The man who sold the world

Arriving in Pakistan from London in the summer of 2003, I wondered if I would encounter grave anti-western sentiment, given that Britain and the US were waging wars in two Muslim lands.

What I found, at least when it came to my own family, was the odd moment of comic relief. Take the cousin, for instance, who decided that boycotting American fast food franchises was not enough. She was soon found outside a local gym armed with crates of Mecca Cola to better seduce the sugar addict with a conscience.

Back then, of course, terrorism and its threat had yet to penetrate both the national psyche and the daily discourse. Pakistan had yet to be crowned the world’s most dangerous nation or, as one British publication put it last summer, the laboratory of world destruction.

Today, there is little cause for comic relief. Every major post-9/11 international terror plot has unearthed a Pakistani link. And this week, the world’s most wanted terrorist was killed on Pakistani soil in what has been officially touted as a unilaterally covert US operation.

While many questions remain, one certainty has emerged in the immediate aftermath of the May 1 killing. Osama bin Laden has succeeded in polarising the world in death almost as much as he did in life.

I love that bin Laden was taken out by someone who has, Hussein, in his name, chirped one of my relatives in the US. Because of Osama, she said, her patriotism had been questioned and her brother had been sent to war. His death, therefore, was a personal victory for US President Obama and a collective victory for the US.

I wondered if I, too, would feel the same if I were American. Most likely, though, I would agree with those of my American friends who are now calling for a reflection of the Bush administration’s war policies that unnecessarily claimed many military lives. Iraq, after all, was never about al Qaeda but, in fact, regime change. And although history cannot be rewritten on the basis of what-ifs, like many Americans, I would want to ask Bush if he regrets not accepting the two Taliban offers to hand over bin Laden to a third country back in October of 2001. For, while Bush had found it unpalatable to have him in anything but US custody, bin Laden today rests at the bottom of the deep blue sea.

Like the majority of Pakistanis, I, too, would disagree that Operation Geronimo incurred no civilian casualties. Uncountable non-terrorist lives have been killed by US drone strikes since 2004. Ditto those killed in retribution attacks.

Admittedly, some in Pakistan have held funeral prayers for bin Laden and rallied to celebrate his ‘martyrdom’, but an overwhelming number of Pakistanis feel ashamed that the al Qaeda chief was able to remain holed up in a compound next to a military academy for a reported five years. They want answers. And they want an end to the double games played by successive Pakistani regimes that have sheltered terrorist elements.

Bin Laden’s death provides the best opportunity to review post-9/11 foreign policy in both Pakistan and the US in order to move forward. As Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, outlines in his book The Search for Al Qaeda, a final resolution of the Palestinian conflict must be a priority. It would rob al Qaeda and its supporters of much of their propagandist diatribe. Ditto Kashmir. Then, according to Riedel, efforts must be taken to normalise Pakistan-India ties to better strengthen Pakistan’s resolve in fighting terror within its own borders.

Genuinely pursuing these recommendations would go some way to ensuring that bin Laden’s legacy is eroded, just as his body has surely been. In the meanwhile, this and the previous Pakistani regime should be investigated for their respective roles in the collective intelligence failure that allowed the man who sold the world to live a life of comparative luxury, just 60 kilometres from the federal capital.



Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2011.