Wednesday, 04 May 2011
Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari defended his administration against US accusations that it did not do enough to trace Osama Bin Laden. (File Photo)
The Central Intelligence Agency said on Tuesday that it feared Pakistan might “alert” Osama Bin Laden about the raid and therefore did not inform Pakistani authorities about the assault on the Al-Qaeda leader’s home in Abbottabad last Sunday.
The United States also announced that its embassy in Islamabad and consular offices in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar were “closed for routine business to the general public until further notice.”
This was done ostensibly out of concern about reprisals by militants following Bin Laden’s assassination by US Navy SEALs.
Pakistan authorities said on Tuesday that they had arrested members of Osama Bin Laden’s family. They were taken into custody at Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.
Sources told Al Arabiya that some of those arrested had been wounded. The US Navy SEALs who killed Bin Laden spirited away his body, and gave the terrorist a sea burial in the North Arabian Sea on Sunday, observing Muslim last rites.
Meanwhile, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan vigorously defended his administration against accusations it did not do enough to track down Bin Laden.
“Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama Bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world,” Mr. Zardari said in an op-ed article for The Washington Post.
Underneath a headline reading “Pakistan did its part,” he said: “We in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an Al-Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day.”
But this seems to have done little to assuage the international community.
Irate US lawmakers wondered how it was possible for Bin Laden to live in a populated area near a military training academy without anyone of authority knowing about it or sanctioning his presence.
They said it was time to review the billions in aid the United States provides Pakistan.
“Our government is in fiscal distress. To make contributions to a country that isn’t going to be fully supportive is a problem for many,” said Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, according to Reuters.
The White House acknowledged there was good reason for US lawmakers, already dubious about Pakistan’s cooperation against Al-Qaeda, to demand to know whether Mr. Bin Laden had been “hiding in plain sight” and to raise questions about US aid to Islamabad.
Tuesday’s statement by the CIA is likely to increase pressure on Islamabad—already facing heat from its media for its intelligence failure on Bin Laden’s presence in the country—to provide further explanations.
For years, Pakistan had said it did not know Bin Laden’s whereabouts, vowing that if Washington had actionable intelligence, its military and security agencies would act.
Meanwhile, American, Pakistani and Afghan officials held a previously scheduled meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday and renewed vows to fight against militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan but avoided answering questions about the Bin Laden operation, reported Reuters.
“Who did what is beside the point ... This issue of Osama Bin Laden is history,” Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told a joint news conference.
Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom said on Tuesday that Britain would continue working with Pakistan to combat militancy, but insisted “we need those questions answered” on whether Bin Laden received any kind of support there.
“The right choice is to engage with Pakistan and to deal with the extremists rather than just throw up our hands in despair and walk away, which would be a disastrous choice,” he told BBC radio.
Although there were no visible protests in Pakistan following Bin Laden’s death, the banned outfit Laskhar-e-Tayyaba held funeral prayers for the slain terrorist in various parts of the country, vowing to avenge his death and calling him a hero.
Another religious outfit, Jamaat Dawa, also held funeral prayers for Bin Laden in Karachi.
Pakistan’s main Taliban faction threatened to attack Pakistan and the US, calling them “the enemies of Islam.”
“If he (Bin Laden) has become a martyr, it is a great victory for us because martyrdom is the aim of all of us,” spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Agence-France Presse by phone.
The Obama administration was still weighing a decision on whether to release photos of Bin Laden’s body as evidence of his death. There is also a video of the sea burial but it was not clear if it would be released, a US official said. The White House said Tuesday that it had withheld public distribution of a photograph of Bin Laden’s corpse because the picture would have been too inflammatory.
Nevertheless, pictures have been circulation in the Internet reportedly showing a bloodied—and dead—Bin Laden. It was impossible to authenticate those pictures.
Under Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda militants struck targets from Indonesia to the European capitals of Madrid and London.
But it was the 9/11 attacks, in which Al-Qaeda militants used hijacked planes to strike at economic and military symbols of American might and killed nearly 3,000 people that helped Bin Laden achieve global infamy.
Many analysts see Bin Laden’s death as largely symbolic since he was no longer believed to have been issuing operational orders to the many autonomous Al-Qaeda affiliates.
(Muna Khan of Al Arabiya can be contacted at muna.khan@mbc.net and Abeer Tayel of Al Arabiya can be reached at abeer.tayel@mbc.net)
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