Thursday, March 28, 2024
 
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Final reason to call Pak a terror state




By Farooq Ganderbali



It is now fairly well established that Pakistan kept the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, in protective custody since 2006 and for this reason alone the state should be declared a terrorist state and heavy sanctions imposed. Pakistan’s record of sheltering terrorists is not new. It has been doing so for decades, essentially to target India and to extract money from the US and other western nations.


But the fact that Pakistan could not only shelter but also protect the al Qaeda chief for five years while it claimed to be fighting alongside the US against the al Qaeda is `mother of all shocks`. By doing so, Pakistan has outclassed its own duplicity and has become the state which has sponsored, sheltered and protected some of the most vicious terrorists for decades. Even after the Osama bin Laden exposure, it continues to do so. Two of the most notorious ones in the recent ones are Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi. What more does the UN or the international community need to declare Pakistan as a terrorist state and bring down hard sanctions on it.

The story of Osama bin Laden however merits recounting. Since September 11, 2001, Pakistan had been saying that it was not aware of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. So when then Americans pushed Pakistanis to join hands in hunting bin Laden, the latter agreed to do so but with a heavy price. Pakistan wanted a lucrative sum every year to carry out the mission and help the Americans to do so also. Between 2002 and 2008, General Pervez Musharraf, who was the military dictator ruling Pakistan, extracted about $12 billion from the US tax payers and gave up a few al Qaeda leaders like Ramzi Yousef, Abu Zubeydah and Khalid Mohammad Sheikh. The additional `bonus` for all these catches would have been astronomical but remains a secret between the two ``strategic allies``.


So while the world was literally looking for Osama bin Laden, Pakistan Army quietly abducted him from his shelter in the tribal areas, most probably with some of its ``strategic partners`` operating in the area. The army then kept him in protective custody near Rawalpindi before shifting him to a newly constructed building at Abbottabad. The then Army chief, Ashfaq Kayani and ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha, were in the know of their VIP prisoner. So was former chief, Musharraf. There would be others higher up in ISI who would have been privy to the secret.

It is not known how long did the Americans remain in dark about the man who they were hunting with all the power at their disposal, without realising that their own ally was double-crossing them. May be they did know about the duplicity but was not able to locate Osama bin Laden and hence pretended otherwise. Pakis wanted a price and they knew that the new President in Washington was desperate to have something to brag about and get something right. The price was fixed—Pakistan will have a free hand in Afghanistan, stalled F-16 deals would be cleared, additional requirements for weapons and ammunition would be met, IMF and World Bank would suddenly find Pakistan a safe country to invest in, the US will overlook Pakistan’s rapid accumulation of nuclear weapons (while leaning heavily on Iran) and its nuclear and military dealings with China. In addition, massive accumulated debts were written off and equally substantial payments were made to the state and Generals for fighting ``terrorism``.


In any case there were few doubts about Osama bin Laden and his patrons in ISI. A few months after the Abbottabad raid, in December 2011, a senior Pakistani General, who was also for a brief moment the head of ISI, had disclosed that the al Qaeda chief’s whereabouts were known to at least some elements in Pakistan Army. This is what he said: ``(Brigadier) Ijaz Shah had kept this man (bin Laden in the Abbottabad compound) with the full knowledge of General Pervez Musharraf...`` Shah was a henchman of Musharraf and was known to be the key officer—he headed the Punjab unit of ISI and later on was made the Interior Secretary—in the ISI who dealt with jihadi groups. Shah was accused by the slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as one of the conspirators. Shah was also the same person who was handling Saeed Omar Sheikh, one of the main accused in the Daniel Pearl murder case. Sheikh is a senior leader of Jaish-e-Mohammad. He was rescued by ISI by hijacking an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Delhi in December 1999. Recounting of these details is necessary to highlight the ISI role in sheltering Osama bin Laden.


Even the Abbottabad Commission, set up by the Zardari government, raised questions about Pakistan Army’s complicity. This is what the report said: ``Culpable negligence and incompetence at all levels of Government can be more or less conclusively established by testimonies of interviewees. But connivance, collaboration and cooperation at some levels cannot be discounted. If some level of connivance existed it could not have been established in the circumstances in which the Commission operated. Some degree of connivance on a plausible deniability basis outside governmental structures was possible, some would say even likely.” These words may sound ambiguous but any one who cared to read between the lines would realise that it was an indirect indictment of Pakistan Army. The commission would not have dared to accuse the army of ``playing ball`` with the Americans in killing Osama bin Laden. So it did the next courageous thing—blame it on all thereby placing the army in a dim light. This was amply reflected in the question the Commission posed to senior Army officials who were summoned as witnesses.-- “Is it the official or unofficial defence policy of Pakistan not to attempt to defend the country if attacked by a military superpower like the United States?”


Whatever little doubt there was about Pakistan Army’s complicity has now been set to rest by a former ISI chief, Asad Durrani. In a candid interview to Al Jazeera in February 2915, said he was aware that Osama bin Laden was in the protective custody of ISI. His exact words were: ``I cannot say exactly what happened but my assessment […] was it is quite possible that they [the ISI] did not know but it was more probable that they did. And the idea was that at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been, when you can get the necessary quid pro quo - if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.``


(The author is a Freelance Journalist and columnist)



(Opinions expressed in write-ups/articles/Letters are the sole responsibility of the authors and they may not represent the Scoop News)



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