What Pakistan Knew About the Bin Laden Raid
What Pakistan Knew About the Bin Laden Raid
As Islamabad’s ambassador to Washington, I had an intimate view of the Pakistani response to the SEAL Team 6 operation. But I still have a few unanswered questions.
With
a litany of unproved claims, veteran investigative journalist Seymour
Hersh has revived discussion about the circumstances in which al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed in May 2011 in
the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.
Some
of Hersh’s assertions in a
10,000-word London Review of Books article border
on fantasy. He claims that bin Laden lived under the protection of
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was given up for
reward money by one of the agency’s officers, and was eventually
eliminated in a U.S. raid covertly backed by Pakistan’s army
commander and ISI chief.
According
to Hersh, the Americans “blackmailed” Pakistan’s generals into
helping them kill bin Laden but then stabbed them in the back for
political reasons by denying them any credit for assisting in the
raid by Navy SEALs. Instead of blaming ISI for sheltering bin Laden
in Pakistan (which Hersh claims it did), he points the finger at the
Obama administration for not acknowledging ISI’s role in the U.S.
operation that killed the terrorist mastermind.
With
the exception of the possibility of a Pakistani “walk in” selling
information about bin Laden’s location, the
other details of Hersh’s story simply do not add up.
Hersh
explains the Obama administration’s eagerness to claim sole credit
for finding and killing bin Laden in terms of domestic U.S. politics.
But he offers no explanation as to why, after covertly helping the
Americans, Pakistan’s generals would keep quiet about their role.
The veteran reporter alludes to the idea that this might have been
because of bin Laden’s popularity among the Pakistani public. But
by 2011, bin Laden was no longer that popular — and in any case
Pakistan’s military leaders have consistently ignored public
opinion to ensure the flow of American aid. Hersh’s suggestion that
Pakistan’s generals covertly helped Americans eliminate bin Laden
simply to maintain the flow of U.S. dollars to the country — but
kept it secret so as not to incur the wrath of the Pakistani street —
does not hold water.
For
several years before the bin Laden raid, Pakistan’s military and
the ISI had been criticized in the U.S. media and Congress for
double-dealing in the fight against terrorism. If the ISI had
protected bin Laden (or held him prisoner) for five years before
being found out by the Americans, the United States would have
increased its leverage by going public with accusations of hiding bin
Laden. But there’s no evidence that Washington held Islamabad’s
feet to the fire.
If,
however, a backroom deal had been negotiated to secure Pakistani
cooperation in the raid on Abbottabad in return for U.S. silence, the
ISI would have demanded some glory for its cooperation. Facilitating
the raid, as narrated by Hersh, would have provided Pakistan’s
military and ISI an opportunity to redeem themselves in American
eyes. Hersh wants us to believe an entirely improbably scenario.
According to him, Obama’s political requirements denied Pakistanis
any credit and senior generals in Islamabad simply accepted that
without pushing back.
Was
the “walk-in” real?
To
this day, there is no solid evidence of Pakistanis at the highest
level of government knowing about bin Laden being in Pakistan —
though there have been widespread suspicions. If, after being tipped
off by a rogue Pakistani intelligence officer looking for personal
reward, the United States planned a raid with covert help
from Pakistani intelligence, why didn’t the cooperating
Pakistani officials demand credit for assisting in targeting bin
Laden in order to mitigate the bad press
for previously protecting him? And what prevented the U.S.
government from publicly acknowledging that they knew bin Laden had
been officially protected? Was the need to keep the relationship with
Islamabad on solid footing so important that the Obama administration
would risk telling a lie this massive?
Hersh’s
story is based on the fundamental premise that the U.S. government
had bad intentions, including in their interactions with the Pakistan
Army and the ISI. In an interview
with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn,
Hersh defends Pakistan’s generals.
“Pakistan has a good army, not a bad army,” he declared, adding
that the Obama administration’s cover story made the Pakistan army
look incompetent because it didn’t know that bin Laden was residing
in a garrison town just two miles from the country’s main military
academy. But he still does not offer an explanation for why the
Pakistan Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and ISI head, Lt. Gen. Ahmed
Shuja Pasha, went along with the cover story.
The
only point in Hersh’s story that seems plausible relates to the
Pakistani officer who tipped off the Americans about bin Laden’s
location. Further
reporting by AFP and
a story
by NBC affirm
the role of a Pakistani defector — though NBC later amended its
story to clarify that while the defector provided information, it
didn’t lead to finding bin Laden. The rumor that the CIA learned
about bin Laden’s location through an ISI officer has been around
since the Abbottabad raid. But I’ve also heard another version of
the same story from Pakistani officials.
According
to this version, the ISI officer only facilitated the CIA’s
on-ground operation in Abbottabad after the
U.S. spy agency started planning an operation based on intelligence
obtained through other means. The CIA relocated the Pakistani officer
— not because he was the man who tipped them off on bin Laden’s
location — but because he acted without authority from his
superiors in enabling the CIA to conduct an operation on Pakistani
soil.
