When President Barack Obama announced on May 1 that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I was among those who headed to the White House. The mood in Lafayette Park was joyous, ebullient, cathartic — though hardly the bacchanal of vengeful jingoism that some in the media have portrayed it to be, or an expression of "orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed" as David Sirota claimed on Salon.com. An outsider would have been struck ...

When President Asif Ali Zardari's phone rang at 1.15 a.m. on Monday, it was President Barack Obama on the line, with news that a U.S. operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden and retrieve his body had been successful. That phone call, Pakistani officials tell TIME, was the first that their government heard about a U.S. military operation conducted just three hours' drive from Islamabad. There was no mistaking the obvious mistrust from Washington in the timing: Pakistan's ...

Briefing reporters on the details of Osama bin Laden's killing in Pakistan, the White House's Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan remarked optimistically that "bin Laden's dead. The al-Qaeda narrative's becoming increasingly bankrupt." Financially, al-Qaeda may be heading for bankruptcy too. The terrorist network has been hit by a double whammy: the death of its charismatic leader and the Arab Spring, the popular and democratic uprising against cutthroat despots. No longer can al-Qaeda and its offspring sell itself ...

Sohaib Athar was jolted upright by the low-flying buzz of helicopters passing over his home next to Abbottabad's Jalal Baba auditorium. In this sedate garrison town ringed by jagged peaks, the gentle thrum of the day is reduced to a whisper by night. "The helicopter was circling around for five to six minutes," Athar tells TIME. "It's not commonplace here." In what soon became among the world's most read tweets that day, Athar alerted his Twitter followers: ...

How close did Gary Faulkner, the shaggy Colorado construction worker arrested in Pakistan on Sunday, come to tracking down his prey, Osama bin Laden in the mountains along the Afghan border? Very close, according to his brother, Scott, a physician in Fort Morgan, Col. Scott says that during his last two visits to Pakistan, wanna-be bounty hunter Faulkner had located a cave on an 18,000 ft mountain where he saw "a bearded man in a white robe ...

The Rich Dad in your first book was based on your friend's father. What is that friend doing these days? Syed Tabish Rehman CHITTAGONG, BANGLADESH He's a rich man. He's managing the family estate. I published Rich Dad, Poor Dad in 1997, and both my real dad and my other dad were dead. If I had written the book while my real dad was still alive, he'd have killed me. If you did not have your Rich Dad in your ...

Although Pakistan's headlines are dominated by the violent excesses of Taliban extremists, the majority of Pakistanis subscribe to the more mystical Sufi tradition of the country's Barelvi school of Islam. And attacks on their places of worship are becoming depressingly familiar. Last Sunday, two bombers attacked the 13th Century Sakhi Sarwar shrine, near the southern Punjabi town of Dera Ghazi Khan, slaughtering 50 people and injuring twice as many. Mercifully, two other bombers failed to detonate their ...

India and Pakistan blame each other's spies for just about everything that goes wrong. If there's an outbreak of plague or a riot, it's the work of the sinister "foreign hand." Indians are certain, for instance, that Pakistan's secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, masterminded the December attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Do they have any concrete evidence? "Zilch," concedes an Indian official. "Quite honestly, we only know they are involved by implication." Equally, the Pakistanis ...

You are planning a return to Pakistan to run again for President, a job you left in 2008. Why? For the sake of Pakistan. I am very comfortable. I go around the world lecturing, and they pay me well. But there is a cause bigger than the self. I governed the country for nine years — successfully. So I don't have to reinvent the wheel. And I know Pakistan is suffering. I know there is a vacuum of ...

C.I.A. Steps Up Drone Attacks Within Pakistan The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan  in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan. As part of its covert war in the region, the C.I.A. has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft  thus far in September, the most ...