![\"Children](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/6087f8f817b4f.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very bad thing for this place and for the whole country,\u201d said Altaf Hussain, a retired schoolteacher, walking down an alley alongside Bin Laden’s former residence.<\/p>\n \u201cBy living here, Osama gave this city a bad reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n The raid caught Pakistan between a rock and a hard place.<\/p>\n Officials could deny knowing he was there \u2014 but in doing so they would effectively be admitting to a shocking intelligence failure.<\/p>\n They could also have admitted that the world’s most infamous fugitive was under their protection, but that would concede being powerless to prevent Washington from carrying out such a daring raid on sovereign soil.<\/p>\n They opted for the former, but the US operation reinforced an already strong anti-American sentiment among a population tired of the heavy financial and human toll paid for the war on terror \u2014 and Islamabad’s alliance with Washington after the September 11, 2001, attacks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sections in Pakistan were initially receptive to the founding myth of Al Qaeda \u2014 the resistance of Muslims to American imperialism.<\/p>\n But at the time of his death, Bin Laden’s local popularity had waned.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore, I remember that people named their children Osama, even in my village,\u201d said journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, a specialist in jihadist networks.<\/p>\n Bin Laden’s death did not stop extremism from spreading in the country, and conservative religious movements became even more influential.<\/p>\n Over the next three years, several terror groups \u2014 foremost among them the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) \u2014 carried out bloody attacks and established strongholds in northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.<\/p>\n A military campaign launched in 2014 helped bring down the violence, although a recent series of minor attacks has\u00a0raised fears\u00a0that extremists are regrouping.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Without its charismatic leader, Al Qaeda \u201csurvived, but barely\u201d and is no longer able to launch major attacks in the West, says Yusufzai.<\/p>\n The group is also no longer \u201ca great threat to Pakistan\u201d, believes Hamid Mir \u2014 the last journalist to interview Bin Laden face-to-face \u2014 although other groups such as the militant Islamic State remain so.<\/p>\n He said while the Al Qaeda founder is still seen as a \u201cfreedom fighter\u201d by some, many also acknowledge him as \u201ca bad person who killed innocent people and caused destruction \u2014 not only in Pakistan, but in many countries, in violation of the teachings of Islam\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bin Laden nonetheless retains an aura in radical circles.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is alive in the heart of every Taliban and every jihadist,\u201d said Saad, an Afghan Taliban official living in Peshawar.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Imran Khan\u00a0caused a scandal\u00a0two years ago by telling parliament that Bin Laden had died a \u201cmartyr\u201d.<\/p>\n Even in Abbottabad, a prosperous and largely tolerant medium-sized city, there is ambiguity towards Bin Laden, whose house was razed in 2012 by authorities so that it would not become a memorial.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this street, there are differences of opinion,\u201d says teenage former neighbour Numan Hattak. \u201cSome say he was good, others that he was bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Children play cricket in a patch of scorched grass and scattered rubble in Abbottabad \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Local](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/6087f8f7eaa06.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div>‘People named their children Osama’<\/h2>\n
![\"In](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/6087f8f6413fa.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/608829b3bcb4f.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/6087f8f79c7a2.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div>![\"In](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/6087f8f71b11e.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div>‘Some say he was good’<\/h2>\n
![\"Prominent](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/608829be03b19.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div>![\"In](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/6087f8f7d5864.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div>![\"Children](\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/primary\/2021\/04\/6087f8f7e0296.jpg\")
<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"