The
NBC story also repeats the suspicion of U.S. officials — about
Pakistani complicity in hiding bin Laden — though, obviously, there
isn’t enough evidence for the U.S. government to formally and
publicly make that charge. As a witness to Pakistan’s response
after the bin Laden raid I find it difficult to believe Hersh’s
conspiracy theory about so many people in both the U.S. and Pakistani
governments and militaries telling a big coordinated lie.
In
the middle of a diplomatic dance
I
was serving as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States at the
time of the SEAL raid in Abbottabad. I was on my way to Islamabad via
London and Dubai when the operation took place; I first found out
about it upon landing at Heathrow airport in the early morning of May
2, 2011. My superiors in Islamabad instructed me to turn around
immediately. I was back in Washington by around 5 p.m. local time.
My
instructions were clear: to ensure that the U.S. government,
Congress, and the media did not blame Pakistan’s government, armed
forces, or intelligence services for allowing Osama bin Laden’s
presence in the country, as that would have been a violation of U.N.
Security Council Resolutions 1267 and 1373. My bosses, both civilian
and military, were obviously concerned that Pakistan would be taken
to task. But nothing in the conduct of Generals Kayani and Pasha
(both of whom later forced me to resign as ambassador) hinted at
their collusion with the U.S. in the Abbottabad raid.
A
bevy of damage diplomacy followed. A few days after the Abbottabad
raid, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John
Kerry visited Islamabad. Gen. Kayani was eager during that visit for
a statement by the U.S. senator emphasizing Pakistan’s position as
an American ally in the war against terrorism. Kerry agreed to the
reassuring language proposed by Kayani. The Kerry visit was followed
by a visit by Pasha to Washington during which he was keen to
convince the CIA that the ISI had no knowledge of bin Laden being in
Pakistan. In a meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta, Pasha listed
the CIA’s own failures over the years to advance his argument that
intelligence gathering is often imperfect and that the enemy can hide
within plain sight.
Notwithstanding
my own disagreements with Kayani and Pasha, I found no reason to
believe that either general was feigning ignorance or outrage while
being secretly in league with the Americans. The Foreign Office also
asked me to protest the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by U.S.
forces in conducting the operation and to point out how it violated
the norms of international conduct between two sovereign countries
that were, at least officially, allies. I didn’t make much headway.
The
U.S. officials I interacted with were not only unwilling to apologize
for violating Pakistani sovereignty but demanded that Islamabad
cooperate in giving Americans access to data and persons found at the
house in Abbottabad where the raid was conducted. They also demanded
the return of the wreckage of the stealth helicopter that had been
damaged and left behind during the operation. Pakistan handed over
the wreckage a few days later, though not without prodding by the
Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen.
Security
Council cover
Immediately
after the raid, the U.S. government persuaded the president of the
U.N. Security Council to issue a statement,
“welcoming [the] end of Osama bin Laden’s ability to perpetrate
terrorist acts.” Obama administration officials I spoke with
pointed to UNSC resolutions and this statement by the Security
Council president to justify their unilateral action in Abbottabad in
disregard of Pakistani sovereignty.
Pakistan’s
protests about violation of its sovereignty and against the U.N.
Security Council president’s statement came within hours of the
Abbottabad raid. Our side was stunned because it had not been kept in
the loop. At the United Nations, the Security Council president was
busy listing justifications under international law for the violation
of Pakistan’s sovereignty. But none of these responses would have
occurred if, as Hersh says, the cover story about the unilateral raid
had been “manufactured” in the White House just two hours after
the raid, in a cynical ploy to help Obama’s re-election bid.
On
the evening of May 2, I
was interviewed on CNN.
There I made what remains a valid point: I said that it was
obvious someone in
Pakistan protected Osama bin Laden. The question was to determine
whether bin Laden’s support system lay “within the government and
the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan.” I had
asked for “a full inquiry into finding out why our intelligence
services were not able to track him earlier.”
I
never got an answer to my question. Pakistan created a commission
that conducted its hearings in a non-transparent manner and declined
to publish its findings. The Obama administration went back to
business-as-usual with Pakistan — without insisting or pushing
Islamabad for answers on the tough questions about bin Laden’s stay
in Pakistan from 2006 to 2011. I understand how the failure of both
Washington and Islamabad to disclose a more complete understanding of
what transpired in the years leading up to the raid feeds conspiracy
theories and the presumption that something is fishy.
But
it is this failure — explaining bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan,
not the elaborate conspiracies Hersh alleges on the say-so of a
single retired U.S. counterterrorism official — which has been a
major disservice to truth.
Both
the people of Pakistan and the people of the United States would
benefit from detailed answers to questions about bin Laden’s
support network in Pakistan. But don’t hold your breath. It might
not be in either Islamabad’s or Washington’s interest to wake
sleeping dogs.
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