that Pakistan allowed its close ally China to examine the wreckage of the helicopter that U.S. Forces demolished cast doubts on Pakistan's loyalty.

Connections with Abbottabad

Abbottabad attracted refugees from fighting in the tribal areas and Swat Valley, as well as Afghanistan. "People don't really care now to ask who's there," said Gohar Ayub Khan, a former foreign minister and resident of the city. "That's one of the reasons why, possibly, he came in there."

The city was home to at least one al-Qaeda leader before bin Laden. Operational chief Abu Faraj al-Libi reportedly moved his family to Abbottabad in mid-2003. Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) raided the house in December 2003 but did not find him. A courier told interrogators that al-Libi used three houses in Abbottabad. Pakistani officials say they informed their American counterparts at the time that the city could be a hiding place for al-Qaeda leaders. In 2009 officials began providing the U.S. with intelligence about bin Laden's compound without knowing who lived there.

On January 25, 2011, ISI arrested Umar Patek, an Indonesian wanted in connection with the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, while he was staying with a family in Abbottabad. Tahir Shehzad, a clerk at the post office, was arrested on suspicion of facilitating travel for al-Qaeda militants.

Allegations against Pakistan

Numerous allegations were made that the government of Pakistan had shielded bin Laden. Critics cited the very close proximity of bin Laden's heavily fortified compound to the Pakistan Military Academy, that the U.S. chose to not notify Pakistani authorities before the operation, and the double standards of Pakistan regarding the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. U.S. government files, leaked by Wikileaks, disclosed that American diplomats had been told that Pakistani security services were tipping off bin Laden every time U.S. forces approached. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), also helped smuggle al-Qaeda militants into Afghanistan to fight NATO troops. According to the leaked files, in December 2009, the government of Tajikistan had also told U.S. officials that many in Pakistan were aware of bin Laden's whereabouts.

CIA chief Leon Panetta said the CIA had ruled out involving Pakistan in the operation, because it feared that "any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets." However, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stated that "cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding". Obama echoed her sentiments. John O. Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism advisor, said that it was inconceivable that bin Laden did not have support from within Pakistan. He further stated: "People have been referring to this as hiding in plain sight. We are looking at how he was able to hide out there for so long."

Indian Minister for Home Affairs P. Chidambaram said that bin Laden hiding "deep inside" Pakistan was a matter of grave concern for India, and showed that "many of the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks, including the controllers and the handlers of the terrorists who actually carried out the attack, continue to be sheltered in Pakistan". He called on Pakistan to arrest them.

Pakistani-born British MP Khalid Mahmood stated that he was "flabbergasted and shocked" after he learned that bin Laden was living in a city with thousands of Pakistani troops, reviving questions about alleged links between al-Qaeda and elements in Pakistan's security forces.

On August 7, 2011, the American spy novelist and security analyst Raelynn Hillhouse published an account on her national security blog The Spy Who Billed Me that suggested Pakistan's ISI had been sheltering bin Laden in return for Saudi cash and that he was betrayed by a Pakistani intelligence officer.

Pakistani response

According to a Pakistani intelligence official, raw phone-tap data had been transferred to the United States without being analyzed by Pakistan. While the U.S. "was concentrating on this" information since September 2010, information regarding bin Laden and the compound's inhabitants had "slipped from" Pakistan's "radar" over the months. Bin Laden left "an invisible footprint" and he had not been contacting other militant networks. It was noted that much focus had been placed on a courier entering and leaving the compound. The transfer of intelligence to the U.S. was a regular occurrence according to the official, who also stated regarding the raid that "I think they came in undetected and went out the same day", and Pakistan did not believe that U.S. personnel were present in the area before the special operation occurred.

According to the Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan had prior knowledge that an operation would happen. Pakistan was "in the know of certain things" and "what happened, happened with our consent. Americans got to know him—where he was first—and that's why they struck it and struck it precisely." Husain Haqqani, Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., had said that Pakistan would have pursued bin Laden had the intelligence of his location existed with them and Pakistan was "very glad that our American partners did. They had superior intelligence, superior technology, and we are grateful to them."

Another Pakistani official stated that Pakistan "assisted only in terms of authorization of the helicopter flights in our airspace" and the operation was conducted by the United States. He also said that "in any event, we did not want anything to do with such an operation in case something went wrong."

