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Pakistani policemen walk past the compound where Osama bin Laden was hiding
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"It stretches credulity to think that a mansion of that scale could have been built and occupied by bin Laden for six years without its coming to the attention of anyone in Pakistani Army, The initial circumstantial evidence suggests that the opposite is more likely – that bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control"
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 It all started with a very suspicious ticker on Pakistani television channels about a chopper going down late on May 2. Hours later, it was the biggest story in the world. Osama bin Laden – the world’s most wanted terrorist, the founder of Al Qaeda, and the man considered responsible for the thousands of deaths on September 11, 2001 – was declared dead by none other than the president of the United States of America.
The details are sketchy and Pentagon is trying its best not to embarrass its Pakistani allies, but the biggest question that remains is how the world’s most wanted man was living in one of the most secured military towns in Pakistan?
“I don’t know if Abbotabad was declared a war zone but the chopper that crashed was American, and that no one could operate in Pakistani airspace without the PAF’s and the Pakistani government’s permission,” Air Vice Marshal (r) Shahid N Khan, part of a number of sensitive operations in the past, told TFT.
While all top terrorists caught in Pakistan have been held in joint raids by the CIA and the ISI, it has historically been the CIA or the FBI who found the leads. A US administration official told TFT it was “a lead created by a call originating from North Waziristan because of which we caught two Al Qaeda individuals who gave vital intelligence information”.
US President Barack Obama said Osama bin Laden had been tracked since August 2010 and that the Pakistani government cooperated. “We had various leads coming on Osama bin Laden, but we never worked seriously on him,” a senior top Pakistani intelligence official said. “He has always been America’s problem, not ours.”
The US initiated a unilateral action based on an understanding with Pakistan from years ago, former intelligence chief Shah Mahboob Alam said. “While there had been speculations that the American helicopter was actually shot down by the Pakistani air defence unit, the ISPR did not comment on them. There are contradictory statements about possible Pakistan role in capture of OBL from the Pakistani side.”
Effect on US-Pakistan ties: Steve Coll, author of two books on the CIA’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden, told TFT that US officials do not want to admit publicly that “Pakistan had to be protecting the late Al Qaeda founder”. He called on the Justice Department to get to the bottom of Pakistan’s possible complicity in hiding bin Laden in Abbottabad, a military cantonment about 75 miles north of the capital. “It stretches credulity to think that a mansion of that scale could have been built and occupied by bin Laden for six years without its coming to the attention of anyone in Pakistani Army,” he wrote on the website of The New Yorker magazine, where he is a contributor.
“The initial circumstantial evidence suggests that the opposite is more likely that bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control,” Coll said. “Pakistan will deny this, it seems safe to predict, and perhaps no convincing evidence will ever surface to prove the case.”
On the Pakistani side, emotions run very high. Local media and defence analysts are calling the act another blunt violation of national sovereignty. “What is the government doing to stop such plunder of national dignity?” an editorial in a right-wing newspaper asked.
Pakistani reaction to Osama’s death: The reaction in Pakistan to the news of Osama’s death is surprisingly calm, despite widespread fear of public protests. While Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan initially denied the reports, they later acknowledged them and promised revenge not from the United States but from Pakistan.
In Karachi which remains tense because of political violence, the Barelvi Sunni Tehreek’s chairman, Sarwat Ejaz Qadri, welcomed the killing of Osama bin Laden. “But we would have wanted Pakistan Army to take the lead and not the Americans,” he told TFT.
Most politicians remained cautious in their reactions, but almost all segments of the society apparently welcomed the death of bin Laden who had become a controversial figure for some years being held responsible for the killing of thousands of Pakistanis.
Impact on war on terror: Al Qaeda and their ideological affiliates have lost a figurehead, a rallying point, and a poster child. For one commentator, every day that bin Laden was at large was a victory for terrorists. But the war against the ideology of terror will continue, with no foreseeable resolution.
The strategy and tactics that led to the death of bin Laden (excellent intelligence and a surgical strike) are the most effective in addressing high-value individual targets. It even permits acquiring of evidence and more intelligence information because everything isn’t destroyed by a bomb.
But this is a long-term war against an ideology that pervades popular imagination and is organised
in a grassroots manner. Whether conventional military strategy can
permanently succeed against that ideology remains to be seen.
Ali Chishti is a writer based in Karachi. He can be reached at
akchishti@hotmail.com
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