7-Eleven Owner Recalls Pakistan City Where Bin Laden Hid Out

Khalid Mian and his wife Ash own and operate the 7-Eleven store in the 6300 block of Eastern Ave., not far from the top of Dundalk Avenue in East Baltimore. Mian, who immigrated to the United States 18 years ago, grew up in Faisalabad, in the Punjab province of Pakistan.

The 47-year-old said he could not believe it when he heard earlier this week that Osama bin Laden had been discovered hiding in the city of Abbottabad, with which Mian is very familiar, for possibly the last six years.

“It’s been maybe 25 years since I’ve been there, but it’s like a resort area, where people go in the summer because of the high mountains,” Mian said. “There are cable cars that take tourists up to the mountains. It’s beautiful, lots of streams and lakes, and natural spring water. People hike and drink the spring with their hands.

“Nobody would’ve imagined bin Laden was there,” Mian said.

Faisalabad is one of country’s largest cities, located in central Pakistan, where temperatures reach 100 degrees in the summer. Mian and his family and friends, like many others, regularly made the half-day’s drive north to Abottabad's cooler climate for weekend respites from the heat.

“It’s a very popular place to visit,” said Mian, describing the area as developed and modern by Pakistani standards. “Everyone knows it.”

Pakistan's top military academy is also located Abbottabad, Mian noted.

“Many retired generals have homes on the lakes where they can watch the sunrise on the water,” Mian said.

Earning a degree in economics in Pakistan, Mian came to the U.S. for economic opportunity and because he liked American movies, he said, smiling. He and his wife, like everyone else, believed bin Laden was hiding in either the tribal-controlled areas of Pakistan or along the long, rugged, Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“If he’s in Pakistan, he’s hiding in one of those areas,” said Ash Mian. “That’s what everyone believed.”

“It was very surprising,” said her husband, adding that he figured bin Laden was mostly likely hiding in the tribal areas where the U.S. military has targeted drone attacks.

He explained, however, that unlike the U.S., it was much easier for someone to hide without detection in Pakistan, where poor property records and civil bureaucratic problems lead to a generally less-organized society. In his opinion, he continued, Pakistan really has three quasi-governing bodies.

“There’s the political system, the military and mullahs,” Mian said. “Three different governments. They don’t know what the other is doing. And the civilian governments are changed very easily.”

He did not believe the upper echelons of the Pakistani military or intelligence network knew where bin Laden was hiding. Although it was possible, he said, that lower level military intelligence staff might have known where bin Laden was hiding.

Mian and his wife said their biggest hope now is that bin Laden’s death will lead to greater peace in Pakistan, and that both the U.S. military drones and the Taliban will leave the country.

Mian and his wife, who has been in the U.S. for 10 years, said they’d never even heard of the Taliban prior to 9/11 and the start of the hunt for bin Laden.

They said that Taliban, forced to flee Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion, has destroyed schools for girls in Pakistan and killed large numbers of Pakistani civilians with their bombings. They have also destroyed holy shrines that they do not like.

“The Taliban and al-Qaida have the same morals,” Mian said. He added that both groups lack basic logic in their belief systems, to the point of absurdity.

“They do not want women to be seen by male doctors, but they won’t allow women to be educated, either, to become doctors. They can’t answer a simple question like that.

“Maybe now that their leader is dead," Mian said, "the followers will leave the country, too."