Analysis: After 10 Years, What Helped Give Bin Laden Away?

For a decade, his presumed choice of Pakistan as a hideout from history’s biggest manhunt worked well enough. Experts speculated that he had sought protection from local militants in their remote mountain bastions, repaying the hospitality by helping their bloody effort to make Pakistan ungovernable.

In part, the effort succeeded because he and other al Qaeda leaders had been able to avoid the electronic communications that Western spies often use to track their targets.

The country, especially in its lawless northwest bordering Afghanistan, is home to many pro-al Qaeda groups believed to have been willing and able to provide human couriers to enable the world’s most wanted man to communicate with his followers.

Overnight, however, bin Laden’s long effort at concealment ran aground when U.S. forces stormed his hideout and shot him dead.

Precisely what were the giveaway factors remains unclear, because much detail has yet to be told about the raid.

One fact about his location was an immediate surprise — instead of hiding in a cave in a remote peak of the Hindu Kush, the leader of al Qaeda turned out to have been hiding in an urban area near the capital Islamabad.

TELL-TALE SIGN

But in the event it may have been his apparent attempt to hide his communications, rather than his precise choice of location, that helped to seal his fate.

The large urban compound that sheltered him in the garrison town of Abbottabad, 60 km (35 miles) north of Islamabad, is reported to have had no telephone or Internet, a highly unusual lack in a property of such size, although a Reuters reporter visiting the scene saw one satellite dish in the compound.

Henry Wilkinson of Janusian security consultants in London said the absence of economic communications would have been a tell-tale sign for the planners of the raid.

“No telephone or Internet is pretty unusual and would have been an immediate factor of interest to investigators,” said Wilkinson.

After 40 minutes of fighting, bin Laden was among several people in the mansion killed.

U.S. officials said their forces were led to the fortress-like three-storey building after more than four years tracking one of bin Laden’s most trusted couriers, who was identified by men captured after the September 11 attacks.

For years counter-terrorism experts have said the leaders of al Qaeda had resorted to using couriers for fear of detection.