In June the ISI arrested the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe Osama bin Laden's compound and five CIA informants.

Code name

Several officials who were present in the Situation Room, including the president, told reporters that the code name for bin Laden was "Geronimo". They had watched Leon Panetta, speaking from CIA headquarters, while he narrated the action in Abbottabad. Panetta said, "We have a visual on Geronimo", and later, "Geronimo EKIA"--enemy killed in action. The actual words of the commander on the ground were, "For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo". Officials subsequently explained that each step of the mission was labelled alphabetically and that "Geronimo" indicated the raiders had reached step "G", the capture or killing of bin Laden. Osama bin Laden himself was identified as "Jackpot", the general code name for the target of an operation. ''ABC News'' reported that otherwise his regular code name was "Cakebread". ''The New Yorker'' reported that bin Laden's codename was "Crankshaft".

Many Native Americans were offended that Geronimo, the legendary 19th century Apache who eluded the U.S. Army for years, was irrevocably linked with bin Laden. The chairman of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, the successor to Geronimo's tribe, wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to "right this wrong". The president of the Navajo Nation requested that the U.S. government change the code name retroactively. Officials from the National Congress of American Indians said the focus should be on honoring the disproportionately high number of Native Americans serving in the military, and they had been assured that "Geronimo" was not a code name for bin Laden. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs heard testimony on the issue from tribal leaders, while the Defense Department had no comment except to say that no disrespect was intended.

Derivation of intelligence

After the death of bin Laden, some officials from the Bush administration, such as Bush Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo and former attorney general under Bush Michael Mukasey, wrote Op/Eds claiming that enhanced interrogation techniques they authorized yielded the intelligence that later led to locating bin Laden's hideout. McCasey specifically stated that the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) was what brought out the crucial detail of the nickname of bin Laden's courier.

U.S. officials and legislators including Republican John McCain and Democrat Diane Feinstein, Chairwoman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, countered that those statements were "false", noting a report by CIA Director Leon Panetta stating that the first mention of the courier's nickname did not come from KSM, but rather from another government's interrogation of a suspect whom they said they "believe was not tortured". McCain called on Mukasey to retract his claims.

CIA director Leon Panetta had written a letter to McCain on the issue, stating, "Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier's role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the 'only timely and effective way' to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively." Although some information may have been obtained from detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, Panetta's letter to Senator McCain confirms that enhanced interrogation techniques may have hindered the search for Bin Laden by producing false information during interrogations. In the letter CIA Director Panetta wrote Senator McCain that :"We first learned about the facilitator/courier's nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier's role were alerting. In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier's full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means."

In addition, other U.S. officials claim that shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in CIA secret prisons told interrogators about the courier's pseudonym "al-Kuwaiti" and that when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was later captured, he only "confirmed" the courier's pseudonym. After Abu Faraj al-Libbi was captured he provided false or misleading information: he denied that he knew al-Kuwaiti and he made up another name instead. Also, a group of interrogators asserted that the courier's nickname, was not divulged "during torture, but rather several months later, when [detainees] were questioned by interrogators who did not use abusive techniques."

Intelligence postmortem

Evidence seized from the compound is said to include ten cell phones, five to ten computers, twelve hard drives, at least 100 computer disks (including thumb drives and DVDs), handwritten notes, documents, weapons and "an assortment of personal items." Intelligence analysts will also study call detail records from two phone numbers that were found to be sewn into bin Laden's clothing.

The material gathered at the compound is being stored at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, where forensic experts will analyze fingerprints, DNA and other trace evidence left on the material. Copies of the material are being provided to other agencies; officials want to preserve a chain of evidence in case any of the information is needed as evidence in a future trial.

A special CIA team has been given the responsibility of combing through the digital material and documents removed from the bin Laden compound. The CIA team is working in collaboration with other U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of the Treasury, National Counterterrorism Center, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Media Exploitation Center "to triage, catalog and analyze this intelligence."

Bin Laden's youngest wife told Pakistani investigators that the family lived in the feudal village of Chak Shah Mohammad Khan, in the nearby district of Haripur, for two-and-a-half years prior to moving to Abbottabad in late 2005.

