There is more damaging information alleged in the book: that the house where Osama lived was carved out of the area owned by the Pakistan Military Academy and that originally, the US and Pakistan had together concocted the story that Osama was killed by a drone but that later President Barack Obama decided not to trust Pakistan and mounted a secret operation. Of course, all or much of this may be untrue or hotly contested, but the fact also is that the rest of the world hardly ever accepts Pakistan’s position on such matters.
The account has been rejected by Pakistan. It is certain that the Obama Administration, too, will not endorse it. However, in Pakistan, the book will create waves not at all helpful in the current atmosphere of political instability and a growing trend of distrusting the army leadership. This will strengthen the resolve of the PML-N to oppose Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
The other element that will use the revelations in Miniter’s book are the proxy warriors of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council which is greatly put off by General Kayani’s decision to allow the Nato supply route to reopen. They have reacted negatively to his Independence Day declaration that the war against terrorism and extremism is Pakistan’s war. The received wisdom in Pakistan is that it is America’s war, which is actually against Islam. Retired generals come on TV channels to assert that America is in the region to rob it of its natural resources and checkmate China.
PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif’s remark that the drones killing innocent Pakistanis may still be flying from inside Pakistan with the consent of the Pakistan Army is going to further muddy the waters and spawn conspiracy theories involving America and General Kayani. The PML-N is retaliating against the perceived army policy of fielding Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as a political replacement of the two mainstream parties in the country: the PML-N and the PPP.
General Kayani, it seems, has offended America as a policy aimed at placing him closer to the emotion of the masses in Pakistan, in no small measure fanned by his intelligence agencies. He has now offended this dominant emotion by pronouncing the forbidden formulation of ‘it is Pakistan’s war’. He may face opposition from the Punjabi Taliban, who are increasingly suspected of attacking the army in Punjab, and al Qaeda, which leads the war against America in Pakistan and elsewhere on the globe. Already, the Taliban openly state that the drones that kill their top terrorists are operated with the consent of the army. The policy on Osama bin Laden’s killing in Abbottabad was wrong from the beginning. The army should have gone along with the elected government in power and not taken on the US for ‘violating Pakistan’s sovereignty’, which the entire world knew had been earlier blown to smithereens by al Qaeda and its minions. President Asif Ali Zardari had reacted to the killing in Abbottabad through an article published in Washington Post (May 3, 2011) titled “Pakistan did its part”. It began with these words: “Pakistan, perhaps the world’s greatest victim of terrorism, joins the other targets of al Qaeda — the people of the United States, Britain, Spain, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria — in our satisfaction that the source of the greatest evil of the new millennium has been silenced and his victims given justice. He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone.... The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan’s war as it is America’s.”
General Kayani has come around to that point of view but has run against a national mindset that reveres Osama as a hero.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 25th, 2012.
COMMENTS (8)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
1714024018-0/ModiLara-(1)1714024018-0-270x192.webp)
This book is an obvious political jab at Obama which makes one wonder whether the statements are accurate. If true -- this would confirm that your leaders are clueless when it comes to managing Pakistan's World image -- rather than become instant hero's you decided to become duplicitous supporters of the most wanted terrorist on the planet.
All infos that come to the surface just looks like another trick to fool the public and create the desired atmosphere. We are left with nothing but to make inferences and then uncertainty prevails. This is what is happening in this and all other such type of news stories. But whatever it may be, this empire of deceit, which involves our and foreign hands, is bound to perish soon.
"This will strengthen the resolve of the PML-N to oppose Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani."extension of tenure (here I said it for you).
This story is a bit far fetched and difficult to believe. The entire truth may never be known but from the facts available it is clear that Osama was sheltered in the safe house by a section of the Intelligence agencies.
I doubt if the ISI helped capture OBL. Considering, that after killing of OBL, the CIA chief (i think but not sure) got on the television and said that the "pakistan was either complicit or incompetent" in the matters pertaining to OBL's presence near kakul. If ISI was indeed helping the US, one would have thought these pretty strong-insulting statement damning our army would not have been uttered in front of the whole world! Neither would have been there so much hoopla created by the US politicians against pakistan after the OBL killing. A bit of commonsense is all that is required to understand that the book is a right-wing replublican propaganda which is trying to undermine Obama's role in operation "neptuan's spear"
@Mirza: Please think, so you say that if the chopper had not crashed the US would have claimed the "Osama was killed in a drone strike"! Nice try, except that the "neighbors" saw and heard the choppers and gunfire, and ran into the Seal Team outer perimeter security detail during the attack! As for why the Abbottabad Commission reported is being "suppressed", I would bet that there are just too many TRUTHS in the report about how OBL lived there all those years "unnoticed"! As for the "BUS", Pakistan threw ITSELF under the bus when OBL was killed beside Pakistan's premier military academy!
Nice editorial. World knows about us, who and what are we. Simple thugs.
A great fair and balanced editorial by ET, thanks for that. The way PCO judge Iqbal is sitting on the Abbottabad Commission Report proves that these "rumors or news" are correct. More than a year ago The Telegraph from London has given this same news. If the newest US chopper would not have crashed the news would have been "OBL killed by a drone strike". After the chopper crashed the US had to come out with the truth and they "threw Pak army under the bus". Hence the anger of Pakistani establishment against the US, instead of embarrassment on finding OBL in an army base. If Pakistani army wants the truth out then let the commission report become public with clear answers otherwise the world knows the truth. The longer we sit on our hands the weaker our case is going to be.