The discovery, killing and extraction of Bin Laden in Abbottabad under the noses of our military were both humiliating and shameful. We earned odium and ridicule abroad and at home people were flabbergasted. Regardless of whether we emerge as knaves or fools when we get to know more about the operation, it has already proved to be a major public relations disaster for the country and particularly the military. And if Pakistan’s complicity is proved, it would amount to an indictment of a whole system and a way of thinking. But even if it is not, it would still reveal unparalleled incompetence.
No doubt an investigation will be held and just as surely, its findings will never see the light of day. The report on a much bigger disaster – the loss of East Pakistan – never made it to the public domain. Unless there is genuine soul searching and lessons are learnt, history will repeat itself and given the degree of hostility exuding from Washington and Delhi, the slightest suspicion that Pakistan is even unwittingly complicit in any future incident will be disastrous.
It’s about time we realised that trying to lull the people into a false sense of security does little to improve the situation. Reminding them ad nauseam what the war has cost us in lives or money merely elicits the response that we should have acted much earlier to stem the rot that afflicts our society. At best, it evinces pity which, as we know, is almost akin to contempt. An outsider would rather hear what steps are being taken to end the suffering than to hear us repeatedly bleat about our suffering.
It’s far better to start telling the truth and being honest about the problems we confront in all their complexities than to find momentary comfort in understatements, lies and deceit. Saying therefore that ‘we have broken the back of terrorism’ when terrorists can be seen jumping, running and going on a killing spree on a daily basis merely because that is what the audience want to hear, is absurd. Moreover, in the absence of any real substance or statistics to back them, such assurances just come across as barefaced lies. Similarly we should be forthright when an ally, partner or friend makes unreasonable or impossible demands on us such as the American insistence that we take the fight to the Afghan Taliban in North Waziristan. We should tell them frankly why that is not possible. It may invite brick bats but what it will not do is lead to misunderstanding or a depletion of trust that follows when the weaker side – in an inherently unequal relationship such as ours with the US – prevaricates or obfuscates, hoping that a patina of lies will make up for the truth.
That said let’s see if we can tread our way through the jumble of facts that we have learnt thus far about the OBL operation and come to some, albeit, speculative conclusions based on the assumption that such monumental incompetence could not have occurred. Although it has occurred in the past – at the hands of the CIA twice, on 9/11, on the question of the presence of WMDs in Iraq and, of course, in the case of the Indian intelligence agency RAW in the case of the Mumbai attacks of 2007.
My guess is that we knew about Bin Laden’s hideaway (it would be incredulous intelligence failure if we did not) but chose to keep it a secret in the hope of trading Bin Laden at some stage for a major concession from the US, as we appear to have done with some of OBL’s deputies (examples include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al-Libi).
According to a ‘senior intelligence official,’ we did know about that compound and it was raided by our intelligence at the time of its construction, about five years ago, on suspicion that al-Libi might be lodged there. The official further said that the raid did not yield anything and the house dropped off their radar screen after that. It is the latter part of this statement that many find hard to digest.
We now know that the oversized compound was commonly referred to by locals as Waziristan House where its inhabitants would keep to themselves and confine much of their comings and goings to the night time. We also know that Bin Laden was not leading a retired life there because computers and discs were found. You don’t need an internet connection to use a computer disc (both for reading and writing into it) as it can be done directly from the hard drive.
If we knew he was there and wished to trade him in for some concessions why did we inform the Americans in 2009-2010, as claimed by the Foreign Secretary, that we suspected he may be present in the Abbottabad environs? That could be because we did not know for certain in 2009-10 that Bin Laden was there and only got to know about his precise location later. Or may be the idea of trading him came later.
Did we know what was being passed on to his deputies since he was busy communicating with them through the courier; and had we also penetrated his deputies? Probably not – because of the risk that they may alert him.
As it turned out, by earlier alerting the Americans to the presence of his couriers they had managed to get a fix on them and thereafter they were able to locate Bin Laden which we did not know.
Of course, once the Americans had managed to locate Bin Laden the leverage with which we could have traded him at a later stage was lost. But we could only have known that the Americans knew about Bin Laden’s location when the Blackhawks were closing in on Abbottabad. So, it could be said that by the time we discovered that the Americans knew about Bin Laden’s precise location, it was too late to do anything about it.
Interestingly, a former high ranking ISI official also felt that we knew the Americans had come, even though they came unannounced, because we had the military cordon off the area so that they could go about their business undisturbed. In that way the stigma of cooperating with the US in killing Bin Laden would not latch on to us. In other words, Bin Laden was too hot a potato for us to handle, so it was better that it looked as if we were caught by surprise rather than caught with his blood on our hands. Predictably, one analyst felt we should take this explanation with a pinch of salt while another said ‘add a tonne to his ‘pinch’ on my behalf.’
The episode raises a lot of unanswered questions but the notion that we were stumped by US intelligence on Bin Laden’s whereabouts is hard to digest. But if true, it raises a different set of disturbing questions about our intelligence agencies and frankly, suits our adversaries much better. They can now, with a much greater degree of plausibility, challenge our claim that our nuclear weapons are in safe hands which is presumably why a stern message to warn them off was needed.
Be that as it may, America should be pleased that they got Bin Laden with our cooperation, regardless of whether or not we have been playing games with them because they too, have been playing games with us. The fact is that the commando operation, however skillfully carried out, would have been far too risky to undertake without some cooperation from our side because failure would have been an utter disaster, especially for Obama who gave the final go ahead.
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