Pakistan and the US operation

Pakistan and the US operation

One must admire the skill of Waqar Malik (The Jakarta Post, May 4) in highlighting unimportant things like the distance between Osama bin Laden’s hideout and Islamabad, its real estate worth, etc. But he fails to mention more important facts like that the hideout was less than 1 kilometer from the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA), and that it had high walls etc.

He also missed that the Pakistani President has stressed again and again that his administration neither knew anything of this mission nor took part in its execution. Wasn’t that because Americans were sure about the mission going awry if they had informed Pakistan?

The Navy SEALS, meanwhile, violated the sovereignty of Pakistan (words of Gen. Musharraf himself), slipped inside the country and after spending some 40 “quality” minutes in Bin Laden’s hideout, left with some dead bodies, computers, hard disks and flash disks, documents, etc. The Pakistani air-defense system seems to have gaps through which these choppers slipped in and out unnoticed. Huge Pakistani human losses are occurring because Pakistan chose, for whatever reason, to join the “war on terror” and although Pakistan was the first country to recognize Afghanistan under the Taliban, it abandoned it immediately after Armitage’s “persuasive talk” with then ISI chief, as quoted by Gen. Musharraf in “in the line of fire”.

After this decision, Pakistan turned around to fight against the Taliban. Was it because they were choosing the winning side? I still remember Gen. Musharraf repeatedly saying, “Ground realities had changed”, to justify his actions!

In regards to the grave mistrust between the US and Pakistan intelligence agencies, this has been the case since the mid 60s when the late Z A Bhutto, Pakistan’s then foreign minister, made some secret deals with China that the US didn’t like. In regards to drone attacks, permission for them was given by Gen. Musharraf when he aligned Pakistan with the US.

American media is abuzz with interviews of important personalities in US Congress and military and one common point is Pakistan’s untrustworthiness (Ralf Peters of Fox News repeatedly called Pakistan “treacherous”). Many members of the US Congress have openly recommended cutting off aid to Pakistan. US Representative Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and a staffer in Reagan’s White House, openly recommended that aid to Pakistan should be cut and the US should seek friendship with India.

Both major parties of the UK have expressed similar opinions about Pakistan-PM Cameron at Bangalore and ex-Foreign Secretary Miliband in Washington. Since about a year, ISI has been ranked as the No. 1 spy agency in the world, replacing Israel’s Mossad. (Please see the “net version” of this letter for links.) When the best Intelligence Agency says it didn’t know what happened within 1 km of PMA, can anybody believe them? No!

In an article in The Express Tribune, “The curious case of Osama bin Laden”, author Hoodbhoy writes some scathing remarks such as “An American official pointedly declared that the information leading to Bin Laden’s killing was shared “with no other country” and General Kayani had declared on April 23 at PMA that “the terrorist’s backbone’s has been broken and insyaallah we will soon prevail”.

In the newspaper The Independent Imran Khan writes about a “national depression at the loss of national dignity and self-esteem as well as sovereignty.” He has hit the bull’s eye!

K B Kale, Jakarta

First published in JP on 9/5/2011
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/05/09/letter-pakistan-and-us-operation.html