Osama Bin Laden

Opinion

President Barack Obama of the United States of America has been a terror to the countries harbouring terrorist. His efforts paid off when he announced recently the capture and killing of the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group.

According to different sources, the president authorized the raid on Bin Laden’s compound before his state visit to Alabama and Florida on 29th April, 2011. Believed to be the hideout of the world’s most wanted terrorist, the Abbotabad compound is located 60 miles away from the capital city of Pakistan. Obama, however, broke the UN article which states that “No country should take up arms against another”. America ignored this article when she invaded Pakistan, thereby compromising the country’s sovereignty in order to attack Osama bin Laden, OBL for short.

OBL was wanted for 9 years, 7 months and 20 days, over the attack on the World Trade Centre building in the US. The attack was spearheaded by the spiritual leader of the global. Al-Qaeda terrorist franchise and the master plotter of the September 11, 2011 attack which killed approximately 3,000 people from various parts of the world.

The announcement made by the US President on 1 May, 2011, goes thus: NAVY SEALS have killed the 54-year old world terrorist. OBL caught up with his nemesis after a gun battle with NAVY SEALS and CIA paramilitary force.”

The carefully rehearsed operation took place at about 1:30am Monday local time. It was recorded that the operation lasted 40 minutes. During the raid on OBL’s hideout, three adults, all male died. They were believed to be Bin Laden’s adult son and two unidentified courier men. One unidentified woman also died as she was being used as human shield by OBL.

The luxury compound in Abbotabad which OBL resided was a multi- million dollar enclave in Pakistan near the Pakistani military force base. The house built in the compound was said to be heavily fortified, with an 18-foot high wall, taller than necessary to protect two courier men who allegedly lived there alone. Cable network facilities that cost over a thousand dollars were installed in the compound to serve as security radar. After accomplishing the task, all the American NAVY SEALS left there safely, loading Bin Laden’s body into the chopper that landed in Afghanistan, the US official statement on the operation said. One of the American choppers was said to have crash-landed at the Abbotabad compound during the operation and exploded.

It was reported that the US NAVY SEALS captured two of OBL’s wives and four of his children during the operation. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a Senior US security official told Reuters that NAVY SEALS dropped by helicopters in the compound were under order not to capture Bin Laden. “This was a kill operation,” he said.

Intelligence US officials weren’t certain that Bin Laden would be at the site as there was “no smoking gun that put him there,” NBC News reported. OBL was indeed holed up in a two-storey house 100 yards from a Pakistan military academy. A US official said that in the wake of the operation in May there may be a heightened threat to the US homeland. The US is taking every possible precaution to avert any threat by the alien nations. The usual protocol for such raid is to have intelligence experts comb through and retrieve whatever information they can find on the site, Pakistan television showed the compound burning on Sunday night possibly from the chopper’s destruction.

The pentagon officials had long believed that Bin Laden was hiding on a mountainous region along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. In August 2010, US intelligence officials got a tip-off on his whereabouts, which led to the operation that culminated in the Sunday Armageddon, President Obama said; “by mid-February information developed made US officials confident that the information was sound.”

In mid-March, Obama headed five National Security Council meeting on the subject. On Friday 29 April, he gave the final order to carry out the attack on a compound in what was described as an “affluent suburb” of Islamabad. “It is noteworthy that the property is valued at approximately 1 million dollars but has no telephone or internet service connected to it”, an administration official said. OBL’s compound was huge and “extraordinarily unique”, “about eight times larger than other buildings in the area,” a US official said.

When one Army veteran, who was a long time operative involved in numerous similar aerial black ops across that region was apprised of the Obama’s administration account of mission, he said two themes struck him: first was the ability of OBL to live in comfort some 60 miles away from Pakistan capital. The other theme that struck this career soldier is: those who participated in the hunt for OBL, could perhaps be expected in political Washington the year before a presidential election. According to US secretary defence, the photo of Bin Laden’s dead face do exist, but those mainly distributed on the internet are fake. At some point only to convince die-hard bin Laden followers, it is expected that some photos of his corpse will be released as it has been done in the past when famous villains such as Che Guevara and former president Saddam Hussein were killed or captured.

Osama bin Laden’s death ignited immediate spontaneous celebration in front of the White House, lower Manhattan, Ground Zero New York, Florida, Washington, Hawaii and other American cities. Former US President George W. Bush said in a statement that he had personally been informed by Obama of the death of the terrorist leader whose attack defined his eight years in office. “This momentous achievement marks a victory for America and people who want peace all over the world and for those that their loved ones were victims of September 11, 2001 event,” the former American president said.

Obama echoed his predecessor’s declaration, saying “the death of bin Laden marks the achievement to date in our nation’s struggle to defeat Al-Qaeda. But he stressed that the effort against the terrorist organisation continues. Al-Qaeda remains in existence as an organisation presumably under the leadership of Alman al-Zawahir, a 59-year old Egyptian physician who is widely known to be bin Laden’second in command.

 

•FADESIRE Temitope, Feature Writer, writes from Lagos.

 

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