Osama bin Laden dead: Pakistan terms it as major victory over terrorism

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan had no clue about the operation until long after Osama bin Laden was killed but it was quick to term the incident as a "major setback" for terrorist organisations and a "major victory" in the country's fight against militancy.

"We will not allow our soil to be used against any other country for terrorism and therefore I think it's a great victory, it's a success and I congratulate the success of this operation," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told AFP in an interview on Monday.

Asked about the extent to which Pakistan co-operated in the operation he said he didn't know the details.
"I don't know minute details, but in short we have intelligence co-operation," he said.

"Osama bin Laden's death illustrates the resolve of the international community, including Pakistan, to fight and eliminate terrorism," the Pakistan foreign ministry said in a statement. "It constitutes a major setback to terrorist organisations around the world."

But contrary to the latest posturing and claims earlier that bin Laden was not in Pakistan, Osama could not have had lived in the heart of Pakistan without the support of its establishment. He was not hiding in a cave in the mountains but in a massive mansion worth $1 million.

The New York Times reported CIA officials spent several weeks looking at satellite photos after they tracked down a courier, reportedly having close ties with Osama, entering a compound with a mansion in Abbottabad.

The mansion was set on a hilltop and surrounded by 12-foot-high concrete walls topped with barbed wire. The property was valued at $1 million. US officials believed that the compound, built in 2005, was designed for the specific purpose of hiding bin Laden.

But this did not stop the former chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Hamid Gul from claiming that it was wrong to say that the Pakistani establishment harboured bin Laden. "It is wrong to say that the ISI or the Pakistani government was harbouring Osama. When asked about the kind of suspicious high-wall mansion in which Laden was hiding, Gul claimed that big wall compounds were common in areas of Quetta and Abbottabad.

"It is not unusual to have compounds with huge walls and heavy security in this part of Pakistan. Pathans usually build huge compound walls," he said.

Despite the patronage extended by the Pakistani establishment to bin Laden, his killing invited the wrath of extreme elements. The Pakistani Taliban threatened to kill President Asif Ali Zardari and carry out attacks on the Pakistani Army and the US military after hearing the news.

"Now Pakistani rulers, President Zardari and the army will be our first targets. America will be our second target," Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, told news agencies by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The Taliban are an ally of al-Qaeda. Threats against the US too appeared on a website linked with al-Qaeda. One post on the Shumukh al-Islam website, the "exclusive outlet" for official messages from al-Qaeda, said, "America will reap the same."