Book review: 'Manhunt'

Who took out the lights in the areas around Osama Bin Laden’s compound just before the US operation? Why was Pakistan’s response so late in coming? How could the US carry out such a raid based on just a hunch? These are just a few of the questions that linger after reading Manhunt.

Written by Peter Bergen, one of the few journalists to have interviewed OBL, this 300-page book draws on sources ranging from US officials to retired Pakistan Army personnel.

Starting with OBL’s escape from Tora Bora, which Bergen blames on US indecision, unsure intelligence and the obsession to maintain a small ‘footprint’ in Afghanistan, we move on to how the hunt for Bin Laden was conducted. By 2005, as the trail went cold, locating his “courier network”, “family members”, “communication links with senior al Qaeda leadership” and “outreach to the media” became the “four pillars” for OBL hunting.

Bergen claims Obama ordered the raid against the advice of his vice president and secretary of defence based on a “fifty-fifty [chance] that Bin Laden was there,” to quote the president himself. What boggles the mind is that no satellite image or a recent photo of Osama was available with the CIA before the go-ahead for the operation was given.

Bergen seems to have some backhanded praise for the ISI’s role, and he credits the spy agency with extracting “useful information [from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] that the CIA appears to have overlooked.”

Army chief Kayani and then ISI chief Pasha are shown as coy and docile in dealing with the Americans and wary of the Pakistani media. Hours after the operation, Kayani is quoted as telling Mullen: “We’re not going to be able to handle the Pakistani media without you confirming this. They need to know that it was Bin Laden and not just some ordinary US operation.”

Bergen writes that in the aftermath of the raid, “Kayani worried that the army’s image could shatter, and he told his closest colleagues that this was the worst week of his life.” Although he seems to absolve the Pakistan Army of connivance with OBL, he asserts that the Pakistani response was so slow and confused that upon hearing a chopper go down in Abbottabad, Kayani ordered the air chief to scramble fighter jets in the opposite direction, anticipating an Indian strike against the nuclear facilities.

Bergen also fleetingly mentions Dr Shakil Afridi, and declares that “Afridi’s team was never able to get DNA samples from the Bin Laden children.” If so unimportant, why did the Pakistan government sentence him to 33 years in prison and why do US congressmen cry hoarse over his imprisonment?

We also get a sneak peek into OBL’s life, from his “frugal” diet and Viagra-aided love life to his “delusional” terror planning. His security paranoia is vividly described, from the “tarpaulin over a section of the garden … designed to keep even the walks a secret,” to the fact that even his trusted aide Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s wife was unaware of Osama’s presence in the house. Yet at the time of the raid, “[OBL] had no real escape plan, and there was no secret passageway out of the house.” Odd that someone so security conscious would commit such a lapse.

The book lacks the investigative reporting which could have helped solve some of the riddles surrounding the death of Osama. While it’s a laudable scholarly attempt at setting the record straight, it ends up raising more questions than it answers.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, September 9^th, 2012.