Last night at roughly 11:oopm EST, President Obama announced that the United States was in custody of the body of Osama Bin Laden, the founder of al- Qaida and the leader behind the 9/11 attacks that killed over 3000 Americans in 2001.
Coming almost 10 years after the vicious attacks that he coordinated and after an intense, transnational manhunt, Bin Laden was killed in a fire fight with U.S. Special Operations forces in or around a fortified compound in Pakistan.
In his speech the President disclosed the steps he had taken to apprehend Bin Laden and that after receiving firm intelligence about Bin Laden’s location last week he, “authorized an operation to get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice.” The operation reportedly occurred during the White House Correspondents dinner Saturday night.
A number of questions remain going forward. First what does this mean for al-Qaida? Secondly, what does this mean for U.S.- Pakistan relations? It is a poorly kept secret that the U.S. has been conducting a covert war in that country along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. However, definitive proof that Bin Laden was being harbored in Pakistan could change that situation.
