John Brennan, a counter-terrorism advisor to President Barack Obama, told journalists it was “inconceivable” that Bin Laden did not enjoy a “support system” in Pakistan.Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders have always maintained that Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were not in their country or that they were hiding in the tribal belt along the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border. Instead, the world’s most wanted man was found living comfortably in a $1 million property in a town where well-off and military families reside – Pakistan’s equivalent of Aldershot, as one commentator put it.Many are now asking if the Pakistan establishment is guilty of complacency at best or complicity at worst.
A leading British academic, Shaun Gregory, who heads the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford, is in no doubt. In a letter to The Times, he accused the Pakistani military and the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency) of peddling “four big lies” to the West. These are that AQ Khan (the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb) was acting alone when he established and ran for nearly two decades the largest clandestine nuclear proliferation network in history; that the Afghan Taliban and its spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, do not have safe havens in Pakistan; that Pakistan does not support terrorist organisations as instruments of state policy in its ongoing struggle with India; and that Osama Bin Laden was not in Pakistan.
Professor Gregory asked: “Is it not time to accept that the Pakistan army and ISI constitute an enormous threat to Western interests and that the failed policies of the past towards the army and ISI, in particular that of military aid, must be recalibrated?”Since 2001, the US has given £15 billion to Pakistan in order to fight terrorism. It is a widely-held view that the Pakistani military did not use all of these funds for their agreed purpose of fighting terror. In fact, there are widespread allegations of corruption in Pakistan’s military and among its politicians.
Ordinary Pakistanis have suffered more than the people of any other nation from the kind of terrorism perpetrated by Osama Bin Laden. Pakistanis have been the victims directly as the result of terrorist attacks and indirectly because of their country’s pariah reputation that the behaviour of its leaders has created. The pall of corruption around Pakistan means that nations otherwise willing to help do not do so. The kind of suffering endured by Pakistan kills the seeds of optimism among its people and destroys any vibrancy in a country that desperately needs aid to build infrastructure, hospitals and schools.The Pakistani government must do much more to crack down on terrorist groups such as the Taliban, the Haqqani network and the Lashkar e Taiba (Pakistan-based terror gangs) which continue to promote terrorism while operating from Pakistan. The international community wants to see a Pakistan that is stable, democratic and free from terror and not a safe haven for murderers and assassins.
With the death of Bin Laden, al Qaida may have lost its head, but we need to understand that it is a franchise operation and may yet spawn more ways of spreading death and destruction while using religious fanaticism as an excuse. The “war on terror” is far from over. Rather, it is moving into a new era. The military intervention in Libya and the continuing war in Afghanistan show how little the West and the US in particular have learned.State terrorism and fundamentalist terrorism feed off one another. Unless the US changes its strategy of using military intervention of questionable legality to assert its interests, terrorism will not be eradicated. Rather, more terrorists will be created.
A number of immediate and long-term implications follow from the killing of Bin Laden. First, Barack Obama’s bid for a second term in the White House after 2012 presidential election has been greatly strengthened. The elimination of the al Qaida chief represents a major triumph for Obama and negates the Republican charge that his administration is weak on defence and national security. After all, by killing Bin Laden, Obama has accomplished what his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W Bush, could not. Obama is right to stress that America would never be against Islam and that Bin Laden was a mass killer and not a true Muslim leader.
The US President must now concentrate on issues such as the cause of a Palestinian homeland and American withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan in order to prevent al Qaida or any copycat terror groups from exploiting the situation. He will be helped by the fact that al Qaida’s new recruits can no longer swear a personal oath to Bin Laden, which may affect recruitment numbers.Obama has gained the moral and political capital to allow him to bring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a responsible end. The killing of Bin Laden is powerful evidence that terrorist threats can be dealt with more effectively by targeted specialised operations than by deploying whole armies.
Nor should we forget the West’s shameful part in all this. In the name of fighting al Qaida, George W Bush and Tony Blair presided over the devastation of Iraq and Afghanistan. And it should be remembered that Bin Lladen were financed and equipped by the Pentagon and the CIA to fight the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s.What the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world want is peace. A tiny minority, masquerading as Islam, taunted the West and so brought calamity to the good and the innocent. It is now clear that the Islamic world is a much more complicated place than the Americans once thought it was – and it is continuing to change at a rapid pace.
Relations with Pakistan, a critically important ally, are badly strained, while the Arab Spring is altering the political landscape of the Middle East in ways that are not yet fully understood.And while the world is a better and safer place without Bin Laden and his death is a battle won in the war on terror, that war is a long way from being over. The ideology of terror that Bin Laden developed is very much alive. The amorphous nature of its networks, which made al Qaida so difficult to infiltrate and dismantle when Bin Laden was alive, is what can give it continued life after his death. If this dangerous ideology is to be neutralised, we need the help of senior, moderate Muslim leaders whose words will be taken with utmost seriousness by the followers of Islam.
Meanwhile, the West needs a thorough rethink of its foreign policy. It also needs continued vigilance, as complacency is a recipe for further catastrophe.The death of Bin Laden means there is an opportunity for Pakistan to decide whether it wants to confront Islamist violence decisively or continue with the double game. The second path is a recipe for internal chaos, more drone strikes and more direct US action against the Islamic terrorist groups operating openly in the country.
Pakistan’s military establishment has two aces up its sleeve: nuclear weapons and America’s dependence on Pakistan to evolve a solution on the Afghanistan crisis. It is for such reasons that the US will not abandon Pakistan. However, if proactive steps by the Americans continue to be compromised by constant blackmail, the peace and prosperity that Pakistanis so desperately need cannot be achieved. Nor will the economic, electricity or water crises of the troubled nation be solved. Pakistan will slide towards the status of a failed state.
