It has recently been revealed that before living in Abbottabad, Osama first moved to Peshawar in 2002 and then shifted to Swat and Haripur. This information comes from Osama’s widow Amal al Sadeh, who along with his other two widows and two daughters have been handed down 45-day imprisonment along with a fine of Rs10,000 each. The court ordered their detention for illegal residency and ordered their deportation as soon as possible.
Now that more information is available, the first question that needs to be answered is: how did bin Laden manage to spend nearly a decade in the country without being detected? The US still maintains that it has not found any smoking gun which would prove that Pakistani authorities knew of Osama’s presence in the country, but an absence of proof is not enough to let them off the hook. Even if the authorities, who in this case mean the military, were not complicit in hiding Osama, they were certainly negligent in their duties.
Investigating the intelligence failure posed by Osama’s presence in the country needs to be a top priority of the commission tasked with looking into the May 2 raid that killed the al Qaeda leader. So far, the commission has shown more interest in looking into American violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty and making scapegoats of officials like former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani, who had nothing to do with Osama’s presence in the country. The commission needs to recognise that Osama’s relatively comfortable sojourn in Pakistan represents a far greater violation of our own sovereignty than the Navy SEALS raid that killed him. Addressing this issue will also set the much-needed precedent (as well as show the rest of the world) that Pakistan’s civil and military establishment is serious about investigating just how the world’s most-wanted man lived undetected in Pakistan for so long.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 3rd, 2012.
COMMENTS (14)
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Osama is dead, long live Osama.Two different world, two different perception.
False news, I wonder how can a person like Obama talk such lie, they never showed body of Osama, they drowned it or they even I think never got Osama,
@Ammar wrote: "come on guys !! you believe in “usama killed in Abotabad, Dead Body burried in Sea, Navy Seal who took part in Operation killed in Afganistan soon after ” story … Time to grow up."
I agree with you 911%. These naive people don't even know that moon landing was fake, it was staged in a Hollywood studio. The same people also think Elvis is dead, which is a non-sense because I just saw him a month ago in Las Vegas. With my own eyes! As they say, seeing is believing! Now a days people are just soooooooo naive, unlike you and I.
@Ammar: Its not established the killed seals were same who took part in abbotabad raid...but surely they belonged to team six units of US seals.
Sheikh had every right to live in Muslim land as he was , is and always eill be leader of Jihad
come on guys !! you believe in "usama killed in Abotabad, Dead Body burried in Sea, Navy Seal who took part in Operation killed in Afganistan soon after " story ...
Time to grow up.
From the article: "The commission needs to recognise that Osama’s relatively comfortable sojourn in Pakistan represents a far greater violation of our own sovereignty than the Navy SEALS raid that killed him."
It is about time someone has said this.
It is nice to hear a rational voice coming from Pakistan.
Agree with you 200%
Keeping the myth alive!
This shows the coordination level between the US and Pakistan.What was the objective of Afghanistan invasion, if the most wanted man OBL was in a state that is a front line ally against war on terror.
The image of Pakistan has been irretrievably damaged by hosting Osama for over 10 years. A country whose actions never match the words spoken can never win respect. At some point of time the old policy of duplicity and deceit have to be jettisoned. I suggest it be done today.
The reason OBL has lived in Pakistan with his harem for almost a decade is "it was the safest place for him". He lived among friends who have taken good care of him and kept telling the whole world that he is somewhere in the caves and mountains. If the US has not found and killed him we would still be hearing that he is not in Pakistan.
The world needs no evidence of Pakistan Army's complicity, because circumstantial evidence is far too strong to suggest it was hosting Osama, and real evidence is plenty it hosts many other such terrorists.
The world however needs evidence of sincerity from Pakistan about introspection and change of course. Sadly there is none to be seen. Pakistan is saying "gurrr" to the world instead of showing some remorse for the stupid policies of the past.
Nice editorial -- but the Editor knows better than I that the Commission, govt, and military has no intention of finding out who was assisting OBL. The fact that no one wants to look under that rock gives the World the impression that someone very powerful in the Pakistani hierarchy is responsible.