The story behind Osama bin Laden’s killing

S P SETH

Not many people, especially among the younger generation, would have heard of the intrepid American reporter, Seymour M. Hersh, who has been breaking stories over the years that has deeply embarrassed the US government of the time. Probably his most important expose was the massacre at the My Lai village in Vietnam in March 1968 of dozens of women, children and old people, “all gunned down”, as Hersh puts it in an article in the New Yorker updating the tragic events, “by young American solders”, a contingent of about a hundred soldiers known as Charlie Company. They “raped women, burned houses, and turned their M-16s on the unarmed civilians of My Lai.” This exposure, however much played down by the US government, created quite a stir and helped mobilize people against the US war in Vietnam.

The reason for bringing it up at this time is that another significant expose by Hersh about the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad throws new light on this event, which would appear to contradict, in important ways, the US official version and accounts that have appeared from Pakistan. According to Hersh, the entire drama, if one might call it that, was a stitch up of sorts involving the US authorities and the highest echelons of the Pakistani military hierarchy. In a recent article in the London Review of Books titled, The killing of Osama bin Laden, Hersh contradicts the Obama administration’s account of what actually happened four years ago. He says, “The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance.” And he adds, “This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account.”

Based on his own contacts and sources within the US, Hersh has come to conclusion that, “[Osama] bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha [ISI boss at the time] knew of the raid in advance and made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals [the assault team] to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US…” The said Pakistani informant and his family were, according to this account, smuggled out of Pakistan and relocated in the Washington area and he is now a consultant for the CIA.

But before the US operations to raid the bin Laden compound to kill him, and during much of the 2010, the US had not let Generals Kiyani and Pasha to know that the Americans had prior knowledge, through the Pakistani informant, that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad as a captive of the army. This was, however, no obstacle to “get the cooperation we [the US] needed [to launch the assault], because the Pakistanis wanted to ensure the continued release of American military aid” as well as “under-the table personal ‘incentives’…” The upshot of it all was that Pakistani military at its highest levels was now part of the planned US operations, agreeing to permit a four-man American cell comprising a Navy Seal, a CIA case officer and two communications specialists, to set up a liaison office at Tarbela Ghazi, an important ISI base for covert operations not far from Abbottabad.

And why did Pakistan army try to keep bin Laden’s captivity a secret? Because, according to Hersh’s source, Pasha told the Americans that, ‘ISI was using bin Laden as leverage against Taliban and al-Qaida activities inside Afghanistan and Pakistan…” In other words, Generals Kayani and Pasha viewed bin Laden as a ‘resource’ both against the al-Qaida and Taliban, as well as to get the US military aid and personal benefits. And when the ISI became part of the US operations, an ISI liaison officer was flying with the Seals guiding them into the darkened house and up a staircase to bin Laden’s quarters. ‘They knew [the ISI] where the target [bin Laden] was—third floor, second door on the right’, according to the retired US official.  And, ‘Osama was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.” In other words, Pasha and Kayani had delivered their side of the bargain.

From here, things went a bit awry as Obama wanted to take credit for a job well done by the US assault team. The agreement with the Pakistani side was that the US would announce bin Laden’s killing in a drone attack in the mountains. But the political temptation for Obama was too great to follow the agreed plan. And to further embellish the account, it was said that the US intelligence tracked bin Laden to his compound through a network of his couriers. According to this account, bin Laden and the two couriers were killed in the ensuing firefight during the American raid. Later, as the story was developed and refined, the number killed went up to five to include bin Laden, his brother, a bin Laden son, a courier, and one of the women said to be shielding bin Laden. There were minor variations here and there in the days to come. Pakistan didn’t like the way the story of bin Laden’s death was played to the media and the outside world by not following the mutually agreed version that he was killed in a drone strike in the mountains. Which led to a ‘four-year lapse in cooperation’ between the Pakistani intelligence and the US agencies, only now resumed. But the relationship is likely to be marred with distrust.

This broadly is the account that Seymour Hersh has put together based on his sources in the US and Pakistani agencies and other corraborative material. It is not suggested that everything that Hersh has pieced together fits in but his  credentials, dating back from his expose of the My Lai massacre, endow it with credibility.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushlpseth@yahoo.com.au

 

Pakistan and Chinese investments

S P SETH

The recent visit to Pakistan of the Chinese President Xi Jinping created great excitement in the country’s political establishment for understandable reasons. A promised Chinese investment of $46 billion for projects across the board sounds like an answer to Pakistan’s prayers to lift it out of its economic morass. As it is, Pakistan is a mess, and has been for a long time, much more so after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the Unites States. Which made Pakistan the frontline state and in that role it has been simultaneously part of the global war against terrorism and a sanctuary for the Taliban leaders and other extremist/terrorist outfits. Even thinking about this inherent contradiction is sufficient to give one a headache. And to be living with this headache nationally and in terms of policy planning and execution, it is not surprising that Pakistan is such a mess. In the process, it has spawned a serious extremist/terrorist internal threat to the state from the country’s own version of the Taliban, and a medley of extremist/militant groups and movements, some of them enjoying the patronage of the country’s military establishment. It must get pretty hectic and confusing with crossed wires about who is doing what to whom in a country, which at the best of times, if there were ever such times, had a difficult task of governance.

