WHAT DID THEY KNOW

AND HOW LONG DID THEY KNOW IT?
The fact that  Osama bin Laden has been living in a fortress-like compound on the outskirts of a Pakistani city that is home to three army regiments and thousands of soldiers raises questions over whether Pakistani security forces knew the whereabouts of the world's most wanted man for years, possibly since 2005.  This is no doubt is an enormous embarrassment for Pakistan's government.

Officials from the Pakistan President downwards have consistently maintained that the al-Qaida chief was not sheltering on Pakistani soil, suggesting instead that the Americans look for him elsewhere, particularly in Afghanistan. The Pakistani stance was part of a wider policy of denial, dating back to the 9/11 attacks, premised on the argument that Pakistan was not the source and springboard for Islamist-inspired terrorism but rather its principal victim.

Their head-in-the-sand position has led to intensifying friction with Washington in recent months, as the Obama administration struggles to bring an ordered end to its 10-year involvement in Afghanistan. But all that is as nothing compared with what may now follow. Official denial-ism has also hampered Pakistan's efforts to deal forcefully with its own violent Islamists, the so-called Pakistani Taliban, with which al-Qaida is said to have links. Tens of thousands of people have died in Pakistan as a result of terrorist activity since 9/11, more than all the European and American victims combined.

Given this context, and amid predictions by western commentators of possible terrorist retaliation against US and British targets, it is Pakistanis, along with Afghans, who are most likely to pay a blood price in terms of revenge attacks for the slaying of a man who is seen by some in the Muslim world as an iconic figure.

The Pakistani government was not informed beforehand of the American Special Forces' raid. The truth is, US officials would simply not have trusted their counterparts in Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's powerful security and spy agency, with such sensitive information.  That alone should tell us something.

Extremely pointed questions are now certain to be asked about how mush the IS, knew of the existence of the highly unusual, heavily fortified, expensively built compound in Abbottabad, 35 miles north of Islamabad – and of its high-value, low-profile tenant. If they did, why did they not investigate? If they did not, was it because they didn't want to know?

Here in the United States as in London and Delhi, relief that the world's most wanted man has been killed will be tempered, and may yet be overtaken by deep anger that he was apparently living not in some freezing mountain cave, as many assumed, but freely, undisturbed and untroubled by the authorities, in comfort in a desirable Pakistani neighborhood.