The CIA may have focused its war on Al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal badlands but Osama bin Laden's killing exposes the limits of drone strikes and the need for Islamabad to broaden intelligence in cities.
Abbottabad, the garrison town tucked in hills where bin Laden may have lived in secret for years, is just the latest Pakistani city with a strong military presence that some of Al-Qaeda's most-wanted have called home.
The three-storey compound where bin Laden lived with three wives and 13 children is hundreds of miles from the Afghan border areas where the CIA last year doubled drone attacks in the war to defeat Al-Qaeda.
"The tribal belt was in the eye of the storm," said Pakistani analyst Imtiaz Gul, who has written a book about the region. "This was the bullseye."
"I personally never thought he was alive and if he would be recovered it would be from some cave. This has been a master deception that bin Laden created," Gul said.
Pakistani security officials say they are investigating whether bin Laden lived in the compound for five years, as his Yemeni wife -- who was shot in the leg during the operation -- has claimed.
The New York Times quoted Pakistani investigators as saying that she also said the family lived for nearly two-and-a-half years in a small village, Chak Shah Mohammad, near the main highway.
That would mean bin Laden left the tribal belt in 2003 and had been living in
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