Pakistan, the World and Obama’s victory over Osama

[Muhammad-Bin-Qasim]

Pakistan, the World and Obama’s victory over Osama
A. B. Qazi and M. Shafique*


Pakistan, the World and Obama’s victory over Osama
A. B. Qazi and M. Shafique*

The event of 9/11 shocked the world when US jetliners taking off from US soil hit two of their landmarks, one the symbol of America’s economic might and the other a symbol of its military might. It was a blow to the aviation authorities, intelligence, and military of the US because all of them failed to prevent this horrible act of terrorism before it happened or intercept it while happening. Regardless of the abundance of conspiracy theories within and outside the US about this event, the Bush administration hurriedly told the world that there was someone named Osama Bin Laden (OBL) who was behind this act of terror. The US did not deem it necessary to provide evidence for this conviction even to Taliban regime in Afghanistan despite their insistence when the US demanded of them to hand over OBL or face war. This demand was rejected on the pretext of national security and what followed has come to be known as the ‘war on terror’.

Ten years after this global war on terror, one day Obama announced to his people (and the world) that the hunt for OBL had ended as US special forces had killed and buried him in the murky waters of the Arabian sea. We were told that he was hiding deep inside Pakistan in a compound in the garrison city of Abottabad, just a few hundred yards away from the Pakistan Military Academy. The operation was carried out by US special forces who secretively flew straight from Afghanistan to the compound at night, killed OBL, carried him back, took him to the sea, and 'buried' him there after 'due funeral proceedings' as a statement by the White House termed it.

The events spanned over ten years—from 9/11/2001 when the US was attacked and the hunt for Osama began till 5/2/2011 when the US announced that justice had been served—mark an important era of modern times that has affected the world in fundamental ways. While the whole episode might be entertaining to some like a Hollywood movie, the world needs to take stocks whether justice was actually done; to justice itself, to the allies of the US in this expedition, and to the world at large. There seem to be a number of things that went wrong and do not bode well for the future of the world. These lines are meant to highlight these wrongs committed during the war on terror.

First, based upon the experiences of history and evolution, humankind has agreed upon a fairly refined set of values and procedures that constitute justice. While there are a few differences here and there in the justice systems of individual nation states, there is a consensus about the minimal procedural requirements to bring about justice. Even a cursory view of the case indicates a gross violation of justice throughout this period, right from the beginning to the end. The Bush administration did not provide any concrete evidence to the world or even to its own courts of law for convicting Osama in relation to 9/11 attacks. The administration charged him and others based on its intelligence reports and went on to hunt them. As it was proven in the case of WMDs of Iraq, intelligence reports could be grossly wrong. What the world has witnessed is that during the ten years of the war on terror, Osama or any of his colleagues were never tried, charged, convicted, and warranted by any court of law to be arrested let alone executed. The inherent injustice involved in this practice aside, this is also an injustice to the families of the victims of who can never be certain that justice has actually been served to them if a fair trial does not take place. In the same fashion, the US captured a large number of people from around the world and held them in Guantanamo for indefinite period without affording them due access to the procedures of justice. The world has known very little about these prisons operated outside its territory and jurisdiction set up for the so-called “enemy combatants” who are not even given the rights of a prisoner of war as stipulated under the Geneva Convention. Unfortunately, this practice has diffused around the world in many forms and manifestations. In developed countries, it has resulted in the frequent infringement of individual liberties and rights in the name of national security. In the developing countries, the situation is even worse because security apparatuses have systematically morphed into gestapos of the modern times causing massive violations of human rights which have been pledged in the UN charter. For instance, the case of hundreds of missing persons who were allegedly abducted by intelligence agencies has been lingering on for years in the Supreme Court of Pakistan while the whereabouts of the abductees still remain unknown.

