Abbottabad house 'was Qaeda hub'
Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was in active control of the terror network from his compound in northern Pakistan, US intelligence services now believe.
Reversing assessments that bin Laden lived a nomadic existence, the US says his Abbottabad house was a command and control centre.
Abbottabad, the garrison town tucked in hills where bin Laden may have lived in secret for years, is just the latest Pakistani city with a strong military presence that some of al-Qaeda's most-wanted have called home.
The three-storey compound where bin Laden lived with three wives and 13 children is hundreds of miles from the Afghan border areas where the CIA last year doubled drone attacks in the war to defeat al-Qaeda.
Following the raid that killed him, the US has released five videos of bin Laden watching TV and giving speeches.
Officials say he was deeply involved in al-Qaeda decision-making.
"This compound in Abbottabad was an active command and control centre for al-Qaeda's top leader and it's clear [...] that he was not just a strategic thinker for the group," an official who spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.
"He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions," the official said.
The material found at the compound - which is reported to include digital, audio and video files, as well as printed material, computer equipment, recording devices and hand-written documents - has been described by officials as "the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever".
Personal letters between Bin Laden and others are also said to be among the documents recovered, says BBC.
CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a statement that the material seized "only further confirms how important it was to go after bin Laden".
EYE OF THE STORM
The CIA may have focused its war on al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal badlands but Osama bin Laden's killing exposes the limits of drone strikes and the need for Islamabad to broaden intelligence in cities.
"The tribal belt was in the eye of the storm," said Pakistani analyst Imtiaz Gul, who has written a book about the region. "This was the bullseye."
"I personally never thought he was alive and if he would be recovered it would be from some cave. This has been a master deception that bin Laden created," Gul said.
Pakistani security officials say they are investigating whether bin Laden lived in the compound for five years, as his Yemeni wife -- who was shot in the leg during the operation -- has claimed.
The New York Times quoted Pakistani investigators as saying that she also said the family lived for nearly two-and-a-half years in a small village, Chak Shah Mohammad, near the main highway.
That would mean bin Laden left the tribal belt in 2003 and had been living in northern urban regions for more than seven years.
"When you're trying to escape from Afghanistan, the first place you enter is the tribal area," tribal affairs expert Rahimullah Yusufzai told AFP.
"But I think when they found out that those areas are so much under surveillance, it's not easy to stay there for long periods."
"There are security checkpoints over there, strangers are easily identified among the tribes and there are drone attacks and occasional Pakistani military operations, so in a way they are under more surveillance on a day-to-day basis."
Bin Laden was not the only al-Qaeda leader tracked down to Pakistani cities, which unlike the tribal belt, are under direct government control.
In 2002, his close confidant Abu Zubaydah was arrested in Faisalabad, one of Pakistan's most moderate cities, a place known more for its textile industry than its association with global terrorism.
Alleged 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shaiba was arrested in Karachi, also in 2002, and the following year the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was held in Rawalpindi, the city headquarters of Pakistan's military.
In 2005, al-Qaeda No 3 Abu Faraj al-Libbi was tracked down to the shrine town of Mardan and Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, wanted over the Madrid and London bombings, in the southwestern city of Quetta.
These arrests were made by or in conjunction with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency -- unlike the bin Laden killing -- which Pakistan and Washington say was purely a US operation.
US officials say that finding bin Laden in Abbottabad raises serious questions about whether Pakistani intelligence agents helped protect him.
Pakistan denies complicity. Pakistani officials say the perfect cover would have been to melt into one of Pakistan's heaving cities, where millions live on top of each other.
Pakistani military operations, US aerial surveillance and CIA missile attacks in the tribal belt have increasingly made cities such as Lahore, Karachi and Faisalabad more attractive places to hide, some experts believe.
US missile attacks doubled last year, with more than 100 drone strikes killing over 670 people in 2010 after CIA director Leon Panetta said the covert programme had severely disrupted al-Qaeda's leadership.
Tribal expert Yusufzai said the drone campaign was not effective and should be reviewed.
"Mostly, you have killed people who are not really your enemies -- low-level, unknown people, faceless people, foot soldiers. I can count on my fingers how many known people have been killed," he said.
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