In a move that reveals the extent of bonding between Islamabad and Beijing, China is the first country that the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, visited just days after the killing of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden by the Americans in a secret operation on May 2 not far from the Pakistani capital.
Clearly, the ISI chief’s rushed trip to Beijing was kept under wraps. Leading Pakistani newspapers, and some major Western ones too, carried stories about Lt. Gen. Pasha flying to Washington to meet his CIA counterpart to sort out ties in the wake of recriminations that broke out following Bin Laden’s killing. And then the media just went silent on the subject.
Knowledgeable sources here suggest that Lt. Gen. Pasha did not fly to Washington at all, but to Beijing. Understandably, Islamabad felt the need to keep its “all-weather friend” in the loop so that the two may be enabled to take a common stand on international terrorism when Pakistan is under scrutiny in key capitals for harbouring Bin Laden, to capture whom it had been plied with $20 billion by Washington.
Lt. Gen. Pasha’s secret trip to Beijing was undertaken before the debate in Pakistan’s National Assembly on issues such as Bin Laden’s presence in a Pakistani cantonment close to the nation’s capital, and the secret penetration of Pakistani sovereignty by US special forces to take out the world’s most infamous terrorist leader.
This has led to speculation in India that the ISI head went to China to work out a common line with Beijing on the stand to be taken in the National Assembly, which would also be projected internationally.
After the in-camera testimonies by the military brass, including Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the ISI chief, Pakistan officially declared that its armed forces and the ISI were not to blame either for Bin Laden’s long stay in Abbottabad (where he was killed) or for the transgression of Pakistani sovereignty by US special forces helicopters on the mission to get the Al Qaeda leader.
Beijing has subsequently orchestrated this line, more than once suggesting that Pakistan and its Army have played a commendable role in fighting international terrorism. It is the only member of the UN Security Council to have propagated such a view. After the Pakistan National Assembly discussed the Bin Laden killing, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani proceeded to Beijing.