Almost 10 years later, the CIA-Seal team proved that Osama bin Laden was not gifted with a tenth life, like the cat with nine. Without doubt, Operation Geronimo was most meticulously planned, prepared and implemented. The operation and its success became far more significant with the target being a very well-shielded in a mansion barely half-a-kilometre away from the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad Cantonment. Because there is no way that Laden could have been where he was found and killed — for even a day or for six or eight years — without the specific approval and support of Pakistan’s military or its infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Pakistan military’s first reaction of believing that this was an attack from India, while nothing short of ludicrous, but not surprising, also meant quite obviously that it was not within the planning loop of Operation Geronimo. And probably just as well, because otherwise, Laden may have lived 10 lives and more.
The timing of two reports in the media days before the operation was launched are interesting. One was about leaked documents of Guantanamo Bay stating that the US military classified Pakistan’s top spy agency, the ISI, as a terrorist support entity in 2007 and used association with it as a justification to detain prisoners there. The other was about a senior Al Qaeda commander claiming that the terrorist group has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe which will be detonated/unleash a “nuclear hellstorm”, if Laden was ever caught or assassinated.
However, it is the avalanche of news, reactions, speculations etc. following Laden’s killing that need to be analysed for old and new lies they expose about Pakistan’s military-mullah combo and some of the omissions and commissions of the US and Afghanistan as well, as what they indicate about the possible post-Laden developments related to these three countries, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and implications for India.
Pakistan’s credibility, often questioned by US officials over the last few years, has taken a further hard blow and while its spin doctors are functioning on high rpm, they do not seem to be cutting much ice, what with wide civilian anger and further anti-American sentiment.
As investigations begin into intelligence failings over Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts and Pakistan Army facing a rare barrage of criticism, its chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, smarting from this embarrassing development, is reported to have demanded for the number of US troops based in Pakistan to be reduced. While it is not known how many US personnel are currently stationed in Pakistan, Gen. Kayani wants their numbers kept to a minimum. It remains to be seen how Pakistan will ensure such a move, or whether the US will agree to accede to such a demand by Pakistan.
While US President Barack Obama has assured that if felt necessary, such an operation may be repeated, Gen. Kayani has stated that any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States.
The war against terror that the US has been fighting since 9/11 is certainly not going to end with Laden’s elimination. Over these 10 years, the US has many more Islamists gunning for it in addition to the surviving players like Mullah Omar in Afghanistan/Pakistan and others elsewhere.
Having been on the run/in hiding for a decade, Laden’s exit may only mean a loss of the ideological figurehead, which may affect the Al Qaeda a bit but it is not expected to peter out.
In recent years, it is Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has, been more of Al Qaeda’s public face rather than his dead boss, speaking out more often and even writing a book last year on how to overthrow Pakistan. Zawahiri was the target of the joint US-Jordanian operation in December 2009 that ended when an Al Qaeda double agent blew up the CIA’s base camp in Afghanistan, killing more spies than in any disaster since Beirut in 1983.
Then there is reportedly the New Mexico-born Colorado state graduate Anwar al-Awlaki, who seems best poised to lead Al Qaeda’s response to the new Arab world order. His Yemeni cells proved to be lethally creative by designing an underwear bomb for Christmas 2009 and a year later parcel bombs targeting Chicago.
Al-Awlaki’s English language online magazine, Inspire, was the first Qaeda journal to laud the “tsunami” of change in Arabia and lay out a plan for the group to benefit from it. As such, he may well play a greater ideological role.
By committing Laden’s body to the sea, the US may have denied him a grave, with the potential of being developed into a shrine, the Abbotabad mansion certainly has the potential to be the same. Destroying it may not help unless the Pakistani establishment decides to ensure that Laden will not be deified.
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) who abandoned the leadership after India blamed it and another terrorist group for attacking the Indian Parliament in December 2001, was one of the first to take to the streets, urging his followers to be “heartened by the death of Osama bin Laden, as his ‘martyrdom’ would not be in vain”, he had the LeT organise special prayers for Laden in several cities and towns, hailing him as a great person who awakened the Muslim world.
America must now focus on the LeT, one of the largest and best-funded militant organisations in South Asia and behind the November 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai, which killed 166 people, including Americans and other foreigners. Admiral Robert Willard, heading the United States military’s Pacific Command, recently expressed concern over the expanding reach of LeT, saying it was no longer solely focused on India (as per specific design of the Pakistan Army) or even in South Asia.
The LeT, which has links with Al Qaeda (and even brought its members to pitch in into its anti-India operations), has been in an expansion mode, trying to attract well educated youngsters into its fold and may well try to fill any gaps of Al Qaeda created by Laden’s death in other countries.
The US must stay the course in Afghanistan to maintain its painstakingly achieved intelligence grid there and in Pakistan and must target and neutralise more terrorist leaders and modules. The US must also ratchet its pressure on the Pakistan Army and at least stop the supply of arms for supposedly combating terrorists as all these consignments have only been used to build up its arsenal against India.
In October 2009, when US President Barack Obama signed a legislation that tripled economic aid to Pakistan, he aimed at shifting the focus of the US partnership with Pakistan from the military to the country’s people and civilian/democratic institutions and the Pakistani people.
After four military dictatorships in over six decades of Pakistan’s existence and over two decades of Islamist terrorism nurtured by the Pakistan Army, the US should, in its own interest, continue targeting jihadis, who the Pakistan Army will not or cannot neutralise and actually do South Asia, the world and India in particular, a great favour. Because the US pressing India to continue talks with Pakistan cannot at all be meaningful till Pakistan’s military maintains its stranglehold over the civilian political leadership.
India, though vindicated again by re-exposure of the Pakistan Army’s duplicity regarding its strong terrorist connections, may not have much to feel elated about as there may be no progress on proceeding against 26/11 perpetrators like Hafiz Sayeed and his minions. Even if the US decides to repeat Abbottabad in other Pakistani locations to nab or eliminate other terrorist leaders, India must not expect even any benefit unless it amounts to reigning in Pakistan’s military and ISI.
Whatever was reported about the Indian Army and Air Force Chiefs’ comments on the capabilities of India’s armed forces were only their brief responses on persistent querying by quote-seeking media-persons. With India being Pakistan Army’s compulsive preoccupation and it being over-jittery about Indian Army, Gen. Kayani and foreign secretary Salman Basheer could not help what they said.
As for Kashmiri separatist leader and Pakistan’s anti-India terrorism “amir” Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s call for namaz-e-janaza (funeral prayers) for the dead Laden in Kashmir, he failed to whip up the frenzy he expected to provide him political oxygen after being sidelined by the recent electoral turnout. However, the Centre and the state must be clear that Gen. Kayani’s recent rhetoric is bound to have a fallout of this summer being hotter terror-wise not only on the line of control, the Valley and the international boundary in Jammu and Kashmir but in other states also.
India must treat recent developments as yet another important wake-up call and shake out of its historic soft-state syndrome. Its sheer size, geo-strategic location, history, threats from within and its neighbourhood, necessitate it to develop and steadfastly maintain conventional superiority and deterrence capability beyond its borders, which it has the potential of.
Long-pending security-related reforms, cleansing its body-politic of the scourge of communalism and corruption, expediting necessary arms acquisitions and most important, straightening and strengthening of the political backbone are no longer merely seminar points but very crucial factors for India’s well-being.
Anil Bhat, a retired
Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi