Our Announcements
Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.
Posted by ali rehan munir in Pakistan Security and Defence: Enemy & Threats (Internal & External) on June 29th, 2013
Daunting challenges faced by security forces
Asif Haroon Raja
Pakistan faces formidable array of challenges, both at external and internal fronts. Internal threats are as daunting and menacing as the external threat. So much so that for the first time in Pakistan’s history, it cannot be discerned with certainty which of the two threats is more dangerous? The Army Chief Gen Kayani has however plainly graded internal threat to the security and integrity of Pakistan more hazardous. He said so because war on terror fought inside Pakistan among us has claimed more human lives than the fatalities incurred in all the wars and conflicts with India. Our sensitive and highly defended installations that could not be struck by our arch enemy during the war are being attacked daringly by home-grown non-actors. Few thousand militants merged in the sea of 180 million people prowl behind every bush and corner or stand among a crowd unnoticed and throw a bomb or blow themselves up whenever opportunity comes their way.
For a guerrilla to operate successfully, he should have terrain suited for guerrilla war, should be adept in living off the land and techniques of fighting surreptitiously. He cannot operate for long without local support, safe sanctuaries, funds, armaments and sophisticated communication system. He should have safe exit routes to go across the border whenever cornered. Mountainous terrain of FATA and interior Balochistan, both attached with Afghanistan are suited for irregular warfare and hence favor TTP and BLA respectively thereby enabling them to wage an asymmetrical war for last so many years despite being hounded and badly bruised. Members of the two banned outfits are tribesmen and proficient in guerrilla war. Al-Qaeda allied with TTP gained experience during the eight-year Afghan Jihad against the Soviets and later against the Americans once they were ditched.
The war was first confined to FATA and some parts of interior Balochistan inhabited by Bugtis, Marris and Mengals. Hence it didn’t much bother the ruling elite and it kept following the dictates of the US to do more. When the war spilled into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa settled areas and then to major cities and incidents of terrorism kept increasing, it then alarmed the rulers. But by then the situation had become very complex because flames of terrorism had spread all over the country.
Intrusion of TTP militants into urban centres became possible because of the marrying up of urban-based Jihadi groups that had been bann
Posted by ansarmukhtar in INDIA-AN EVIL NATION on June 21st, 2013
Pakistan Think Tank’s Thought Leaders Comment
Pakistan Army and ISI seem to be the bread and butter of Indian journalists and news-media.
One wonders what these Indian journos would write about had it not been for Pakistan Army and ISI ? On the contrary, there is hardly a word in Pakistani news-media about RAW and Indian Army…
With friends like Kabulis like Amrullah Saleh, we do not need enemies.
Pls note, this pathetic Karzai-excuse of a journo, Praveen Swami (see below), is trying to make it sound like Najibullah’s murder was any different from Moamer Gaddafii’s after the later’s US-funded capture and lynching at the hands of US-Allies, so-called “Libyan-Rebels”.
MAK
by Praveen Swami
Jun 20, 2013
Early in 2011, Hillary Clinton addressed iron words to Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership at a convention in New York, telling the men who enabled 9/11 exactly what they needed to do to bring “an end to the military actions that are targeting their leadership and decimating their ranks.” “They must renounce violence,” the former United States secretary of state said. “They must abandon their alliance with al-Qaeda; and they must abide by the constitution of Afghanistan.” Inside of days, the United States is scheduled to begin talks with Taliban envoys at their newly-inaugurated political office in Doha—an office flying the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, destroyed by American bombs after 9/11.
Heading into 2014, when almost all western troops will pull out of Afghanistan, it’s turning out that America’s Red Lines on terror were drawn with vanishing ink. From 1 January to 6 June, civilian casualties are up 24 percent compared with the same period last year, three-quarters inflicted by the Taliban and its partners. The Taliban has refused to reject al-Qaeda. Its leaders refuse to sit across the table with representatives of Afghanistan’s elected government. New Delhi needs to start worrying, and soon: the Taliban’s march back into office will have lethal consequences not just for Afghans, but India and the region.
Late last year, Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, set up to negotiate peace with the Taliban, drew up a five-stage plan for peace talks. Formal negotiations with the Taliban, scheduled in the plan for mid-2013, are running bang on schedule—but only because key steps have been skipped. In return for its leadership being removed from the United Nations’ 9/11 sanctions list, for example, the Taliban was to announce it was “cutting its links with al-Qaeda.” Eighteen low-ranking Taliban released by Islamabad—a move meant to facilitate negotiations with the Afghan government—have remained on in Pakistan, without renouncing violence.
