By The Numbers: The hunt for Osama bin Laden

The Week

Nearly 10 years after September 11, the terrorist leader has been killed… but at what (human and financial) cost?

The successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound Sunday, and the subsequent killing of the terrorist leader, came nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attacks he engineered. Over those 10 years, the U.S. spent tens of billions on intelligence operations and aiding the Pakistani military. Here, a brief guide by the numbers:

2,819
Total number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks, per official figures

20
Percent of Americans that knew someone injured or killed in the attacks

26
Days that had passed since 9/11 before the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan

Nearly $5.3 billion
Amount of aid the U.S. funneled to Pakistan in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, indirectly funding the rise of the Taliban

$5.4 billion
Amount of military aid the U.S. gave to Pakistan from 2002 to 2008 to help that country’s military patrol the Afghan border where the Taliban and al Qaeda have been known to take shelter

70
Percent of that aid that was allegedly “misspent” on expenditures, such as a new house for a Pakistani general

1,000
Number of “terrorists” Pakistani officials claim to have killed between 2002 and 2008

Nearly 10
Number of years that Osama bin Laden eluded capture

Less than 40
Number of minutes U.S. special forces spent at bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, to complete the mission that killed him

At least 9
Number of planning meetings in which Obama participated prior to the raid that killed bin Laden

20 to 25
Number of Navy SEALs who carried out the raid mission

0
Casualties sustained by U.S. forces in the raid

3
Number of men, in addition to bin Laden, killed in the raid. One of the casualties was bin Laden’s son.

1
Number of women used as a human shield and killed in the raid

$80 billion
Approximate cost of maintaining U.S. intelligence operations for one year

$40 billion
Approximate cost of doing so a decade ago. “Bin Laden and what happened on 9/11 contributed to an enormous increase in intelligence spending that would have to be measured in the many tens of billions of cumulative dollars by now,” says Michael O’Hanlon at Marketplace.

99.9
Percent accuracy, according to officials, of a DNA test confirming that the man shot in Abbottabad on Sunday was indeed Osama bin Laden

Sources: New York, Newsweek, Guardian, Marketplace, TIME

Related Articles

• Pakistan and Osama bin Laden: What did they know? | The Economist (policyabcs.wordpress.com)
• Osama bin Laden Has Been Killed; President Obama Announces Osama bin Laden has be Killed (sugarslam.com)
• Osama Bin Laden’s Young Wife, Wounded In Raid, Identified (abcnews.go.com)
• New details emerge about raid that killed Osama bin Laden (charlotte.news14.com)
• Pakistan critical of ‘unilateral’ US raid that killed Osama bin Laden (longwarjournal.org)
• What bin Laden hideaway really looked like (lansner.ocregister.com)
• Osama Bin Laden Death Photo (sugarslam.com)