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Former al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was able to reside in Pakistan for nine years due to the "collective failure" of state military and intelligence authorities, a leaked Pakistani government report has revealed.
The report, obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, also outlines how "routine" incompetence at every level of civil governance structure allowed the once world's most wanted man to move to six different locations within the country.
The report of the Abbottabad Commission, formed in June 2011 to probe the circumstances around the killing of Bin Laden by US forces in a unilateral raid on the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, draws on testimony from over 200 witnesses, including members of Bin Ladens family, Pakistans then spy chief, senior ministers in the government and officials at every level of the military, bureaucracy and security services.
It was released by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit on Monday, after being suppressed by the Pakistani government.
It comes on the heels of a report by AP news agency revealing that top US special operations commander, Adm William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.
Following the US operation to kill Bin Laden in May 2011, which was avowedly conducted without the Pakistani government or militarys knowledge, the Commission was set up to examine both "how the US was able to execute a hostile military mission which lasted around three hours deep inside Pakistan", and how Pakistans "intelligence establishment apparently had no idea that an international fugitive of the renown or notoriety of [Osama bin Laden] was residing in [Abbottabad]".
The Abbottabad Commission was charged with establishing if the failures of the Pakistani government and military were due to incompetence or complicity, and was given overarching investigative powers.
The Commissions 336-page report is scathing, holding both the government and the military responsible for "gross incompetence" leading to "collective failures" that allowed both Bin Laden to escape detection, and the United States to perpetrate "an act of war".
Moreover, through the testimony of Bin Ladens family members, intelligence officials and the wife of one of his couriers, the Commission is able to piece together a richly detailed image of Bin Ladens life on the run from authorities, including details on the secluded life that he and his family led in Abbottabad and elsewhere.
It found that Bin Laden entered Pakistan in mid-2002, after narrowly escaping capture in the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001. Intelligence officials say he stayed briefly in the South Waziristan and Bajaur tribal areas of Pakistan, before moving to the northern Swat Valley to stay with his guards, Ibrahim and Abrar al-Kuwaiti, for several months.
While in Swat, Bin Laden reportedly met with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks against the United States, in early 2003. A month later, Mohammad is captured in Rawalpindi in a joint US-Pakistani operation, and Bin Laden flees Swat.
Bin Laden turned up next in the town of Haripur, in northern Pakistan, where he stayed in a rented house with two of his wives and several of his children and grandchildren for two years, until 2005.
In August that year, they all move to a custom-built compound in Abbottabad, a military garrison town located about 85km away from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He stayed there for six years, until he is killed in the US operation in May 2011.
Culpable negligence
According to the Commissions investigations, Pakistans intelligence establishment had "closed the book" on Bin Laden by 2005, and was no longer actively pursuing intelligence that could lead to his capture.
Moreover, it found that there had been a complete collapse of governance and law enforcement a situation it termed "Government Implosion Syndrome", both in the lack of intelligence on Bin Ladens residing in Pakistan for as long as nine years, and in the response to the US raid that killed him. It finds that "culpable negligence and incompetence at almost all levels of government can more or less be conclusively established".
On the presence of a CIA support network to help track down Bin Laden in Pakistan without the Pakistani establishments knowledge, the Commission determined that "this [was] a case of nothing less than a collective and sustained dereliction of duty by the political, military and intelligence leadership of the country".
It also found that the US violation of Pakistani sovereignty, in carrying out the raid unilaterally, had been allowed to happen due to inaccurate and outdated threat assessment within the countrys defence and strategic policy establishments.
"It is official or unofficial defence policy not to attempt to defend the country if threatened or even attacked by a military superpower like the US?" the Commission asked of several top military officers.
Military officers, including the chief of the countrys air force, testified that Pakistans low-level radar was on "peacetime deployment", and hence not active on the western border, when the raid occurred.
The report concludes that unless there are major changes to Pakistans defence strategy, it remains vulnerable to a repeat of such an airborne raid.
The Commission found that the countrys "political, military intelligence and bureaucratic leadership cannot be absolved of their responsibility for the state of governance, policy planning and policy implementation that eventually rendered this national failure almost inevitable", and calls on key leaders in each of those segments of the countrys leadership to formally apologise to the country for "their dereliction of duty".
Perhaps aware of the implications of its findings, the Commission noted that it had "apprehensions that the Commissions report would be ignored, or even suppressed", and urged the government to release it to the public.
It did not do so. The report was buried by the government and never released.
Al Jazeeras Investigative Unit obtained a copy of the Commissions report, and has now released it, in full, along with accompanying coverage to help unpick the details, and implications of its findings.
Page 197 of the report, which contains part of the testimony of Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, then director of the ISI, was missing from all copies of the report that Al Jazeera obtained from multiple sources. It is unclear what was contained in that page, but the contextual implication is that, among other things, it contains a list of seven demands made by the United States of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Leaked report shows Bin Laden's 'hidden life' - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English
The report, obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, also outlines how "routine" incompetence at every level of civil governance structure allowed the once world's most wanted man to move to six different locations within the country.