Pakistan has been under direct or indirect military rule ever since the country’s first military coup in 1958, not long after its creation in 1947. In an article titled: “Why Pakistan is Sinking”, in the New York Review of Books, Ahmed Rashid, highlights the problem this way, “The country has for years been under partial military rule, outright martial law, or military authority disguised as presidential rule.” Things seem to be getting worse as: “The arrangement that has evolved over the last six months is the strangest so far: the elected government remains in place but has few powers, and no longer rules the country…”

Externally, Pakistan has always regarded India as the country’s biggest security threat. And this has shaped both its internal and external policies. Internally, among other things, this has meant massive diversion of the country’s resources to build up and maintain a military machine to deal with the Indian threat. Apart from skewing the country’s economic priorities with limited resources, it has also meant that this obsession with India has created a paucity of alternative thinking about Pakistan’s future. It is tantamount to creating a national psyche of perpetual emergency.

It is not suggested that Pakistan simply stopped functioning. The suggestion is that the perceived Indian threat became an over-riding factor determining Pakistan’s present and future. At another level, after the collapse of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, Pakistan decided to divert some of the Mujahidin fighters, now redundant from Afghanistan, against India in the Kashmir region. And its seeming effectiveness led Pakistan, essentially the country’s military establishment, to foster and encourage additional militant groups for all sorts of anti-Indian operations from across the border. Which had the effect of further magnifying the perceived Indian threat and militarizing the country’s politics and policies, resulting from some strong Indian reaction. It has been a vicious circle. In other words, the country never managed to develop a vision for its future. It has become a prisoner of its besieged mentality. In a sense, the old Hindu-Muslim divide of the pre-partitioned India, fostered by the British, was simply transformed into a conflict between two sovereign states of India and Pakistan, and hence all the more dangerous.  Pakistan has continued to regard a much larger Hindu-majority India as a threat to its existence.

As Ahmed Rashid writes, “Because of its fear of India, Pakistan has been turned into a garrison state with a persisting paranoia about being surrounded by hostile countries and dominated by a demanding belligerent United States. Yet the Pakistani army is the seventh-largest in the world with some 642,000 soldiers, 500,000 reserves, and an arsenal of 120 nuclear weapons.” And this still hasn’t been enough to create a sense of security in Pakistan’s military and security establishment. Indeed, Pakistani state is increasingly fighting threats from within rather than any external danger, and not doing a good job of even that. To quote Rashid again, “Still, since September 11, 2001, the army has often been ineffectual. Pakistani extremists have killed up to 30,000 Pakistani civilians and 15,000 members of the Pakistani military.” And the army is engaged in bloody operations against the militants in North Waziristan and the adjoining region. It is a severe indictment of a bloated military machine that is not able to ensure even the country’s internal security and stability.

Coming back now to the promised Chinese investments in a number of development projects in Pakistan, it is fabulous for the country’s future. At the same time one has to ask how such wide ranging economic engagement and cooperation will be carried out against the backdrop of Pakistan’s internal insecurity, where the extremists/militants/terrorists are able to strike at will to expose the failure of the state to enforce its writ. Or else it is hoped that the militants too will see national good in Chinese commitment to lift up Pakistan’s economy in a meaningful way and line up behind the government and army. In that case, will they pack up their alternative project of creating an Islamic state and society as they visualize it?

This doesn’t seem likely and the country’s political/military establishment is aware of it. That is why Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Xi Jinping have reportedly agreed to set up a joint security force to protect the new investments. Which is rather baffling when Pakistan has an army of over 1 million soldiers (including the reserves) and they are not considered enough to handle the new responsibility of Chinese-funded projects. One would think that another security force in Pakistan is something the country might do without, because this will only further militarize its already dangerously over-loaded military machine. Even more dangerous might be the induction of a Chinese military component to fight off extremists that might target Chinese projects.

One never knows how such collaboration might develop because ensuring security will be a huge task considering, for instance, continuing insurgency in the crucial province of Balochistan for the proposed economic corridor, not to speak of terrorism in other parts of the country. Pakistan certainly needs economic development on a grand scale and China has the resources to help. But that can only proceed meaningfully when Pakistan has some level of national consensus and a shared vision of where it is going. And that vital component is sorely missing. 

