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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2020 6:49:47 GMT
 Pakistan's prime minister said Thursday the United States "martyred" the al-Qaida leader and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, a term that reflected a subtle jab at Washington as it's mainly used for honorable figures slain in battle. Imran Khan delivered the jab in a rambling budget speech in parliament, attacking his predecessors' foreign policies and saying that Pakistan's partnership with the United States in the war on terror was a mistake. Khan also said Washington used abusive language against Pakistan, blaming Islamabad for its failures in neighboring Afghanistan. Most of all, the U.S. refused to tell Islamabad of its operation against bin Laden in 2011 before carrying out the Navy SEALs nighttime raid. The special operations force swooped into Pakistan's military garrison town of Abbottabad in the middle of the night on May 2, 2011, killing bin Laden and several of his operatives. "We sided with the U.S. in the War on Terror but they came here and killed him, martyred him and ... used abusive language against us (and) did not inform us (of the raid), despite the fact that we lost 70,000 people in the war on terror," Khan told Parliament. Washington has repeatedly accused Pakistan of harboring the Afghan Taliban and giving safe haven to the feared Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate that has been blamed for some major attacks in Afghanistan over the years and declared a terrorist group by the United States. U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had claimed the Haqqani network was run by Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, known by its acronym ISI. Pakistan denied the accusations, saying Washington was blaming Pakistan for the failure of the U.S.-led coalition's 150,000 soldiers to defeat the Taliban, who are now at their strongest since being toppled in 2001 and rule or hold sway in about 50% of Afghanistan. "The way we supported America in the war on terror, and the insults we had to face in return. ... They blamed us for every failure in Afghanistan. They openly held us responsible because they did not succeed in Afghanistan," Khan said. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries to recognize the Taliban government, which had harbored bin Laden as he planned terrorists attacks against the U.S. After the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan turned and became an ally of the United States against the Taliban, who were ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in November 2011. However, opposition lawmaker Khwaja Mohammed Asif slammed Khan for calling bin Laden a martyr, saying the al-Qaida chief had brought terrorism to Pakistan. "He (bin Laden) ruined my country but he (Khan) is calling him a martyr," said Asif. Since taking over, Khan claimed his government has reset the Pakistan-U.S. relationship, elevating it to one of mutual respect, for which he also credited the personal rapport he has built with President Donald Trump. ""No one insults us now," said Khan. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 26, 2020 4:15:04 GMT
With a litany of unproved claims, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revived discussion about the circumstances in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed in May 2011 in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.
Some of Hersh’s assertions in a 10,000-word London Review of Books article border on fantasy. He claims that bin Laden lived under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was given up for reward money by one of the agency’s officers, and was eventually eliminated in a U.S. raid covertly backed by Pakistan’s army commander and ISI chief.
According to Hersh, the Americans “blackmailed” Pakistan’s generals into helping them kill bin Laden but then stabbed them in the back for political reasons by denying them any credit for assisting in the raid by Navy SEALs. Instead of blaming ISI for sheltering bin Laden in Pakistan (which Hersh claims it did), he points the finger at the Obama administration for not acknowledging ISI’s role in the U.S. operation that killed the terrorist mastermind.
With the exception of the possibility of a Pakistani “walk in” selling information about bin Laden’s location, the other details of Hersh’s story simply do not add up. Hersh may have his unnamed sources, but he clearly does not know how Pakistan works. If the ISI had hidden bin Laden for five years, it would not have cooperated in the U.S. operation to kill him without demanding a serious quid pro quo.
Hersh explains the Obama administration’s eagerness to claim sole credit for finding and killing bin Laden in terms of domestic U.S. politics. But he offers no explanation as to why, after covertly helping the Americans, Pakistan’s generals would keep quiet about their role. The veteran reporter alludes to the idea that this might have been because of bin Laden’s popularity among the Pakistani public. But by 2011, bin Laden was no longer that popular — and in any case Pakistan’s military leaders have consistently ignored public opinion to ensure the flow of American aid. Hersh’s suggestion that Pakistan’s generals covertly helped Americans eliminate bin Laden simply to maintain the flow of U.S. dollars to the country — but kept it secret so as not to incur the wrath of the Pakistani street — does not hold water.
For several years before the bin Laden raid, Pakistan’s military and the ISI had been criticized in the U.S. media and Congress for double-dealing in the fight against terrorism. If the ISI had protected bin Laden (or held him prisoner) for five years before being found out by the Americans, the United States would have increased its leverage by going public with accusations of hiding bin Laden. But there’s no evidence that Washington held Islamabad’s feet to the fire.
If, however, a backroom deal had been negotiated to secure Pakistani cooperation in the raid on Abbottabad in return for U.S. silence, the ISI would have demanded some glory for its cooperation. Facilitating the raid, as narrated by Hersh, would have provided Pakistan’s military and ISI an opportunity to redeem themselves in American eyes. Hersh wants us to believe an entirely improbably scenario. According to him, Obama’s political requirements denied Pakistanis any credit and senior generals in Islamabad simply accepted that without pushing back.
Was the “walk-in” real?
To this day, there is no solid evidence of Pakistanis at the highest level of government knowing about bin Laden being in Pakistan — though there have been widespread suspicions. If, after being tipped off by a rogue Pakistani intelligence officer looking for personal reward, the United States planned a raid with covert help from Pakistani intelligence, why didn’t the cooperating Pakistani officials demand credit for assisting in targeting bin Laden in order to mitigate the bad press for previously protecting him? And what prevented the U.S. government from publicly acknowledging that they knew bin Laden had been officially protected? Was the need to keep the relationship with Islamabad on solid footing so important that the Obama administration would risk telling a lie this massive?
Hersh’s story is based on the fundamental premise that the U.S. government had bad intentions, including in their interactions with the Pakistan Army and the ISI. In an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Hersh defends Pakistan’s generals.
“Pakistan has a good army, not a bad army,” he declared, adding that the Obama administration’s cover story made the Pakistan army look incompetent because it didn’t know that bin Laden was residing in a garrison town just two miles from the country’s main military academy. But he still does not offer an explanation for why the Pakistan Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and ISI head, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, went along with the cover story.
The only point in Hersh’s story that seems plausible relates to the Pakistani officer who tipped off the Americans about bin Laden’s location. Further reporting by AFP and a story by NBC affirm the role of a Pakistani defector — though NBC later amended its story to clarify that while the defector provided information, it didn’t lead to finding bin Laden. The rumor that the CIA learned about bin Laden’s location through an ISI officer has been around since the Abbottabad raid. But I’ve also heard another version of the same story from Pakistani officials.
According to this version, the ISI officer only facilitated the CIA’s on-ground operation in Abbottabad after the U.S. spy agency started planning an operation based on intelligence obtained through other means. The CIA relocated the Pakistani officer — not because he was the man who tipped them off on bin Laden’s location — but because he acted without authority from his superiors in enabling the CIA to conduct an operation on Pakistani soil.
The NBC story also repeats the suspicion of U.S. officials — about Pakistani complicity in hiding bin Laden — though, obviously, there isn’t enough evidence for the U.S. government to formally and publicly make that charge. As a witness to Pakistan’s response after the bin Laden raid I find it difficult to believe Hersh’s conspiracy theory about so many people in both the U.S. and Pakistani governments and militaries telling a big coordinated lie.
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