13 May 2011
A Pakistani woman poses for a picture with her daughter in front of the final hiding place of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 5, 2011. Pakistan faces the prospect of Osama bin Laden's final hiding place becoming a shrine or macabre tourist spot unless the military destroys a compound attracting hundreds of visitors a day.
The site in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011 by the US military and the CIA is already a celebrated media and tourist attraction and could become a shrine to bin Laden and Al Qaeda as the most world-famous site in Pakistan. This would be a crucial closure to the vast 9/11 memorialization in the US and elsewhere, a prime portion of which remains contested at WTC for grotesque politicization and commercialization.
Like other contested historic monument sites there may be short-sighted efforts to erase the facility to prevent it becoming a shrine — as evidence of the crashed US helicopter was erased and Pakistani military and intelligence officials rush to obscure their failure to prevent the attack, or to conceal their secret complicity in it.
If bin Laden when killed continued to direct Al Qaeda, as the US government alleges, then the site may be enshrined and promoted as the headquarters of Al Qaeda in Pakistan (AQP).
These comments on the site and compound begin an expansion of the more general and selective descriptions of bin Laden and his killing, some allege biased and distorted media manipulation, by the US and PK governments characteristic of wartime information management for public support.
This should not be seen as extolling bin Laden and Al Qaeda or to diminish attention from the grandiloquent monumentalization of the World Trade Center to which he and Al Qaeda will be immemorially if infamously linked. The dead are joined in silence against the raucous living unable to stop yelling and selling enshrinement and defilement.
This preliminary architectural commentary could be supplemented with more extensive forensic, political, social, historical, archeological and architectural investigation and documentation customary for historic preservation. Design and construction documents should be located and preserved. Photographs and measured drawings of the property should be prepared. Pakistani military, intelligence and police investigative material shold be collected and anlyzed.
Access to surveillance materials gathered by the US and its allied (including PK) governments for planning and executing the operation – in particular the audio-videos recorded by the attackers — would be beneficial to describing and understanding how bin Laden was able to operate at the site, seemingly without detection, and what policies and measures were instituted to end his life in the manner it was done.
Published bloody photos of three victims killed with bin Laden and their rooms and furnishings are omitted here — they are online. They offer interior architectural information herein referenced and could contribute to historical accuracy if materials from the US and its allied (including PK) governments are withheld to protect secret accountings.
Area and compound plans and exterior facades provide overall views. Comments on the facilities construction and details follow.
Related:
Bin Ladin building allegedly violated building codes:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/zoned_out_at_ft_osama_J5S9HzstICpN6ZtfiyvmcL
Pakistan allegedly plans to demolish compound:
http://news.oneindia.in/2011/05/06/pakto-demolish-osamas-abbottabadcompound-aid0126.html
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You need to fix the headline. I’m surprised no one else has caught it yet.