Note: This article was published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au   

Pakistan and terrorism

S P SETH

Sometimes it takes a horrible tragedy for a country to be galvanized into recognizing a real threat. Would the Peshawar killings of innocent children by Pakistani Taliban be such an event? One would hope so if all the revulsion this has created among many people in Pakistan is anything to go by.  But it belies belief that the country’s leadership, both at the political and military levels, didn’t know it already. In a sense they created the monster, both the Afghan and Pakistani versions, though there is some satisfaction that even the Afghan Taliban have not endorsed their Pakistani counterparts’ dastardly act of killing the children. Projecting a new determination to go after the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that the government wouldn’t make any distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban and would  eliminate terrorism in Pakistan.

Though it has been generally known that the government and the military establishment were selectively supporting and using militant/terrorist groups for political and strategic reasons--the ‘good’ ones-- this is probably the first implied public admission from the prime minister of Pakistan. And this is what created militancy of all kinds, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, that has now come to haunt and threaten the Pakistani state. Will it be possible to destroy intricate linkages, which the state instrumentalities fostered and nurtured over decades? One will have to be an eternal optimist to believe this.

Nawaz Sharif also believes that the government and military are now united in their resolve to eliminate TTP, apparently referring to a new united front, even endorsing military courts to try the terrorists. It is true that there is now an increasing awareness of the need for a united front but to present it as a reality is a bit overdrawn. For decades now, the military has been either directly or indirectly—sometimes brazenly and at other times less visibly—driving the country’s political power. And to imagine now that the government and military will now be as one is hard to believe. The military-government disharmony is now entrenched into Pakistani governance and it can’t just vanish because of the horrible tragedy of the school killings. There is no real tradition in Pakistan of civilian supremacy over its military establishment. It is rather the other way around.

A very important point missing in this equation about government-military relationship is: where do the Pakistani people fit in? They seem to be missing in this calculus. It would appear that, by and large, people are against extremism/militancy/terrorism. This is borne out by recent protests against school killings, as well as from the relatively poor showing electorally by religious political groups and parties. But the people are also disenchanted and frustrated by the system as it operates today. Which is that, by and large, nothing seems to be working for the people. They are the victims of a highly corrupt, self-seeking and self-perpetuating system, with the political/business elite and the military competing with each other to get the most out of it. In the process, the fractious establishment that governs the country does not have much time and energy to put people’s interests and welfare in the centre of governance. Hence, even though people, by and large, are against terrorists, their alternative choice of what goes for governance in the country is not terribly tempting. Which would explain that despite all the violence wreaked on the country by the Pakistani Taliban over many years now, Pakistan lacks a people’s movement/mobilization against such widespread violence threatening its very existence.

A normal state system thrives on two basic tenets: economic and physical security of people. And both are sorely lacking. At the economic level, apart from those who have enriched themselves by mostly foul means, mass of the people are either doing it from hand to mouth or just getting by with no hope about what tomorrow will bring. It is not that anyone would expect Pakistan to create a welfare society. But it would have been quite feasible to create a sense of hope among its people through a well-devised programme of economic development to tap its human resources like, for instance, building infrastructure projects and the likes. At the same time, it would certainly have been possible to allocate more money to health and education to build up Pakistan’s human capital, if necessary, by diverting a bit of the country’s budget from defence. The state must foster a sense that the country is moving forward.

Pakistan, on the other hand, fostered a sense that the country was in a constant state of threat from within and without. The creation of Bangladesh was a singular example of a failure to manage internal contradictions. A shared religion, Islam, was supposed to override linguistic, cultural and regional differences, which simply proved grossly inadequate. The same is happening in some of Pakistan’s other regions, particularly in Baluchistan, where the primacy of a shared religion is simply not working to create national cohesion. At the same time, the Taliban and other militant groups are at war with the state because it is not considered sufficiently Islamic. In other words, a failure to recognize the diversity of factors other than religion (Islam) as a cohesive national philosophy has simply aggravated tensions and contradictions.

In some sense, the creation of Pakistan has tended to embody the politics of an undivided India, thus externalizing some of the contradictions that marked the subcontinent’s politics. In other words, a Hindu-majority India was perceived as a bigger threat now that the subcontinent became two independent states. What was seen earlier as an internal Hindu-Muslim divide, fostered under the British rule became an international issue between India and Pakistan? This had the unfortunate effect of focusing much of the new state’s energies on preparing to face that ‘threat’, as well as managing to keep Afghanistan into its strategic orbit. Not surprisingly then that the country’s military establishment became the dominant element of national politics and discourse. To cut the long story short, this excessive focus on security vitiated Pakistan’s body politic that created all sorts of issues including the rise of the Taliban and other militant groups.

Therefore, any plan of action simply focusing on the TTP and other terrorist groups, laudable and necessary as it is, must be combined with an integrated national blueprint and strategy to lift the people out of their economic misery and create a sense of hope that Pakistan is finally heading towards a brighter future.  

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au