President Ronald Reagan and Pakistan President Zia-ul-Haq hold on Oval office meeting at the White House on December 7, 1982.
| Photo Credit: THE HINDU ARCHIVES
On a chilly evening in January 2006, enroute from Islamabad to Muzaffarabad in my host’s hatchback car, we passed through a small town called Abbottabad which is part of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Abbottabad for all practical reasons is an extension of Pothwari-speaking area of Pakistan, which includes Islamabad-Rawalpindi area and northern Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. He stopped the car briefly to buy its famously sweet oranges, and I thought nothing of it.
That fleeting roadside moment was my first and last encounter with a place that five-years-later, would dominate global headlines. On May 2, 2011, while travelling from the United States to India, I switched on my seat-back television mid-flight and heard President Obama announce that the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, had been killed there bringing to an end a decade-long, meticulously executed search. Instantly, I was reminded of that journey.
Published – August 23, 2025 10:59 am IST