The report of the Abbottabad Commission, formed in June 2011 to probe the circumstances around the killing of Bin Laden by US forces in a unilateral raid on the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, draws on testimony from over 200 witnesses, including members of Bin Ladens family, Pakistans then spy chief, senior ministers in the government and officials at every level of the military, bureaucracy and security services.
It was released by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit on Monday, after being suppressed by the Pakistani government.
It comes on the heels of a report by AP news agency revealing that top US special operations commander, Adm William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.
Following the US operation to kill Bin Laden in May 2011, which was avowedly conducted without the Pakistani government or militarys knowledge, the Commission was set up to examine both "how the US was able to execute a hostile military mission which lasted around three hours deep inside Pakistan", and how Pakistans "intelligence establishment apparently had no idea that an international fugitive of the renown or notoriety of [Osama bin Laden] was residing in [Abbottabad]".
The Abbottabad Commission was charged with establishing if the failures of the Pakistani government and military were due to incompetence or complicity, and was given overarching investigative powers.
The Commissions 336-page report is scathing, holding both the government and the military responsible for "gross incompetence" leading to "collective failures" that allowed both Bin Laden to escape detection, and the United States to perpetrate "an act of war".
Moreover, through the testimony of Bin Ladens family members, intelligence officials and the wife of one of his couriers, the Commission is able to piece together a richly detailed image of Bin Ladens life on the run from authorities, including details on the secluded life that he and his family led in Abbottabad and elsewhere.
It found that Bin Laden entered Pakistan in mid-2002, after narrowly escaping capture in the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001. Intelligence officials say he stayed briefly in the South Waziristan and Bajaur tribal areas of Pakistan, before moving to the northern Swat Valley to stay with his guards, Ibrahim and Abrar al-Kuwaiti, for several months.
While in Swat, Bin Laden reportedly met with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks against the United States, in early 2003. A month later, Mohammad is captured in Rawalpindi in a joint US-Pakistani operation, and Bin Laden flees Swat.
Bin Laden turned up next in the town of Haripur, in northern Pakistan, where he stayed in a rented house with two of his wives and several of his children and grandchildren for two years, until 2005.
In August that year, they all move to a custom-built compound in Abbottabad, a military garrison town located about 85km away from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He stayed there for six years, until he is killed in the US operation in May 2011.
Culpable negligence
According to the Commissions investigations, Pakistans intelligence establishment had "closed the book" on Bin Laden by 2005, and was no longer actively pursuing intelligence that could lead to his capture.
Moreover, it found that there had been a complete collapse of governance and law enforcement a situation it termed "Government Implosion Syndrome", both in the lack of intelligence on Bin Ladens residing in Pakistan for as long as nine years, and in the response to the US raid that killed him. It finds that "culpable negligence and incompetence at almost all levels of government can more or less be conclusively established".
On the presence of a CIA support network to help track down Bin Laden in Pakistan without the Pakistani establishments knowledge, the Commission determined that "this [was] a case of nothing less than a collective and sustained dereliction of duty by the political, military and intelligence leadership of the country".
It also found that the US violation of Pakistani sovereignty, in carrying out the raid unilaterally, had been allowed to happen due to inaccurate and outdated threat assessment within the countrys defence and strategic policy establishments.
"It is official or unofficial defence policy not to attempt to defend the country if threatened or even attacked by a military superpower like the US?" the Commission asked of several top military officers.
Military officers, including the chief of the countrys air force, testified that Pakistans low-level radar was on "peacetime deployment", and hence not active on the western border, when the raid occurred.
The report concludes that unless there are major changes to Pakistans defence strategy, it remains vulnerable to a repeat of such an airborne raid.
The Commission found that the countrys "political, military intelligence and bureaucratic leadership cannot be absolved of their responsibility for the state of governance, policy planning and policy implementation that eventually rendered this national failure almost inevitable", and calls on key leaders in each of those segments of the countrys leadership to formally apologise to the country for "their dereliction of duty".
Perhaps aware of the implications of its findings, the Commission noted that it had "apprehensions that the Commissions report would be ignored, or even suppressed", and urged the government to release it to the public.
It did not do so. The report was buried by the government and never released.
Al Jazeeras Investigative Unit obtained a copy of the Commissions report, and has now released it, in full, along with accompanying coverage to help unpick the details, and implications of its findings.
Page 197 of the report, which contains part of the testimony of Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, then director of the ISI, was missing from all copies of the report that Al Jazeera obtained from multiple sources. It is unclear what was contained in that page, but the contextual implication is that, among other things, it contains a list of seven demands made by the United States of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Leaked report shows Bin Laden's 'hidden life' - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English
