Fear forgone: Locals relieved Bin Laden was not in G-B

Earlier reports of his presence in the K2 mountains in Pakistan had scared locals of US operation in the region.

GILGIT:

The killing of Osama Bin Laden at his house in Abbottabad refreshed the memories of people in Gilgit who remembered being shocked to hear three years ago that the world’s most wanted man was hiding in the K2 Mountains of northern Pakistan.

Arabic television network, Al-Arabiya, had reported on May 26, 2008, that Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was hiding in northern Pakistan, creating panic among the local people. The report also said US secret service agency was intending to drive him out in a major military operation in the northern tribal belt.

The Dubai-based network also said in its report that in the past few days, US security and military officials had a top-level summit at a military base in the Qatari capital, Doha, to plan an operation to hunt for the Al-Qaeda leader.

Local people in Gilgit-Baltistan had then attributed the news report as a US ploy to expand its operation into the region which shares its borders with China.

“I thank God that he [Laden] wasn’t hiding in G-B’s mountains,” said Thufail Ahmed, a businessman who still remembers the “revelation” that worried the local people. He said there was an omnipresent fear among the people in G-B that one day Osama would be found in the mountains of G-B, as was predicted by the report. Ahmed’s views were echoed in a number of discussions taking place among the ordinary people in the markets after the incident in Abbottabad.

The killing of Bin Laden is one of the most widely discussed news in G-B as people have been finding links of the fresh incident with those of the report published three years back.

Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, was reportedly gunned down after US military raided a house in Abbottabad, a town about 400 kilometres from Gilgit and located on the edge of Karakoram Highway that links Gilgit-Baltistan with China and also rest of the country.

“I can’t make sense of this US operation and the killing of the most wanted man, it’s so confusing,” said Waqas Ahmed, a university student deeply interested in politics and world affairs.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 6^th, 2011.