THE
LIFE AND DEATH OF OSAMA BIN
LADEN Pakistan has a price to
pay By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - United States officials
modified their narrative on Osama bin Laden's
killing on Monday in the Pakistani town of
Abbottabad to protect Pakistan's broader interests
against threats from militants, saying that the
Pakistanis had little involvement.
However, well-placed security sources
maintain that the operation in Abbottabad - just a
two-hour drive north of the capital Islamabad -
was without a doubt a joint Pakistan-US effort and
that all logistics were arranged inside Pakistan.
All the same, while Pakistan's military
command was aware that the operation targeted a
high-value suspect, it was completely
unaware that it was in fact
Bin Laden until this was announced by the
Americans after the al-Qaeda leader had been shot
dead by US Special Forces.
The operation
to get Bin Laden was similar to the one that
netted Indonesian al-Qaeda operative Umar Patek -
the mastermind of the Bali bombings in Indonesia
in 2002 that killed more than 200 people - from
Abbottabad in late January.
So when
Pakistani intelligence gave the approval for
American gunship helicopters to fly from Tarbella
Ghazi, 20 kilometers from Islamabad and the
brigade headquarters of the Pakistan army's elite
commando unit, to capture a high-value target in
Abbottabad, the Pakistanis assumed it was for the
seizure of Umar Patek's companions.
Once
permission had been granted to the helicopters,
Pakistani security forces were put on high alert
in Abbottabad to provide necessary assistance to
the American operation, which was led by American
Navy Seals.
Limited bases were granted to
the Americans in Tarbella Ghazi in 2008 under an
agreement for high-profile operations. Asia Times
Online broke that story of that development. (See
A
long, hot winter for Pakistan October 11, 2008
and The
gloves are off in Pakistan September 23,
2008.)
After a 40-minute operation, the
Americans had the body of Bin Laden - later buried
in the Arabian Sea - and Pakistani authorities
were informed. Their forces then entered the
compound where Bin Laden had been found and took
control.
News of Bin Laden's death broke
like a bombshell among military bigwigs as well as
on the political leadership. On the international
diplomatic front, Pakistan has already lost its
argument against allegations that it perpetuates
terror. Now, militant groups are expected to turn
their guns on the Pakistan state for its
complicity in Bin Laden's death.
Before
Bin Laden's killing, hardly 10% of pro-Taliban
militants were fighting against Pakistan. That is,
90% disagreed with Pakistan's policy of aligning
with the US in the "war on terror", but they chose
to keep their focus on fighting foreign forces in
Afghanistan. Bin Laden's death has invited the
wrath of all groups. For example, the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP - Pakistan
Taliban), immediately announced it would avenge
his death and declared Pakistan the number one
enemy and the US as number two. On Monday evening,
a suicide attack was carried out against police in
Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province, in which Abbottabad
is located. The TTP claimed responsibility.
While all information was coming out of
Washington, Pakistan - where the entire operation
was conducted - behaved like an extremely
terrified child and did not utter a single word.
Only by noon did the Pakistani Foreign Office
issue a statement that declared that the operation
was exclusively conducted by American forces.
American forces claimed to have buried Bin
Laden at sea so that people could not eulogize his
grave and that he would not continue to be an icon
of anti-Americanism. However, al-Qaeda is a
completely different beast.
The world
without Osama Bin Laden, a rich Saudi
prince-like figure, was in many ways the
brainchild of Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and his
Egyptian camp (See Al-Qaeda's
unfinished work Asia Times Online, May 2005)
to bolster a movement that in the 1990s had mostly
failed and was rapidly losing popularity in the
Muslim world.
When Khalid Sheikh Mohammad,
the September 11 mastermind, who was not an
al-Qaeda member, approached Zawahiri with a plan
to strike the US mainland with hijacked aircraft,
Zawahiri saw a huge chance to orchestrate broader
friction between the Muslim and non-Muslim world,
and in the process organize anti-American
sentiment in the Muslim world under a single
banner. He approved the plan despite intense
opposition from several top al-Qaeda commanders
who thought the American reaction would not be
sustainable for the Taliban in Afghanistan or for
al-Qaeda.
However, Zawahiri was planning a
different world after 9/11. Therefore, following
the 9/11 attack and the subsequent US invasion and
defeat of the Taliban, al-Qaeda migrated to
Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area where it
succeeded in regrouping by 2003.
That was
a turning point at which time it was decided to
preserve the iconic figure of Bin Laden as a jewel
while Zawahiri worked on a different strategy - to
engineer a new leadership of al-Qaeda.
A
careful use of material and human resources and
the maximum exploitation of circumstances by 2004
brought forward leaders like commander Nek
Mohammad and Haji Umar and as each one of these
was killed off, another would be ready to step
into the position. These included Abdullah Mehsud,
Baitullah Mehsud and Hakeemullah Mehsud, and now
the highly effective Sirajuddin Haqqani and
commander Ilyas Kashmiri.
Al-Qaeda's
regrouping helped the Taliban make a comeback by
2006, at which time Bin Laden went very quiet -
like a precious stone that was buried deep inside
the Earth with safety and care. He didn't have
much of a role in decision-making, but his name
and stature often brought in money for al-Qaeda.
By 2010, the Americans came up with a
formula for their withdrawal from Afghanistan and
al-Qaeda began to place more emphasis on people
like Haqqani and Kashmiri to replace the older
generation of al-Qaeda in the action in the
mountains of the tribal areas. These older men
would return to the Middle East to take over the
command of Arab revolts.
Under the same
arrangement, Central Asian fighters in the tribal
areas were asked to make preparations to set up
fronts in Central Asia (see Soft
Sufi, hard-rock militant Asia Times Online,
January 22, 2011.)
In essence, by 2011
al-Qaeda had turned into a kind of hornet's nest
capable of opening war fronts in different places
at the same time, or focusing its energies on a
single front. Bin Laden's killing has frozen all
previous plans and according to sources in North
Waziristan, schemes have morphed into two parts:
immediate reaction against Pakistan and a
long-term scheme against the West and India.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times
Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of
forthcoming book Inside al-Qaeda and the
Taliban, beyond 9/11 to be published by Pluto
Press, UK. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
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