Most people who follow such matters have felt for some time that Osama bin Laden was hiding somewhere in Pakistan, probably in the rocky, inaccessible tribal areas of the country that border Afghanistan. No one could imagine the Al Qaeda founder — who was killed by US Special Forces in Abbottabad in a mansion right next
to the Pakistan Military Academy on May 2 — would be provided a safe haven by the Pakistani security establishment in the heart of a famous Pakistani garrison area. In hindsight, there couldn’t have been a safer hiding place, provided by the Pakistanis, for the world’s most wanted terrorist as the Pakistan Army and the ISI made a habit of glibly denying they had any idea of Bin Laden’s whereabouts. Senator Joseph Lieberman, an influential voice in American politics, has demanded that Pakistan give proof that it did not know Bin Laden was living (in some comfort, and style) in Abbottabad under the nose of the Pakistan Army. Other key US senators have also begun to raise questions about the value of treating Pakistan as a strategic ally in the “war against terror” and throwing money its way — several billion dollars a year for the past decade — to help capture the likes of Bin Laden. The writer Salman Rushdie has even said it’s high time for Pakistan to be declared a “terrorist state”.
All this is adding up to a certain kind of political discourse. Pakistan’s stock answer over the years has been to present a self-portrayal of victimhood, as though it had no role in nurturing, protecting and bankrolling terrorists — and not just against India and Afghanistan. It would be nice to know what its larger gameplan is. A study of materials found at the compound that Bin Laden inhabited before his death can perhaps fill some of the gaps in our understanding of the Pakistani state and its compulsive relationship with international terrorism. It does need to be considered that Bin Laden wasn’t alone among the world’s most prominent terrorists to be found in Pakistan, cosseted by the ISI. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and several others, like Osama, were not found in the rough tribal country but inside major Pakistani cities, looked after reasonably well. The same can be said of the entire Taliban top leadership. And, of course, the likes of Dawood Ibrahim — in whom India has a direct interest.
For any of this to have sufficient meaning for us we have to construct a paradigm of security politics that countries of our region and the wider world will find both reasonable and compelling. Regrettably, so far, there is little to suggest that the Indian government has communicated with Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States on the first contours of post-Bin Laden implications. Indeed, this should have been accorded some priority. It is also time to start dispatching specialists to hold consultations with their counterparts with a view to opening channels of politics that can be fruitfully pursued in the near future. Pakistan-inspired terrorism against India long predates the arrival of Osama bin Laden on the scene, and is unlikely to end with the terror mastermind gone. But in today’s circumstances, our questions will have greater resonance. America, we may be quite certain, will continue to pursue the broad line of two-track politics that it has with Pakistan — in which punish and placate go side by side. The ingenuity of our diplomacy, and the capabilities of our national leadership, must now be put in the service of invoking urgency to address long-standing issues of concern to us. Pointed questions need to be asked rather than raising general concerns on applying closure to 26/11 on the lines of 9/11.