Osamaland
The house where Osama Bin Laden was killed is a tourist attraction in the making.
In this part of the world, a tourist attraction is in the making.
The house where Osama Bin Laden was killed is surrounded by news crews and locals.
Young men smoke and offer up opinions to anyone with a pen or a camera.
They come from all over town to take pictures of the compound … a gruesome souvenir.
I’m surprised by the size of the house, it dwarfs the rest of the buildings.
To be honest it looks like a prison compound from the outside.
One local I spoke to told me that “I live local and you couldn’t walk past this building without some security guard stopping you..I’d ask them who lived here. They’d reply a Pathaan. I always thought it was strange.”
It’s a common refrain from the locals. But if you think about it, people get used to strange sights.
The house has been there for 5 years..Why ask questions?
Now though round this gruesome tourist sight, the now famous kill site, questions are flowing.
“Osama must have been protected by the army!”
“Why did they put him in our neighborhood?”
“We all know each other, apart from the people who lived in that house”
As soldiers now stand guard outside the hulking metal gate many people are getting scared.
Jahinger was at home when the helicopters swooped in that night. He ran outside and describes a ferocious noise and the deafening sound of gunfire.
“I was so scared, my little children were literally yards away..I thought war had come to us and we would die,” he said.
As night falls I look around the town and imagine what fearsome sight a U.S. Special forces team flying in helicopters must have looked and sounded like.
I have seen American military might over the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq.
I have seen the Pakistan army pound remote villages in the north west of the country.
But this was a major city and the heart of the Pakistani army.
That Bin Laden was here is, quite frankly, astounding.
Off the record one former military officer told me that the army must be so embarrassed by the whole thing, but that its central command must have known.
Perhaps we will never know the truth.
Trudging back through the darkness I wonder just what happens next.