Revelation of stealth helicopter

The tail section of the secret helicopter survived demolition and lay just outside the compound wall. Pakistani security forces put up a cloth barrier at first light to hide the wreckage. Later, a tractor hauled it away hidden under a tarp. Journalists nevertheless managed to obtain photographs which revealed the previously undisclosed stealth technology. ''Aviation Week'' said the helicopter appeared to be a significantly modified MH-60 Black Hawk. Serial numbers found at the scene were consistent with an MH-60 built in 2009. Its performance during the operation confirmed that a stealth helicopter could evade detection in a militarily sensitive, densely populated area. Photos showed that Black Hawk's tail had stealth-configured shapes on the boom and the fairings, swept stabilizers and a "hubcap" over the noise reducing five- or six-blade tail rotor. It appeared to have a silver-loaded infrared suppression finish similar to some V-22 Ospreys. The U.S. requested return of the wreckage and the Chinese government also expressed interest, according to Pakistani officials. Pakistan had custody of the wreckage for over two weeks before its return was secured by US Senator John Kerry. Experts disagreed as to how much information could have been gleaned from the tail fragment. Stealth technology was already operational on several fixed-wing aircraft and the cancelled RAH-66 Comanche helicopter- however, the modified Blackhawk was the first confirmed operational "stealth helicopter". Likely, the most valuable information could come from radar-absorbing paint used on the tail section. Local children were seen picking up pieces of the wreckage and selling them as souvenirs. In August 2011, reports surfaced that Pakistan had indeed allowed Chinese scientists to examine the helicopter's tail section and were especially interested in its radar-absorbing paint. Pakistan and China subsequently denied these claims.

Previous attempts to capture or kill bin Laden

February 1994: A team of Libyans attacked bin Laden's home in the Sudan. The CIA investigated and reported that they had been hired by Saudi Arabia, but Saudi Arabia accused them of lying to make bin Laden more amenable to Sudanese interests. August 20, 1998: In Operation Infinite Reach, the U.S. Navy launched 66 cruise missiles at a suspected al-Qaeda training camp outside Khost, Afghanistan, where bin Laden was expected to be. Reports said that 30 people may have been killed. 2000: Foreign operatives working on behalf of the CIA fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of vehicles in which bin Laden was traveling through the mountains of Afghanistan, hitting one of the vehicles but not the one in which bin Laden was riding. December 2001: During the opening stages of the war in Afghanistan launched following the September 11 attacks, the U.S. and its allies believed that bin Laden was hiding in the rugged mountains at Tora Bora. Despite overrunning the Taliban and al-Qaeda positions they failed to capture or kill him.

See also

Coup de main

FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

High-value target

Manhunt (military)

The Situation Room (photograph)

Special Activities Division

References

External links

Times Topics

China.org.cn "The Strange Death of Osama Bin Laden." Chinese English-language website opinion column. May 3, 2011.

Phillips, Macon. "Osama Bin Laden Dead." The White House Blog. May 2, 2011.

"Photo Gallery May 1, 2011." The White House

Garamone, Jim. "Obama Declares 'Justice Has Been Done'." American Forces Press Service, U.S. Department of Defense.

Garamone, Jim. "Intelligence, Operations Team Up for bin Laden Kill." American Forces Press Service, U.S. Department of Defense.

"Office of the Spokesperson Press Release Death of Osama bin Ladin." Embassy of Pakistan in Washington. May 2, 2011.

"Most Wanted Terrorist Dead." Federal Bureau of Investigation. May 2, 2011.

"Message from the Director: Justice Done." (Archive). Central Intelligence Agency. May 2, 2011.

"Statement from September 11 Families' Association Tribute WTC Visitor Center." September 11 Families Association. May 2, 2011.

January 2011 satellite image of the area where Osama bin Laden was captured (DigitalGlobe)

"Operation Neptune Spear (2011)". ShadowSpear. May 2, 2011.

"Osama bin Laden killed". The Big Picture. ''The Boston Globe''. May 2, 2011.

Category:2011 in military history Category:2011 in Pakistan Category:Abbottabad District Category:Central Intelligence Agency operations Laden, Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Category:Obama Administration initiatives Category:Operations involving American special forces Category:Osama bin Laden Category:Pakistan – United States relations Category:United States Naval Special Warfare Command Category:War on Terror Category:Military raids

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