The U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s elegant hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan and his subsequent death were inadvertently live-tweeted by low-key Pakistan IT consultant Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) who had retreated with his young family to the quiet town of Abbottabad from the cosmopolitan and hectic city of Lahore. Joining in that news-breaking twitter conversation was Athar's friend and Internet entrepreneur colleague Ahmed Bilal, the editor of SoccerLens, the world’s No. 1 soccer blog.
I've published many stories through SoccerLens, which provides an outlet for elite independent soccer media and connects the East to the West and the EPL, La Liga and Serie A to MLS.
On May 1, the West learned more about the East by experiencing the raid on bin Laden's compound through the twitter updates of the articulate Athar, an unwitting witness to history.
Bilal explained Athar's twitter updates and Pakistan's complex domestic situation to me the morning after the assault on the compound. But even after the successful removal of bin Laden, the perpetrator of the September 2001 attacks on the United States, the fallout of the 10-year war on terror concerns Bilal.
"There's also the view to consider that the 'Eastern' view of the war on terror is very different to what the US/UK media portrays it as," said Bilal.
There's massive loss of life to consider that the war on terror has incurred, dwarfing the initial losses suffered in 9/11. Given that the people most affected by US actions are often those who did nothing to deserve it, you can understand why there's natural resistance to the US and as a result, lingering support for OBL."
Athar live-tweets the raid
Since his unintentional role in revealing the raid, Athar has been pursued by global news agencies and television networks, but had little interest in becoming part of a media event and immediately returned to work.
"[Sohaib Athar] is one of the smartest and kindest people I know," said Bilal. "Looking at the instant fame he's received, it couldn't have happened to a better person (or a person who wanted less attention)."
Athar moved his family from Lahore, where Bilal resides and works, to the comfortable village of Abbottabad to escape “the traffic, the pollution, the bombs, the generally poor security situation in general,” according to Bilal. There are also regular electrical blackouts in Lahore which interfered with Athar's work as an IT consultant. Athar was annoyed by the frequent domestic and international political intrusions on his work and family. Posts in his twitter account from earlier in the year show a person dealing with those frustrations with good-natured humor while pursuing domestic and professional matters.
Both Bilal and Athar are Manchester United fans, but Bilal describes Athar as "a casual fan, not your die-hard, I-bleed-United type of fan, but more of a casual punter who has followed United over the years on and off. He purposely doesn't own a TV, so it's not as if he gets a chance to follow United on TV."
Although Facebook is the most popular social media in Pakistan, social media colleagues Athar and Bilal chatted on the more newsy twitter during the confusing commotion at the high-walled compound in the prosperous residential community where Bin Laden was discovered and ultimately killed.
Athar was trying to sleep when the nearby sounds of a helicopter disturbed him. Initially, he didn't take it very seriously and his twitter comments reflect that. There's a military academy in the town and Athar was uncertain if the noisy low-flying helicopter belonged to the Pakistanis, the academy or a foreign entity. Unfortunately, the military commotion was not unusual. As a gunfight was heard and the raid developed, more friends on twitter joined in with updates and speculation on the situation.
Athar's twitter feed (sample)
ReallyVirtual Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).
ReallyVirtual A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S
ReallyVirtual @m0hcinthe few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani...
ReallyVirtual @smedica people are saying it was not a technical fault and it was shot down. I heard it CIRCLE 3-4 times above, sounded purposeful.
ReallyVirtual @tahirakram very likely - but it was too noisy to be a spy craft, or, a very poor spy craft it was.
ReallyVirtual @raihak The day there is uninterrupted electricity in Lahore for a whole month, I will start packing my bags, until then, Abbottabad is home
ahmedbilal @ReallyVirtual did you kill Osama? With your bare hands? While tweeting? You hero!
ReallyVirtual I am JUST a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash. Not many twitter users in Abbottabad, these guys are more into facebook. That's all.
ahmedbilal @ReallyVirtual tell them how you heard the choppers, saw the gun fire and bravely tweeted from behind a rock.
ReallyVirtual @ahmedbilalI need to find a large rock first, before the cameras arrive, lol
ReallyVirtual @kursed What really happened doesn't matter if there is an official story behind it that 99.999% of the world would believe
ReallyVirtual @ahmedbilal @kursed Sadly. We should start learning how to spread believable stories and recreate a reality that suits us.
ahmedbilal He just hid behind a rock and tweeted the whole thing RT @ReallyVirtual: Bin Laden is dead. I didn't kill him. Please let me sleep now.
What is left behind and what lies ahead
"While the US claims Pakistan had knowledge of the operation, it's worth noting that the Pakistani government first denied any knowledge of it, then accepted that they knew about it but denied taking part in it," said Bilal.
The local government is treading a very fine line between helping the US and also keeping the domestic peace by not wanting to be seen as a US pawn (that ship has already sailed but still) or aggravating the religious factions who hold the US responsible for all the killings that have happened for the last 10 years."
I asked Bilal how the two countries can develop a new relationship after all that has been lost.
"What best encourages healthy relations? Many options come to mind," said Bilal. "Obama spoke about the loss of 9/11. He didn't say anything about the losses inflicted in the 10 years after 9/11. More than OBL, it's this lack of responsibility and perspective that angers people in the Muslim world.
The bottom line is that words will not help, deeds will. And authorising a covert operation on another sovereign nation's soil isn't exactly the kind of deed that gets you acceptance in any part of the world... Healthy relations are only possible if both sides agree to extend their hands of friendship without strings attached."
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