Osama’s death: Impact on Pakistan

Despite the scepticism expressed in certain jihadist quarters, there appears to be little doubt that Osama bin Laden, leader and icon of the al Qaeda movement, is dead and that he was killed in a house in Abbottabad. It is too early to determine whether his death will become a rallying point for the extremists or will prove, as the Americans obviously hope, that the Americans always ‘get their man’ and give the demoralised extremists pause.

Reassuring noises have been made in official statements about the role that Pakistan has played, with US President Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton both expressing appreciation for the cooperation Pakistan had extended in the long intelligence gathering operation that eventually pinpointed Osama’s location and permitted Obama to make what has been called the ‘gutsiest decision’ to send in US Navy SEALs to kill or capture Osama. The latest statement was by Clinton on May 4, when, after stating that Pakistan was the country most severely impacted by the bombings etc laid at al Qaeda’s door, she said that “we have a very close relationship with Pakistan, and it was crucial in finally leading us to bin Laden. So the work that was done over many years had many contributors, including our partners in Pakistan”. However, such statements were overshadowed by the blunt assertion by CIA director Leon Panetta in a Time Magazine interview that Pakistan had been kept in the dark because telling the Pakistanis would have jeopardised the operation.

The Pakistan Foreign Office has been equally adamant in stating that Pakistan did not know about the operation and in giving the lie to allegations made in the media that the SEALs’ helicopters had used the Pakistani base at Ghazi for the operation. Doubts will continue to exist about the assertion that the PAF was not able to detect the helicopters because the SEALs were able to evade or jam Pakistan’s detection capabilities, the more so since in a briefing by unidentified department of defence officials, the question of where the helicopters had taken off from was deliberately left unanswered.

Already, earlier conjectures about how long Osama had lived in Abbottabad have hardened into the certainty that he had been there for the last six years because the house had clearly been purpose-built to provide the sort of security that Osama needed, and because people are now recalling former president Pervez Musharraf’s statements that Osama could not survive long since he needed dialysis and this could not be administered in the remote fastnesses of caves in the tribal areas. In the meanwhile, despite our foreign secretary’s assertion that Osama was now history and no purpose would be served by questions on the forensics, there will be hard questions posed on the sort of support network, as British Prime Minister David Cameron put it, that had enabled Osama to live for so long in Abbottabad.

The duplicity, of which Pakistan has been frequently accused, was the principal and recurring theme of the statements that Congressmen and other opinion makers in the US made in the triumphal aftermath of the raid and its successful outcome. One can expect that more of this will happen as the ‘treasure trove’ of computer hard drives and USBs collected from the Osama residence are read and analysed.

But what does this mean, in the ultimate analysis, for the US-Pakistan relationship? This has never been a people-to-people relationship. It has not even been what people in Pakistan have been fond of calling a transactional relationship. Theoretically, it was based on the convergent interest of the US and the declared policy of the Pakistan establishment to reduce if not eliminate the extremism that had swept into Pakistan and to rid Pakistan of the terrorists that had found safe havens in the region. In more practical and immediate terms, it was based on the Pakistani need for economic and military assistance and the American need for logistics support by way of transit routes for American military operations in Afghanistan — the common goal being peace and stability in Afghanistan. There were differences on how this goal could be achieved and how Pakistan’s interests as the regional power most affected could be protected, but the goal was still common.

More recently, as American policy in Afghanistan has moved towards support for a political solution in Afghanistan based on reconciliation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, there has also developed an even more urgent need to enlist Pakistan’s cooperation in working out, through an Afghan-led process, the power-sharing arrangements in which Taliban leaders resident in Pakistan would play a principal role. Theoretically again, this is a common goal and one that is closer to what Pakistan wants. Pakistan’s own national interest dictates that there be peace in Afghanistan since without that it cannot bring under control the Frankenstein created during the jihad against the Soviets and nurtured since then for other reasons. It cannot equally realise the economic benefits of its strategic location. For the United States, this reconciliation is the only path for a graceful exit for most if not all of its troops from Afghanistan.

In no other country does the United States have a lower approval rating than in Pakistan. How this has come about is a matter that can be debated but there is no doubt that our establishment, irritated beyond reason by the Indo-US strategic alliance, has played a part in generating this sentiment. In the United States, Pakistan’s approval rating that stood at 18 per cent a couple of months ago has probably now dropped to less than Afghanistan’s 12 per cent approval rating. This virtual animosity at the popular level is normally important but frankly irrelevant at this time. For better or for worse, the two countries need each other and will have to work together despite the cloud of suspicion that will continue to hang over the relationship.

A word of warning. It would be in Pakistan’s interest to recognise that while both countries are equally sovereign, one is a superpower while the other is beset with economic, political and security problems, is now in danger of being perceived as a ‘failed state’. Shedding illusions and framing policies in the light of this reality is necessary even when the United States and other powers have no alternative but to stay cautiously friendly towards us.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 6^th, 2011.