Special Feature The World
Left to right: Osama bin Laden; the hideout in Abbottabad where he was killed by US Special Forces on 3 May; and a still from a video seized from the compound, showing him wrapped in a blanket watching television
Osaman suddenly stopped. President Bar- rack Obama’s visit to Ghana in July 2009 made Ghanaians truly concerned about where Osama really was. Together with America’s security ex-
perts, our men in dark glasses sought Osa- ma in the mosques of Nima but he couldn’t be found. Tere was no trace of him at Bantama either. Nor would Esiama and Esi- kuma or even Shama yield any clues about his whereabouts. So, during Obama’s visit, parts of Accra were blocked off completely. Fortunately, Obama came to Ghana and went back safely, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. (As a matter of record, I must ad- mit that a few people did refer to Obama as Osama during the visit. Tey were, without knowing it, paving the way for right-wing American media organisations, which refer to “Osama” as “Obama” on occasion – out of sheer subconscious contempt for the first black president of the United States.) Anyway, Osama went out of sight and
out of mind for quite a while. Ten, in the early hours of Monday 2 May 2011, I awoke to hear my radio reporting that President Obama had announced that Osama “had been killed” in an operation mounted by the US in Pakistan. According to Obama, a team of US Navy SEAL commandos had attacked a compound in Pakistan’s Ab- bottabad Valley, where Osaman had been hiding for five years! During “a firefight, the US team killed Bin Laden, and took custody of his body.” A wife of Osama had been used as a “human shield”. Questions immediately began to be
asked about the manner – and timing – of the announcement by Obama. Wasn’t the Bin Laden killing too convenient a “mo- ment of victory” for Obama, whose ap- proval ratings had dipped south, with the desire to seek re-election in 2012 looking ever more problematic? Also the story was too neat: indeed, a
friend who watched the Obama broadcast remarked that Obama’s “body language” was one that betrayed discomfort. Was he
82 | June 2011 New African
thinking of the effect the Osama killing would have on the Arab crowds that have been challenging governments throughout the Middle East? Would Osama the “mar- tyr” be seen as a US murder victim who would be used by his followers to make America even more unpopular in the Arab street than it already was? Ten the mystification increased in
tempo as Washington engaged in its most popular pastime – spinning stories to the media. An unnamed US official said Os- ama’s body was quickly transported away from Pakistan and “buried at sea”. Tis was because the US government did not want “an accessible gravesite” that could become a shrine to Osama’s followers. Te official said the body was buried “in accordance with Islamic tradition” – meaning, within 24 hours of Osama’s death. Even if this was true, was it? In less than a week, it became clear that Obama’s account of the Osama killing was not the whole truth. Te ad- ministration’s claim that Osama was killed after “a firefight” and that he had used his wife as a human shield, was later changed. Washington admitted that Osama was not armed at all, and that his wife had not been used as a human shield, but had rushed her husband’s assaulter and was shot in the leg! Te administration also backtracked
by downgrading its initial accounts of a “firefight”. Shots were fired only at the be- ginning of the 40-minute operation, by Osama’s courier, who was quickly killed
by the commandos. According to Te New York Times, the
confusion in the accounts of the killing was “a classic [case] of a White House desire to promote a stunning national security tri- umph – and feed a ravenous media – while collecting facts from a chaotic military operation on the other side of the world”. Te paper quoted an unnamed military
official as saying: “Tere has never been any intent to deceive or dramatise… Everything we put out we really believed to be true at the time.” So why didn’t they wait for a full picture
to emerge, before telling the world about it? A spokesman for the National Security
Council was reported to have said that as more and more members of “the 79-member assault team” were debriefed after the raid, revisions of the original story inevitably occurred. Of course, the shifting narrative raised suspicions that the United States was trying to conceal some of the facts of the operation, including the fact that Osama was unarmed when he was killed. Some began to say that the US had “assassinated” Osama. Te Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, spoke for many when he pointed out that the killing of an unarmed man left him “uncomfort- able” and that “the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days, have not done a great deal to help.” It also became clear that Osama was not living in a compound valued at $1 million,
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