Many people in the US find it very hard to believe that officialdom in Pakistan didnât know that UBL was living in Pakistan. We have all heard the logic, âthey must have known…if they didnât know, they are incompetent.â Some think that the incompetence explanation is preferred by the Pakistani government since it would be far more painful to admit the alternative: that Pakistan’s secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), or the Pakistani military or certain elements within either or both, in fact harbored UBL. In fact, Pervez Musharraf, Pakistanâs former president said that it was incompetence this morning on NPR, while the current president, Asif Zardari, has avoided the subject.
Despite the spin, Pakistani complicity is a logical explanation. Consider the following: Would UBL have risked hiding in plain sight in Abbotabad, where, according to the Economist,(Banyan) residents say that local police regularly swept the area around the UBL compound roughly once a week, checking residents’ IDs and sometimes looking inside homes?
It is hard to believe that UBLâs house could have escaped scrutiny for long. So, we are back to the questions:
- Did the police stop at UBLâs house? If not, why not?
- Did the police know who lived there? If yes, did they care? If no, who did they think lived there?
- Wouldn’tât a prolonged stay at a specially built, high-walled compound with many of his family require an external support network?
The fact that UBL had only two guards in the compound suggests he trusted others for security. So shouldn’tât we conclude UBL must have had help from someone in the government?
Indeed, some of Al Qaedaâs other high value targets were captured in urban cities in Pakistan: Khalid Sheikh Mohammad from Rawalpindi, Ramzi Binalshibh from Karachi and Laith al Libi from Mardan. Also captured from Abbotabad last month was the Indonesian Umar Patek, implicated in the Bali bombings.
Either way, Pakistan, the military and the ISI all look humiliated. The Government may be digging for a plausible explanation of its inability to track down Bin Laden in Abbotabad not just to provide to an already-suspicious Obama administration but also to its own citizens who want to know how the Americans managed to fly helicopters from Afghanistan undetected by Pakistani radars and then to carry out a raid when Pakistanâs stated policy is that no foreign forces would be allowed to carry out a land operation in-country. Again, the only logical explanation is that there was some knowledge of the operation at the top of the government.
For Pakistan, the near-term domestic implications are two-fold: a threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban to avenge UBLâs death. This poses a formidable challenge to the government and the security and military apparatus. Another daunting task is to cope with a more assertive United States: Pakistan lost the opportunity provided by the arrest of US spy Raymond Davis on murder charges. The deal for his freedom was that the US would reduce the CIAâs footprint by cutting down its Special Operations forces in-country.
It is doubtful that we will be cutting back the CIA station now.
Strategically, Pakistan has tried to walk two paths simultaneously. They have funded militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir while allying with the US and our anti-terror nation building. For that, they receive more than $3B in annual aid from the US.
That strategy will no longer work. Pakistan can continue its clandestine funding of militant networks, leveraging discontent in Afghanistan and Kashmir only if Islamabad gives up its alliance with the US.
In that case, the US is likely to align more closely with India, leaving Pakistan to move to openly support the militants in Afghanistan and align more closely with China.
Would that be Wrong for America? Discuss….
