Bin Laden was in Pakistan - are they the enemy?
Picking up on Ben's post below, the important subtext of bin Laden's very welcome demise is less the future of al-Qaeda (important as that is) but the future of Pakistan. As Jane Perlez writes:
'With Bin Ladenâ??s death, perhaps the central reason for an alliance forged on the ashes of 9/11 has been removed, at a moment when relations between the countries are already at one of their lowest points as their strategic interests diverge over the shape of a post-war Afghanistan.For nearly a decade, the United States has paid Pakistan more than $1 billion a year for counterterrorism operations whose chief aim was the killing or capture of Bin Laden, who slipped across the border from Afghanistan after the American invasion.
The circumstance of Bin Ladenâ??s death may not only jeopardize that aid, but will also no doubt deepen suspicions that Pakistan has played a double game, and perhaps even knowingly harbored the Qaeda leader.
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Perlez goes on to provide important details as to bin Laden's hideaway:
'Rather, he was killed in Abbottabad, a city of about 500,000, in a large and highly secured compound that, a resident of the city said, sits virtually adjacent to the grounds of a military academy. In an ironic twist, the academy was visited just last month by the Pakistani military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, where he proclaimed that Pakistan had â??crackedâ? the forces of terrorism, an assessment that was greeted with skepticism in Washington.In addition, the city hosts numerous Pakistani forces â?? three different regiments, and a unit of the Army Medical Corps. According to some reports, the compound and its elaborate walls and security gates may have been built specifically for the Qaeda leader in 2005, hardly an obscure undertaking in a part of the city that the resident described as highly secure.
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So in 2005, people start fortifying a compound to repel a ground assault in very close proximity to a major military institution and no one inside Pakistan looks into it? Is that believable?
One can understand the thinking behind Pakistan's support for Afghan Taliban groups, cultivated as an extension of Pakistan's strategic goals in a neighboring territory - but what explains covert assistance to bin Laden, if such assistance was in fact offered (or passively extended)? Was keeping bin Laden alive an effort to keep the U.S. gravy train rolling?
(As a side note, the photo above is via Nicholas Jackson who notes how quickly the bin Laden compound was located on Google Maps.)