President Hamid Karzai, angered by the United States’ decision to talk to the Taliban regardless, has now called off negotiations on post-2014 security arrangements—but the truth is he has little power to shape events. There’s a simple reason why the United States has continued to push for talks: President Barack Obama is desperate for any political deal that will dignify his 2014 retreat: peace, as it were, at any cost.
Key Taliban leaders like Mullah Muhammad Umar, Abdul Ghani Baradar, Abdul Ahad Jehangirwal and Nooruddin Turabi remain in Pakistan—and under the effective control of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The families of key Doha negotiators, including Taliban chief of mission Tayyab Agha, are also in Pakistan. The Taliban’s office in Doha is as much a Pakistani intelligence station as an Afghan political mission. Aga Jan Motasim—a former Taliban leader targeted for assassination in 2010 because of his participation in secret peace talks—recently made clear the Doha leadership was not among Taliban moderates willing to accept electoral democracy.
Islamabad has cashed in on Obama’s desperation, selling its leverage over the Taliban hardliners in return for equities in Afghanistan’s political future. It argues that the Taliban leadership, if given power in Kabul, will be able to buy off ground-level jihadists fighting alongside al-Qaeda and its sister organisations. The Taliban leadership, it hopes, will return the favour by using its influence with jihadists fighting against the Pakistani state, like al-Qaeda and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Few experts believe things will work to the script Pakistan is marketing: key Taliban affiliates like Jalaluddin Haqqani’s networks are deeply entwined with al-Qaeda and the TTP, the scholars Dan Rassler and Vahid Brown have shown. President Obama, though, seems desperate enough to try.
Early on 27 September 1996, Muhammad Najibullah Ahmadzai was dragged out of the United Nations compound in Kabul, where he had taken sanctuary. The former Afghan president was beaten, then castrated; his bloodied body was dragged behind a truck before being hung on a traffic light for public display. President Najibullah’s last minutes were the first of the life of Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate. His fate tells us why President Obama’s initiative is doomed to fail.
From 1994, the United States threw its weight behind oil giant Unocal’s efforts to build a pipeline linking central Asia’s vast energy fields with the Indian Ocean. In April 1996, Robin Raphel—then assistant secretary of state for south Asia, and now President Barack Obama’s ambassador for non-military aid to Pakistan—visited Kabul to lobby for the project. Later that year, she was again in Kabul, calling on the international community to “engage the Taliban.”
Mullah Muhammad Ghaus, the Islamic Emirate’s then-foreign minister, led an expenses-paid delegation to Unocal’s headquarters in Sugarland, Texas. The clerics, housed at a five-star hotel, were taken to see the NASA museum, several supermarkets and—improbably—the local zoo. Glyn Davies, the State Department’s spokesperson, described Najibullah’s killing as “regrettable”. Yet, he said, the United States hoped the new Islamic Emirate would “form a representative interim government that can begin the process of reconciliation nationwide”.
Raphael had these words in response: “The Taliban do not seek to export Islam, only to liberate Afghanistan.”
The United States responded with silence—both to the Taliban’s crimes against its own people, and its role in Osama bin Laden’s violent rise. Even though the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan sheltered bin Laden, it was never declared a state sponsor of terrorism. In 1996, a State Department report had described bin Laden as one of the “most significant sponsors of terrorism today”. “Madeline Albright, [her] undersecretary Tom Pickering and regional specialists in state’s south Asia bureau,” records Steve Coll in his magisterial work Ghost Wars, “all recommended that the administration continue its policy of diplomatic engagement with the Taliban. They would use pressure and promises of future aid to persuade [Mullah Muhammad] Omar to break with bin Laden.”
“The truth,” Albright would later argue, “was that those [attacks before 9/11] were happening overseas and while there were Americans who died, there were not thousands and it did not happen on US soil.” Libya, Iraq, South Yemen, and Syria, all secular states, hadn’t killed “thousands” or “on US soil”—but that didn’t stop the United States from designating them sponsors of terrorism. The truth was also that the United States saw Sunni jihadists in Afghanistan, along with nuclear-armed Pakistan, as allies against a resurgent Iran.
Ever since 26/11, Pakistan has reined in jihadist groups operating against India, fearful of military retaliation and international sanctions. Now, though, as the ISI seeks to deflect jihadist energies away from Pakistan, India is again becoming a target. Threats from al-Qaeda have multiplied: in a recent video, al-Qaeda cleric Asim Umar called on Indians Muslims to battle for shari’a rule; last year, al- Qaeda’s Ahmad Farooq vowed “to hasten our advance towards Delhi.”
Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed recently condemned suicide bombings in Pakistan—but appeared to suggest they’d be legitimate elsewhere. Doha-based Islamist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi—a key influence on the Taliban, and behind the scenes player in the talks—has hailed the jihadist struggle to create an Islamic state in Kashmir. For all practical purposes, the talks in Doha will hand Pakistan and its jihadist proxies the keys to Afghanistan’s future—a decision that could impose enormous costs on India.
New Delhi will have to resume serious dialogue on military assistance with the Northern Alliance, which battled the Taliban until 9/11. It will have to think seriously on the use of offensive covert means to target the jihadist leadership in Pakistan. New Delhi will also have stop dragging its feet on requests for military assistance from Afghanistan, made by Karzai last month. “I think the time has come for India to revitalise its relationship with its historic friends, who resisted Pakistani expansionism in Afghanistan before 9/11,” former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh told Firstpost. “The moment of decision is inching closer.”
Posted by admin in Corruption, LIAR POLITICIANS, Looters and Scam Artists, Morosi Siyasat & Political Crooks, NAWAZ SHARIF, Nawaz Sharif & Kashmiri Biradari, Nawaz Sharif US Agent, Nawaz Sharif Womanizer, Pakistan Army, Pakistan Mujahid & Janbaz Force, Pakistan's Hall of Shame, Punjab Held Hostage Sharif Bros on March 31st, 2013
He defended his action to launch the operation in Kargil in the wake of fresh allegations that he masterminded the intrusions.
Referring to Lt Gen (retired) Shahid Aziz’s allegations that he had kept other military commanders in the dark about the operation, Musharraf said, “Telling everyone about it was not necessary at all”.
He claimed Aziz had an “imbalanced personality” and had resorted to character assassination by making these accusations.
“We lost the Kargil war, which was a big success militarily, because of (then premier) Nawaz Sharif…If he had not visited the US, we would have conquered 300 square miles of India,” Musharraf said in an interview with Express News channel.
Though Pakistan had initially claimed mujahideen were responsible for occupying strategic heights along the Line of Control in early 1999, Musharraf later revealed in his autobiography ‘In The Line Of Fire’ that regular Army troops had participated in the operation.
But Musharraf claimed the action in Kargil was a “localised” operation and not a major operation.
“Kargil was just one of many sectors under a Major General stationed in Gilgit, (who was) in charge of the area. Exchange of fire was routine there,” he claimed. Musharraf said he would not go so far as to accuse former premier Nawaz Sharif of betrayal but his decision to withdraw from Kargil was a mistake.
“Nawaz lost a political front which we had won militarily,” he claimed.
The former general, who has been living in self-exile outside Pakistan since 2009, said the “prime consideration” for actions like the Kargil operation is security and secrecy.
“So the Army leadership decides who is to be informed and when. As the operation progressed and the proper time arrived, a briefing of the corps commanders was held,” he said.
Musharraf said he was “really astonished” that Aziz was writing about the events 10 years later.
Blaming the nation at this juncture, as Aziz had done, seems to be “part of a conspiracy”, he claimed.
“It was a tactical action that had a strategic importance in which no more than a few hundred persons were involved, but which engaged thousands on the Indian side and was of tremendous importance,” he claimed.
Musharraf justified Pakistani casualties in the conflict, claiming the country lost only 270 men against India’s 1,600 soldiers.
India eventually decided, after examining the pros and cons of widening the conflict across the Line of Control (LoC) or even across the international border, on a strategy of containment within the narrower objective of regaining the Kargil heights. This narrower framework meant higher casualties on the Indian side because of the difficulty of traversing slopes against dug-in defenders where the terrain offers no cover.
New Delhi calculated that it does have the political will and military morale, despite the heavy casualties, and can sustain the cost in human and material terms. A near-consensus domestically and the willingness of the Indian military command to accept constraints allowed India to continue with an operation in which it suffered disproportionately heavy casualties.
With regard to Pakistan, the intriguing question is whether the Kargil heights seizure was part of the normal stepping up of guerrilla activity during summer, or whether it had more ambitious objectives. If it were the former, little can be added, except to mention in passing a failure of Indian intelligence. The guerrillas’ presence was only discovered by accident when two Indian army patrols happened to spot them. The true extent of the guerrilla presence did not sink in until the Indian army had carried out an aerial survey of the area, which revealed that between 400 to 700 guerrillas had seized the heights. This could have put them in a position in any future war to threaten the sole overland logistics link with the Indian forces deployed in Siachen, i.e. the Srinagar-Drass-Kargil-Leh road.
