A raid that changed Pak political history

[1]

By Anil Bhat [2]

Rs 795

The killing of the world’s most notorious terrorist, Osama bin Laden, in a daring raid inside Pakistan by US Navy Seals on May 2, 2011 was indeed a landmark event. It signalled victory for the United States, which had promised to get Bin Laden dead or alive; it hugely bolstered the United States confidence and permanently cast a shadow over the Pakistan Army for either being complicit with Bin Laden or being hugely incompetent for not knowing that he was living under their noses all these years.

The Abbottabad raid by US forces indeed marked a turning point for Pakistan.
After years of denial by Pakistan’s military brass, the fact that Bin Laden was living comfortably with a bevy of wives and minions within a highly militarised zone in Abbottabad clearly suggested that they were either unwilling or unable to deal with the global jihadi terrorism infrastructure.
The Pakistan military’s credibility was effectively destroyed forever.
Given the significance of Bin Laden’s killing, a book on its implications cannot but be timely and welcome.
The author, retired Indian Army Col. Anil Bhat, is to be commended for quickly putting together a book of considerable relevance.
More so, since he has focused, as the title suggests, on what the event implies for Pakistan.
The author has chosen to unravel the story in a textbook fashion beginning with a brief chapter on Osama bin Laden’s life story and ending with one on how the killing is likely to affect Pakistan’s relations with the United States, Afghanistan and India. The bulk of the book — five out of seven chapters — is a backgrounder on Osama bin Laden’s life and includes chapters on the Al Qaeda, the 9/11 terrorist strike and the manner in which he was hunted down. Much of this is well known contemporary history and the author appears to have taken much help from the Internet, which has terabytes of information on the topics concerned.
Considerable details on Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and so on exist in popular websites such as Wikipedia and the author’s efforts to collate similar material does not add much to the book or its appeal.
The chapters of interest come at the end: one titled “Aftermath in Pakistan” and the other, “Changing Equations for the US, Afghanistan and India”.
Here, the author makes the point that the Abbottabad raid, whatever else it achieved, humiliated the Pakistan Army, which was “caught with its pants down”, and destroyed its credibility.
The raid also triggered off predictable threats of revenge from Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
In the book’s penultimate chapter, the author makes two or three significant observations, the first being the possibility of a permanent rift in US-Pakistan relations. US historian Webster Griffin Tarpley is quoted as asserting that the breakup of Pakistan is at the top of the United States agenda.
Later in the chapter, he quotes Indian journalist Inder Malhotra to deny the possibility of a complete divorce between the two countries. The chapter’s other observations are that the Bin Laden killing strengthened already existing suspicions about the nexus between Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, and global terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. At another place, the author suggests that the event has strengthened Pakistan’s civilian political leadership: “Political tumult and trapeze is not new to Pakistan, but this time around the Army-civil equation is not quite the same. For the first time political will has overruled the Pakistan Army with the appointment of Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam as the new ISI chief. Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani made the appointment in sharp contrast to the wish of the Pakistani Army that Lt. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha be given an extension.”
This assertion is contradicted two paragraphs later by a statement from James P. Farwell, author of the book The Pakistan Cauldron, who is quoted as saying: “Another impact of the Bin Laden attack has been to weaken the elected civilian government in relation to the military. I do not believe the military wanted to execute another coup. The military has the power it wants as to the matters in which it is interested.” The problem with these observations is that they are not coherent or adequately discussed in the book. All of them deserve more rigorous analysis but have been dealt with in a somewhat perfunctory manner.
The book would be immensely educative for readers who have little or no knowledge of Pakistan’s involvement with terrorism; it would also be an extremely useful compendium for young officers and security force personnel sitting for promotion examinations. However, the book being more in the nature of a compilation than a thought-provoking analysis brings little to the table for those who have dabbled with the subjects of terrorism and Pakistan, and seek fresh insights into the turbulent life of Bin Laden and the land of his death.