Second, in the run-up to the war, the Bush administration had used a simple and mutually exclusive choice of being "either with US or against US" to judge the nations as either friends or foes. Indeed, no responsible nation would have liked to add insult to the injured US by being against her at that stage and thereby invite her wrath. While the choice was pretty straightforward for the most, it was probably the greatest diplomatic dilemma in the history of Pakistan for several historical and strategic reasons. Pakistan had been an ally of the proxy war of the US against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan all along but the US had abandoned Pakistan immediately after Soviet withdrawal. Pakistan was left alone hosting millions of Afghan refugees who had migrated to and assimilated in Pakistani society over the decades. This assimilation was so undetectable that an average native Pakistani could not tell between an Afghan and a Pakistani hailing from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK, formerly known as NWFP). Afghans were allowed to enter, work, marry, and live anywhere in Pakistan. Pakistan didn’t have any proper record of Afghans including a whole generation of theirs who were born and bred in Pakistan. The truth is that the poor nation started to computerize the records of its own residents only in 2000. Moreover, at the time of launching this war on terror, the reins of power were in the hands of military dictator Pervez Musharraf who had toppled an elected civilian government. Pakistan Army had already been declared as “rogue army” by the West due to the well-known dispute between Pakistan and India over Kargil. On the internal front, the regime desperately needed the support of domestic religious political parties which had sizeable influence in the KPK due to its geographic, ethnic, and cultural bonds with Afghanistan. Above all, Pakistan’s close and friendly relations with neighboring China, which happens to have a history of difficult relations with the US, added complexity to the scenario. Being part of the US-led war in the backyard of China had important geostrategic implications from China’s perspective. In this whole backdrop, the choice between “with or against the US” was not as simple for Pakistan as it was for every other nation in the world. Being friends with the US meant not only creating millions of foes integrated within the very fiber of its own society but also sowing the seeds of enmity with a brotherly neighbor to reap whatever forever. On the other hand, the repercussions of not being a friend of the US in that hype are not too difficult for one to imagine. This choice invariably meant a deep split within Pakistani society and exposing it to severe dangers in either case. Nevertheless, Pakistan chose to side with the victim and ever since it has been providing every support to the US in its war on terror despite all the difficulties and the only acknowledgement it gets for its sacrifices is the US demand to ‘do more’.

Pakistan is veritably one of the most attractive havens for terrorists due to its proximity and unguarded border with Afghanistan which has been a land of war and lawlessness for several decades. The roots of the terrorism the world so commonly knows today actually go back to the days when US generously sponsored the recruitment and training of non-Afghan Muslims to be part of jihad against the Soviet Union in which Pakistan was used as an operational base by the US. In those days, the US was the greatest sponsor of jihad simply because it was against its arch rival. After Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US also abandoned Afghanistan and Pakistan without helping in cleaning up the mess it had created, leaving behind a mass of arms and undisciplined warriors. It is not difficult to imagine that while two generations of Afghans had grown up seeing war as a normal part of life, what else could be expected of them but to fight. Therefore, while the victor Afghans split into ethnic factions and got themselves busied in the battle for power, the foreign jihadis lost interest in local fights and quit. While they were splinters of a large social network formed during the Afghan war, they naturally started clustering in certain areas—where their brethren Muslims were facing real or perceived aggression like the one they were taught and fought against the Soviet Union. This time the aggressor turned out to be the West in general and the US in particular because of their silence and apparent complicity with the aggression in Bosnia and Palestine and their military presence on Muslim lands in the Arab world. The first Gulf war was seen by these jihadists as an orchestrated campaign by the US to establish complete control over the Muslim lands and their oil by establishing permanent military bases in those parts which are geostrategically important. This provided sufficient motivation to these Afghan war veterans to rewire their social network in order to combat the new enemy. This also provided the needed motivation and ammunition for further recruitment and expansion by this network. The only difference between the struggles against the aggression of the two super powers is that in the former case, it was sponsored by the West and touted as jihad, and in case of the latter, the West itself, led by the US, became a target and hence the resistance has been termed as terrorism. So what the whole world is reaping today is what was sowed by the US during the cold war. The irony is that the US left Pakistan in the lurch to face terrorism after the end of Soviet war, but got a rude awakening when the fire ultimately hit her homeland on 9/11.

Pakistan is also veritably one of the most attractive places to these fighters to take refuge because of their intimate social contacts nurtured during Afghan war, its ethnic and linguistic diversity, mountainous terrain, huge population of 180 million, and above all, their experience and knowledge about it. Therefore, it is no surprise that many of the most wanted Al-Qaida operatives and high value targets were captured by Pakistani security forces in its territory. These include Umar Patek who was arrested March 29, 2011, in Abottabad, by Pakistani authorities on a tip-off from the CIA. Pakistan. The Indonesian militant is accused of playing a key role in the 2002 Bali bombings and was long seen as a crucial link between Al Qaeda and its Southeast Asian affiliates such as Jemaah Islamiyah. The alleged ‘mastermind’ behind the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured March 1, 2003 in Rawalpindi, by Pakistani Inter Services-Intelligence (ISI) officials in a joint raid with the CIA's Special Activities Division paramilitary operatives. Ramzi bin-al Shibh, one of the first five names on FBI’s list of ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’ was captured on September 11, 2002, in Karachi, in a joint Pakistan-US operation. Abu Zubadeh was captured March 28, 2002, in Faisalabad, by Pakistani military intelligence, accompanied by American CIA and FBI personnel during the massive raid on his compound. Abu Faraj al-Libbi, believed to be Al Qaeda’s No. 3, was arrested May 2, 2005, in Mardan by Pakistani intelligence officers. Ahmed Ghailani was captured in Pakistan on July 25, 2004. Mustafa Ahmad al-Hasawi, a Saudi, believed to be one of two key financial figures to have arranged funding for the 9/11 attacks was also captured in Pakistan in 2003.

