Nearly four years ago when the Americans claimed to have killed the Al Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden ( OBL) in a raid at Abbottabad in Pakistan, there were widespread doubts on two counts. Firstly, it was hard to believe that OBL was living there without the knowledge of the Pakistan army and its all-powerful intelligence agency ISI. Secondly, the claim from both the Americans and the Pakistanis that this was an all-America affair with no Pakistani fore knowledge or cooperation. How could this happen? This was the question that dominated the minds of all logically thinking persons.
Even as there have been no satisfactory answers to these twin questions American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has come up a story that busts both the claims. He has claimed that OBL in Abbottabad was not a free person, indeed he was a prisoner of the Pakistani army, and that the American operation happened with the cooperation of the then Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Kayani and the ISI boss Shuja Pasha. Imparting a damning twist to the American narrative, he has claimed that in May 2011, president Barack Obama, facing the 2012 re-election challenge, needed to portray himself as the ‘hero’ and a corollary followed that Pakistan is a villain. The simplistic explanation for Pakistan going along with the story is that the authorities preferred to be seen as ‘incompetent’ rather than take any blame for the act of killing OBL to avoid adverse public sentiment.
Hersh has a track record of making such sensational claims. In India, he is known for his 1983 story that former prime minister Morarji Desai was a paid CIA informant. The charge attracted a libel suit from Desai in the US, but Hersh could not be punished as it was not proved conclusively that he was lying. Desai however did have the satisfaction of being redeemed in the process as Henry Kissinger, the one time all powerful foreign secretary, deposed that Desai was not a paid informant. This time Hersh’s story is based on the accounts of an ISI officer who is believed to have walked into the Islamabad CIA station and disclosed OBL’s whereabouts in return for an award of 25 million dollars. This was announced by the Americans in 2001 post 9/11. The said ex-ISI man is now living in Washington and working as a CIA consultant.
Whether Hersh is telling the real story or not, the main point is that even among the journalistic and diplomatic communities in Pakistan, there is a lot of disbelief for the official American and Pakistani narratives in the sense that neither side has come up with a convincing answer to a lot many puzzling questions. For instance, OBL would not survived for five years in Abbottabad without some kind of a support system working for him. Either it had to be someone from the army or government or from the wider society. In short some state actor or a non-state actor, although in OBL’s case this distinction would be merely a jugglery of words. Moreover, why could not someone in the Pakistan’s intelligence services track him down earlier? In the last four years, we have seen that cooperation between Pakistan and the United States of America has proceeded as if there was no OBL episode in it. Neither is America unduly worried about Pakistan’s betrayal in protecting the most wanted terrorist, nor is Pakistan concerned that its sovereign supremacy was violated when the Americans conducted that raid in Abbottabad. To say the least this a strange behaviour, considering that the entire war on terror that has changed global perspectives on security originated with an unprecedented attack masterminded by OBL. The point is that if betrayal on such an important issue is not going to alter the terms of engagement then what will?
More than anything else, it is this refusal by both Pakistan and America to come clean on such an issue of core significance that encourages enterprising souls like Hersh to come up with conspiracy theories and damning judgements based on little more than thin evidence. Both sides seem to have a higher vested interest in covering up things rather than being open about the whole affair.
From an Indian standpoint, this is a dangerous thing. We are exposed to the tragic and devastating after effects of terror, and we do depend on international cooperation from countries like America in our fight against this menace. Since Pakistan is the originating point of all our miseries in this direction, we now have the question –whom to believe — staring in our face. The Washington-Islamabad axis has a new meaning for us. The fact that Pakistan got away cheaply even after it provided a safe home for OBL should give us an idea of its audacity. From protecting OBL to sheltering Dawood Ibrahim with voices like Hafeez Saeed being publicly strident, the Pakistani strategy towards forces of terror is now crystal clear. It may be having its own victims of terror, and we should have all the human sympathy for them, but the policy framework and the support it gets internationally should not leave us in any delusion. We should also ponder as to why America and China, the two giants with contrasting ideologies, have lent support to create a nuclear powered Pakistan. Let us not forget that without China’s actual support and the US indulgence in looking the other way, Pakistan could not have got its nuclear arsenal.
OBL is dead and gone but the terror mindset and the apparatus that he created now thrives in various forms and shapes. India has to carve a strategy that insulates itself from the surprises that could be in store as a result of the seemingly disjointed Washington-Islamabad-Beijing axis. This may not appear as an overt combine, but in functional terms it is a problem for us. Islamabad would be powerless if Washington were to stop all military aid, and Beijing refuses to fund its infrastructure. This does not happen, and Hersh’s story is yet another reminder of this strategic reality.
Anil Sharma
