I was wondering after all the hoopla, what do some of the other countries and people feel about this. Most especially Pakistan. Well here is what the Guardian has on this.

We've heard a lot of reaction from the US and a bit from the UK and elsewhere, but what are Bin Laden's followers and sympathisers saying? A snapshot of their feelings can be found here on the Jihadology website, which monitors Jihadi commentary. Here's a taster:

"O Allah, make this news not true"

"Allah protect us in our loss"

"God willing, news is not true. Catastrophic if it is authentic."

"Jihad will not stop because of Sheikh's death, it will continue until we gain victory."

"If it is true then we must thank Allah that America was not able to capture him alive. Else they would be humiliating him like Saddam Hussain. At last he may have find his greatest desire of Shahada."

"Think not of those killed in the way of Allah dead, but alive with the Lord. We consider him a martyr. O Allah, accept the martyrs. And join us by the Lord of the Worlds"

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As soon as the euphoria and relief die down, people are going to be asking how exactly OBL managed to live undetected in a huge and very distinctive compound in a Pakistani town with a massive military presence. The Times of India is already suggesting that the episode will prove highly embarrassing for the Pakistani government and security services. And that, the paper says, is why some officials are trying to claim Pakistan played a major part in the action — despite Obama's statement that "a small team of Americans carried out the operation".

In a glaring counter-narrative, Pakistani security officials claimed Bin Laden was nailed in a joint operation between CIA and Pakistani forces. "It was carried out on a very precise info that some high-value target is there," one Pakistani official was quoted as saying.

US analysts uniformly suggested this was clearly aimed at ducking charges of the Pakistani military's possible role in hiding bin Laden. ''This is hugely embarrassing for Pakistan,'' was a common refrain on US TV channels throughout the night.

The rest of the piece is here

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Amrullah Saleh, who is the former head of the National Directorate of Security — Afghanistan's equivalent of MI5 — has been letting off steam about the fact that Osama bin Laden managed to hide in plain sight in Pakistan.

Ben Farmer, the Daily Telegraph's Afghanistan correspondent, has tweeted this:

Amrullah Saleh, former Afghan spy chief, says "no way" bin Laden could rent compound in Abbottabad without government or ISI knowing.less than a minute ago

Saleh says: "Does Pakistan want the whole world to believe that the intelligence agency of a nuclear state did not know OBL was there?"less than a minute ago via
beninkabul

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My colleague Brian Whitaker has drawn this to our attention. It's an early reaction to the news from The Arabist blog by Issandr El Amrani

A bittersweet moment: he deserved to die, but it took so long to track him down, despite all of the billions spent in intelligence and high-tech defence gear, that by the time he died it seemed almost irrelevant to the wider problems of the region. Also, to think of all the time and lives wasted, and the unnecessary, criminal ventures like the war on Iraq that were justified in the name of fighting Bin Laden. But I'm a believer in revenge, and symbolically this is important for the US, and for the families of the victims of 9/11. Let's hope this might be used as an occasion to turn the page in US foreign policy.
Several things do strike you, though. First, outside of Pakistan and the US this won't be much of a big deal — and it probably wouldn't have been either at any point in the last decade, which goes to show how the alarmism about Bin Laden being some kind of popular figure in the Muslim world was misplaced. Secondly, where's Ayman Zawahri? And thirdly, the amount of Pakistani complicity with Bin Laden really seems beyond the pale.