The irony is that while Pakistan has been struggling with the menace of terrorism ever since the Afghan war, the world came to realize it only after 9/11 and seems to believe that Pakistan is a terrorist state or all Pakistanis are potential terrorists. There can be nothing more untrue than this. Pakistan has lost thousands of its soldiers and civilians while fighting America’s war; in direct combat with militants as well as in suicide attacks in the mosques, streets, markets, and public places across the country. Pakistan even launched military operations within its own territory causing history’s biggest internal displacement of people which ran into millions. Pakistan also gave the US a free hand to conduct drone attacks on terrorist hideouts within its territory as and when it deems necessary. These drone attacks alone have resulted in the killing of thousands of people in the name of collateral damage. How the innocent victims of these attacks avenge themselves is yet another story. Pakistan also provided reasonable access, support, and information to the US intelligence apparatus to work within its territory keeping aside its laws about foreign nationals and diplomatic staff. The fact that the US intelligence operative, Raymond Davis, was roaming around across the country in violation of the laws of the land and killed in cold blood two of its citizens but the government brokered his release is also indicative of the level of support US has been getting from Pakistan. Despite all these sacrifices of Pakistan and being the greatest victim at the hands of terrorists, the operation against Osama has been conducted in a way that denigrated and defamed Pakistan giving the impression to the world that Pakistan is complicit to Al-Qaida or protected Osama. While it was Pakistan who captured most of Al-Qaida leaders and operatives and handed them over to the US in the absence of an extradition treaty, this allegation makes little sense that Pakistan would aid and abet Osama. If the US intelligence and security forces had failed to detect terrorists and prevent the event of 9/11 in their homeland despite all their sophistication, does this prove or indicate that they were complicit to the terrorists? Besides this allegation, the operation by the US without taking Pakistan into confidence has cast an unmistakable message that she does not consider Pakistan even an ally let alone a friend, neither does she care about its sovereignty. By doing so, the US has provided the fuel and ammunition to those who believe and propagate that the US has been zeroing in on Pakistan as the target for next expedition after Iraq and Afghanistan. It must not be difficult for one to imagine how this message is going to affect the public opinion in Pakistan and elsewhere and how it will help the war on terror. Furthermore, it has set a dangerous precedence which may be used as example by India who already believes Pakistan to be harboring terrorists.

Third, what indicates a dangerous evasion of justice is the way Osama was practically executed. Although there were initially contradictory statements from various officials of the Obama administration regarding the status of OBL at the time of the operation, now we have a unified stance from the administration that he was neither armed nor did he resist in any way. It must be remembered that although he was declared enemy of the US in the war, the operation took place in a non-combat zone. Therefore, according to the known procedures of justice even in times of war, he must have been captured as a prisoner. Regardless of who he was, killing him in front of his family when he was unarmed, unguarded, and did not resist constitutes a war crime. The fact of the matter is that this whole episode starting from Osama's conviction by the Bush administration and his execution by the Obama administration either constitutes a capital crime or proves that the US administration is the "supreme court of the world" which has the right and authority to accuse anyone of a crime, order their hunt, and execute them anywhere in the world without the need to prove them guilty. Is there any other plausible conclusion if the world cares about justice?

Fourth, as if there were not enough unanswered questions in this unprecedented killing of a terror suspect by US special forces on Pakistani soil, the US authorities made it more controversial by not providing any appropriate evidence of the claim that they have actually succeeded in hunting OBL. It has been a routine practice of US authorities to make such information public which could lend credibility to the US ‘claim’ of success in relation to any declared enemy. But for inexplicable reasons, the US administration seems hell bent on providing fuel to all kinds of conspiracy theories by not releasing that minimum information which in no way seems to endanger their cause or their national security. The CIA transmitted a mugshot of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to news agencies around the world. Photographs of the dead bodies of Uday and Qusay, killed by US Task Force 20 in a showdown in Mosul in July 2003, were also released by the US. For that, Paul Bremer had reasoned, “I think it will help convince people that these two people are dead...). When Saddam Hussein was captured alive in December 2003, a video footage was released showing a doctor who was supposedly examining and ascertaining that it was in fact Saddam Hussain. Similarly, the US government released a photo of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s corpse after he was killed in an American air strike in June 2006. One wonders why the US administration needed credibility of success in relation to Uday and Qusay but not in case of Osama who was proclaimed to be the raison d’etre of the war on terror. The US actually needed more credibility now than at the time of killing of Uday and Qusay. She suffered from the actual crisis of credibility after the world came to know in 2004 about the torture in Abu Ghraib prison, the falsehood of the hoax of WMDs of Iraq, Bush’s acknowledgement of the existence of ‘black sites’ (i.e. secret CIA-run prisons across Europe), and Obama’s retreat on the promise of doing away with the Guantanamo phenomenon.

