Almost 10 years after he masterminded the bloodiest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, the arch terrorist Osama bin Laden was gunned down in a hail of bullets by U.S. special forces on May 1 in a walled compound in Pakistan.
For about the past five years, bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda and America’s most wanted fugitive, had been living in Abbottabad, a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, rather than in some spartan cave in Pakistan’s wild tribal area, where he was presumed to have been hiding. Indeed, his fortified house was only several hundred metres from a military academy, Pakistan’s version of West Point, and an army base.
The location of bin Laden’s lair lent credence to the theory that he had a support system in Pakistan and that the Pakistani government may have had an inkling of his whereabouts. Working on the assumption that Pakistan – a mercurial U.S. ally in the war against terrorism and a recipient of generous American aid packages – is not sufficiently trustworthy, the Obama administration did not give it advance notice of the raid. Leon Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has admitted that Pakistan might have jeopardized the daring operation had it been given advance warning.
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that is well on its way toward becoming the world’s most populous Muslim nation, seethes with anti-American and anti-western sentiment. Carved out of India in 1947 amid intense and widespread sectarian violence, Pakistan was established as a tolerant Muslim state by its founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He hoped that Pakistan would be a bastion of secular, liberal and multicultural values. But due to the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and a proclivity by Pakistani leaders to cater to obscurantist Muslim forces, Pakistan began drifting into Islamic fervency about two decades ago. Though Islamic political parties have had a marginal place in Pakistani politics, they exert a disproportionate influence on Pakistan, which has been ruled by cliques of generals for nearly half its existence.
Muslim fundamentalism is deeply entrenched in Pakistan thanks to a network of Saudi-financed Islamic schools, or madrasas, and deep-seated poverty and endemic corruption. Dominated by a self-serving elite with an endless appetite for conspicuous consumption, Pakistan has provided few basic services to the masses.
Pakistan was thrust into the war on terrorism on Sept. 11, 2001, after Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon, the twin symbols of American financial and military supremacy. Since these assaults were conceived and planned in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which tolerated an Al Qaeda presence, the United States invaded Afghanistan. The invasion prompted the leadership of both Al Qaeda and the Taliban to flee into the lawless northeast corner of neighbouring Pakistan.
Determined to bring the planners of 9-11 to justice, the Americans formed a strategic alliance with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharaff, and began pouring billions of dollars’ worth of military and economic assistance into Pakistan. Musharaff, a foe of Islamic radicalism whom extremists tried to assassinate, seemed like a reliable ally.
In the wake of 9-11, the United States and Pakistan carried out joint operations on Pakistani territory that netted two high-profile Al Qaeda operatives, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, but not Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
These operations notwithstanding, the Americans have been less than satisfied with the level of Pakistan’s co-operation in the war against terrorism.
To win the war in Afghanistan, to which the Obama administration has committed 100,000 troops, the United States must wipe out Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan and deal devastating blows to their allies, Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani group. Without Pakistan’s help, these goals simply cannot be accomplished.
These jihadist organizations have wreaked a trail of death and destruction, having taken credit for the gruesome murder of the American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, the killing of tourists in Bali, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan and the shooting of Indian nationals and foreigners in Mumbai, India.
Under U.S. pressure, the Pakistani army has launched anti-terrorist campaigns in Swat and South Waziristan, having deployed close to 150,000 troops there since 9-11. But much to the consternation of the United States, Pakistan has declined to send its army into another terrorist enclave, North Waziristan. Nor has the Pakistani government permitted U.S. troops to carry out covert missions in Pakistan.
Worse still, from Washington’s point of view, Pakistan has strenuously objected to U.S. drone strikes, which, though extremely effective in eliminating Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, are generally regarded as a blatant infringement of Pakistani sovereignty.
Beyond these grievances, the United States suspects that Pakistan, through its internal intelligence agency, the ISI, is playing a duplicitous game. Pakistan, on the one hand, has pursued terrorists and channelled intelligence data to the United States. On the other hand, there is a perception that Pakistan coddles and protects Washington’s enemies. A case in point: Lashkar-e-Taiba, though officially banned, reportedly operates openly in Pakistan. A group that has vowed to “plant a flag” in Washington and Tel Aviv, it has been used by Pakistan as a proxy against its regional rival, India.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has described Lashkar-e-Taiba as a “global threat.” Last week, he accused Pakistan of maintaining operational ties with Lashkar-e-Taiba’s clone, the Haqqani group, the largest terrorist organization in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mullen’s accusation has been heard before. In his memoirs, At the Center of the Storm: My Years in the CIA, the CIA’s former director, George Tenet, scathingly wrote, “The Pakistanis always knew more than they shared with us. They did not co-operate with us in the war against Al Qaeda.”
Pakistan’s policy, though outwardly murky, is quite clear upon further examination.
Although Pakistan fears jihadist terrorism and has been continually victimized by it in a succession of suicide bombings, Pakistan’s leaders regard India rather than the Taliban as the main enemy.
Pakistan, therefore, cultivates relations with the Taliban and like-minded groups so as to keep India, its arch enemy, at bay.
“The Pakistani establishment is providing support to terrorist groups while keeping the denial process in play,” Uday Bhaskar, the former director of New Delhi-based Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, said last week in a Reuters interview.
Pakistan’s current president, Asif Ali Zardari, whose wife, Benazir Bhutto, was killed in a terrorist incident, has vowed to fight Islamic militancy in the interests of preserving “a modern, moderate Pakistan.”
High-flown rhetoric, however, will not save Pakistan from the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism. Judging by last week’s event in Abbottabad, Pakistan has yet to prove its wholehearted commitment to eradicating extremism in its midst.