Pakistani town shocked by bin Laden find

After almost a decade of pursuit, the world's greatest manhunt ended with Osama bin Laden cornered not in a cave but in a mansion on the edges of a leafy city near Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

He was hiding, in a sense, in plain sight.

"It is a big surprise for me that bin Laden was actually there," said Sadik Aale Mohammad, who lives a mile from bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, a middle-class Pakistani city an hour's drive north of Islamabad.

"We are in disbelief that this happened in Pakistan and Abbottabad, which is such a peaceful place," he said.

Situated in the Orash Valley, Abbottabad is circled by forested hills cut by the Karakoram Highway, once part of the fabled Silk Road. Tourists come here in the summers for its pleasant weather.

Abbottabad is also home to a large military base, and a prominent Pakistani Army academy. Soldiers are everywhere.

That U.S. intelligence agents and special operations forces tracked bin Laden there, and that he appeared to have been with family and aides for considerable time, has raised questions about the role and veracity of Pakistan's government, a nuclear power and nominal ally of the United States in its war against Taliban in Afghanistan.

It casts doubt on the degree to which Pakistan was complicit in hiding and protecting bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda and mastermind of the terrorist attacks on the United States that killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. Some experts say the find potentially shakes the future of U.S.-Pakistani relations by suggesting terrorists are operating more freely here than previously assumed.

"The question of where Pakistan stands in this whole effort has come to the fore," said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former State Department official. "This long, flawed and difficult relationship will be entering another difficult phase."

Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, interviewed in Dubai by Bloomberg TV, insisted Pakistan had cooperated fully with the U.S. government and said that he had never known bin Laden's location.

"No, never," Musharraf said. "That really surprises me."

The implications for Pakistan were immediately clear to its own citizens.

"What was he doing in Pakistan?" asked Umair Ejaz, a businessman in Lahore, which has been the scene of Islamist violence. He said his country's image has been damaged because it "implies Pakistan had given him free accommodation."

"The blowback from this is going to be huge," Ejaz said.

Pakistan has seen rising levels of violence linked to terrorists operating in the country, which has been a base for extremist Taliban fighting against U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

Bin Laden's refuge in a large compound in a Pakistani military town "is evidence that bin Laden was protected by Islamic elements in the Pakistani army," said Walid Phares, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Even so, Phares doubted Pakistan policy leaders knew bin Laden was there  reasoning "they would never put him in a Club Med situation. They would put him in the Kush mountains."

Stephen Tankel, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said bin Laden's compound, bigger and more secure and secretive than others in the area, could not have been built without Pakistani officials knowing someone important was there. His presence there, and the support he may have been receiving from accomplices in the country, point to a growing jihadi threat in Pakistan, Tankel said.

House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers said that of the known 20 top al-Qaeda leaders, at least 10 to 12 "we believe to be traveling around Pakistan someplace."

He said the U.S. government will press tough questions of the Pakistani government, a recipient of substantial U.S. financial aid, and its ISI security agency. But, Rogers added, U.S. reaction must be tempered with the knowledge of delicate internal political considerations for the country's rulers.

"It is incredibly important for us that we maintain a relationship, so that we can pursue those targets that we know are posing a threat to the United States," he said.

Only two interpretations could explain bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, an old British military garrison town now occupied by active and retired Pakistani military officials, says Andrew Wilder, director of Afghanistan and Pakistan programs at the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington think tank.

"One is that they (Pakistani security officials) didn't know, which is pretty bad news," Wilder says. "And one, that they did know, which is worse news."

It's hard not to conclude that some aspects of the Pakistani military establishment were aware of bin Laden's whereabouts, which "has disturbing implications for U.S. relations in the country," he says. "Yesterday's events will further weaken an already weak partnership."

Wilder said he did not think Pakistan is about to implode or be overtaken by Islamist extremists. The military there is protecting its own interests and is not at war with the state, and every new al-Qaeda attack in Pakistan turns more of the public and the military against it, he said.