The most concrete evidence to the claim that OBL has been killed was his dead body which, as they have put it, doesn’t exist anymore. It has been thrown into oblivion by dumping it into the North Arabian Sea from USS Carl Vinson within hours of his execution. Where did this sea-burial come from? The chief advisor of President Obama for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan, claimed that it was done in ‘strict conformance with Islamist percepts and practices’. One wonders which Islamic scripture teaches sea-burials; it is a phenomenon unheard of so far in Islamic history and literature. When further asked about the hastiness involved in burying OBL, Mr. Brennan replied “it was determined that it is required by Islamic law that an individual be buried within 24 hours. Going to another country, making those arrangements, requirements, would have exceeded that time period, in our view. And so, therefore, we thought that the best way to ensure that his body was given an appropriate Islamic burial was to take those actions that would allow us to do that burial at sea." It is true to the extent that Islam discourages unnecessary delays in burial, but there are no time limits prescribed in Islam in relation to burial. It is a well known practice that burials may be halted until close blood relations of the deceased arrive to see the dead body and attend the funeral proceedings if they wish so. This may, however, be the practice prescribed by the US administration to bury the alleged terrorists of Islamic faith within 24 hours of their death, and that too, in deep waters. Even if such claims may be excused for want of their poor knowledge about Islam, the White House could have come up with other plausible reasons for their claim instead of making a mockery of Islam by using it as a false pretext and adding insult to the injury of Osama’s family.

Fifth, the US administration has attempted to make the world believe that this was one of the most well-planned operations in recent times. Obama has been said to think for days on whether to ‘go or not’ to catch Osama in an operation which, if failed, could have had serious foreign policy implications for the US. Planning of such sensitive and expectedly successful operations also includes planning the post-operation scenario including the first announcement by the President or subsequent responses to the press by other administration officials. However, the success of this operation has been tainted by conflicting and contradictory statements from various officials of Obama administration. Their original assertion was that their Navy SEALs engaged in a ‘prolonged firefight’ which later was contradicted by an NBC report citing US officials that ‘four of the five people killed in the operation, including bin Laden, were unarmed and never fired a shot’. Similarly it was initially reported by the officials of Obama administration that OBL was armed and resisted using his wife as a human shield, all claims which were later contradicted by the administration itself. Whom do we believe?

President Bush had said immediately after the 9/11 attacks, “we will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms”. Since the heinous 9/11 attacks and the equally heinous ‘war on terror’, the very fundamental principles and values of freedom and justice have been compromised by the West, especially the US itself. Be it the freedom of speech, right to information or presumption of innocence unless proven guilty, most of the fundamental values have been suspended or often pushed aside in the name of security. For instance, the Guantanamo phenomenon and the PATRIOT Act are two obvious examples which are known on the surface but much more runs deeper. President Obama was seen as a tide of change in this regard not only because of his anti-Bush policy rhetoric during his election campaign but also because of his inauguration pledge that “the US does not have to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals”. He was even given a Nobel peace prize in advance of any concrete achievements in the hope that the US under his leadership would bring about peace in the world. But the world has witnessed President Obama proposing a law of ‘indefinite preventive detention without a charge’ instead. He has already betrayed his own words that he wanted to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism." What we have been witnessing during this era of modern terror suggests that the freedoms and rights, which the West in general and the US in particular champion, have already been sacrificed by the protectors at the altar of ‘war on terror’. Is it a sign that terrorists have made significant progress in the real battlefield that matters to the peace of the world?

In a nutshell, any US administration never fails to tout its values of freedom and justice but its actions always fail to conform to its claims. Consequently, the US provides good reasons to a large part of the world population, mainly Muslims, to believe that it applies different standards of freedom and justice by discriminating on the basis of religion. There is also a feeling that she applies different standards of justice and human rights for her own citizens and the rest of the world, particularly Muslims. It seems to us that the actions of the US have been shaping a global system of actions and reactions which has the potential to turn the theory of clash of civilizations into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

*Both the authors, alphabetically ordered, are PhD fellows in economics and policy studies of technical change at United Nations University (UNU-MERIT). The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of UNU-MERIT.

Link... Pakistaneering: Pakistan, the World and Obama’s victory over Osama