Pakistan faces pressure after Osama bin Laden killed near its capital

The killing of Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad — a city known as a haven for retired Pakistani military officers and home to the prestigious Pakistan Military Academy — has placed Pakistan's government and intelligence services under intense pressure from multiple directions simultaneously.

From Washington, the questions are pointed and uncomfortable: How did bin Laden live for years in a large, conspicuously fortified compound, barely a mile from Pakistan's premier military academy, without Pakistani intelligence detecting his presence? American officials have been careful in their public statements, but privately the frustration and suspicion are barely concealed. The raid itself — conducted without advance notice to Pakistani authorities — was a message as much as an operation.

From within Pakistan, the political fallout is equally severe. Opposition parties and nationalist commentators are focusing not on bin Laden but on the American unilateral military action inside Pakistani territory, framing it as a violation of sovereignty that the civilian and military leadership failed to prevent or even detect. The humiliation is compounded by the obvious physical evidence at the Abbottabad compound — a building that had stood for years, far too large and secure to have been invisible to local authorities.

Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, faces questions it may not be able to answer publicly without making its situation worse. If they knew bin Laden was there, the relationship with the United States becomes untenable. If they didn't, the competence of the service is severely in question.

For a country that is already struggling with terrorism, economic instability, and a fractious civil-military relationship, the bin Laden affair could not have come at a worse time.