But the Kargil seizure could have other strategic objectives with military, political and diplomatic dimensions. Militarily, if the seizure could be maintained for a reasonable period of time and at least until winter sets in, it could open up possibilities of forcing either an Indian withdrawal from Siachen, or a trade-off between the Kargil heights and the Siachen Glacier.
Politically, it could reflect the impatience in Islamabad with lack of progress in bilateral discussions on Kashmir under the Lahore Declaration process after the fall of the BJP government in end-April. Despite the fact that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India heads a caretaker government until elections are held in September-October, the hope may have been to force New Delhi back to the negotiating table in a serious mode. Diplomatically, since the bilateral process had not yielded results, an internationalisa-tion of the Kashmir issue may have been sought to bring it back onto the frontburner.
If we assume for the sake of argument that all or some of these objectives formed part of the Pakistani thrust into Kargil, or at least were taken on board once things hotted up on the Line of Control, we can examine the results achieved or likely to be achieved in the foreseeable future and then draw up a balance sheet of gains and losses.
Missing Kashmir for Kargil
Militarily, the inherent difficulty of holding on to the Kargil heights in the face of overwhelming firepower and numbers has become a key question as the battle drags on. India has weighed the costs of heavy casualties against the bigger costs of potentially adverse international intervention if the conflict is widened. It has relied on the political consensus to hold on to Kashmir no matter what the cost, which informs its domestic political spectrum (the weak and scattered chinks of rationality represented by liberal opinion notwithstanding). India’s slow but definite gains against the guerrillas have produced collateral pressures for a withdrawal of the guerrillas from what is turning into a suicidal mission.
The political timing of the Kargil seizure, if the idea was indeed to force New Delhi back to serious negotiations, could not have been worse. A caretaker government heading into an election was hardly likely to be in a position to negotiate, let alone offer any flexibility or concession on such a major issue. There has been speculation in the Indian press after the visit to Pakistan by the US emissary General Anthony Zinni regarding proposals purportedly from Islamabad for India to allow safe passage to the guerrillas, quoting the precedent of the Hazrat Bal shrine siege. Whether these reports hold any water or not is not known.
However, Western diplomatic pressure on Islamabad is mounting, especially after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Washington DC and London, and these could take various forms, economic, political, diplomatic. The dependence of the Pakistani economy on the goodwill of the West, and particularly the US, to keep foreign fund flows going makes Pakistan that much more vulnerable to ‘persuasion’.
It goes without saying that such ‘persuasion’ seeks to maintain the status quo on Kashmir, while advocating peaceful negotiations. Pakistan’s experience indicates that retaining the status quo has always proved favourable to India. Any disturbance of New Delhi’s hold on Kashmir, even if partial or temporary, serves to refocus the attention of the global community on a long-neglected, festering wound. But in trying to disturb the status quo in its favour, the manner in which Pakistan pursues this tactical goal is crucial. This cannot happen by ignoring the ground reality.
The Pakistani army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, put his finger on the problem by describing Kargil as “a tactical, military issue”, while Kashmir as such was “a strategic, political” one. In other words, to see only the Kargil part of the picture represented by the Kashmir problem, is to miss the forest for the trees. However, in the present instance, Islamabad appears to have failed to persuade the global powers-that-be of the justness of this linkage. On the contrary, opinion seems to have hardened in the West that the status quo must be restored before diplomatic “business as usual” can be resumed.
Most thinking people in Pakistan are by now convinced that there is no (regular) military option to obtain a solution to Kashmir, particularly after both India and Pakistan have demonstrated their nuclear capability. The irregular military option (guerrilla war) faces considerable political and ideological disabilities, especially since the Kashmir guerrilla movement has acquired a fundamentalist hue over time. This does not appear to be sufficiently inspiring for large numbers of the Kashmiri people who are well known for their traditional religious tolerance. This despite continuing repression by the Indian military in Kashmir.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been castigated by the right-wing, religious, fundamentalist opinion for stating an obvious truth that without both India and Pakistan going beyond their “stated positions”, no solution to the Kashmir problem is possible. The hue and cry against him for saying that, particularly in the Urdu press, reflects the limitations which restrict the country’s political leadership. No flexibility, political or diplomatic, is allowed to any Pakistani leader to even explore some middle ground. Any such suggestion is treated as treason, betrayal, the worst kind of skullduggery. For such ideologically ‘pure’ elements, it is either all or nothing as far as Kashmir is concerned.
Before it is too late, sober heads must begin to ponder how much cloth we have remaining and how to cut it. Passion cannot replace cool calculation required for a strategic plan for peace. The Pakistani leadership must take into account a heavily dependent economic structure, an inability to rouse the world’s conscience beyond rhetoric, and the lack of a solid consensus across the
Posted by admin in Makaar Dushman, Pakistan Security and Defence: Enemy & Threats (Internal & External), Pakistan Strategic Nuclear & Missile Forces, Pakistan-US Relations on March 30th, 2013
What really happened?
By Raqib Shah
In August 2010 after Pakistani authorities shared intelligence with US about the compound in Abbottabad, US after its own intelligence gathering ascertains that the compound is occupied by Osama’s children. Compound surveillance continues through the next year in anticipation of capturing Osama bin Laden.
In January 2011 the young CIA contractor who is given the charge of Pakistan Station Chief works “extra hard” to gather clandestine information related to ISI and Al Qaeda relationship.
The contractor, now infamous as Raymond Davis the “American Rambo” receives a call from one of his assets, early morning on January 27 about a high value target. But the asset refuses to lay out details on phone or to leave the Lahore city, where he had gone underground.Raymond Davis hires a rent a car and drives to Lahore, while his embassy’s security detail follows him in a bullet proof Land Cruiser.
Raymond Davis is able to loose his Islamabad’s ISI “detail” by leaving in an unmarked rented car. The ISI agents falling for his trap follows the embassy’s Land Cruiser. Raymond Davis arrives at Lahore one hour earlier than his detail and meets with the asset. The asset gives him some pictures of an intelligence building at Tarbela and recording of a phone call. Listening to the phone call, Raymond Davis realizes the gold mine he had struck, and immediately calls his security detail which had also reached Lahore, knowing if ISI reaches him first, he would not leave Lahore alive.
Next hour when the security car catches up with Raymond Davis, the ISI bosses realize that Raymond Davis had given them a slip earlier in the morning and in couple of hours he may have done in Lahore, he might have got some important information. Resultantly, they put two contractors on his tail. Raymond Davis seeing a tail fears the worst and shoots them both in the back, at a traffic stop, without logically realizing that there was no way ISI could have known what he was holding.
His security detail which was close behind rushed to his “rescue”. However, by this time police had chased and arrested Raymond Davis, while the security Land Cruiser running over pedestrians escapes towards US consulate compound in Lahore. ISI officers quickly reach the scene and confiscating the memory sticks realize Raymond Davis has unearthed a deep secret which even their immediate bosses didn’t know about.
The sensitivity of information rattles the entire echelons of the ISI and even its own officers are sent under house arrest while the relevant cell steps forward. At that time even some of the top intelligence officers of the secretive ISI outside the relevant cell did not know that Osama bin Laden had died and his body was kept frozen at Tarbela. Young Raymond Davis had unearthed the biggest secret of the century, somehow. But now the Pandora’s Box had been opened. Pak top brass knew it had only a few days or weeks at best to capitalize Raymond Davis’ arrest before US get the intel.
In the next six weeks Pakistan plugs all leaks related to Osama’s death and makes sure that maximum gains are made for Raymond’s release. However,when Raymond Davis is released on March 16, his debriefing results in a tsunami of US policy, personal agendas and fueling of political rivalries. Everyone in the US chain of command now wanted to use the information to further personal goals from General
Petreaus to President Obama. On March 17, knowing that Pakistan had lost its trump card General Pervaiz Kayani releases a press statement in which he critically criticize drone attacks, first from him. From then on Pak Military raised its stance against drone attacks, fearing that US now might target its nuclear assets.
While in USA, politics was at its full swing. General Petreaus wanted to get the buckle for Osama bin Laden’s death on his belt for his future political ambitions, while President Obama wanted the credit to help his sliding popularity. While the tussle continued, the other issue still pending was how to confirm Osama’s death.In the next one month, nearly every week a top US official visited Pakistan, everyone meeting with General Kayani trying to convince him to hand over Osama’s body. While the stance from Pakistan remained, “Osama, Who?” It was a first in the history that so many US top officials had visited and met with a military chief of a foreign country in such a short time. Seeing nothing getting through the top military brass of Pakistan, US started a political and media campaign on the sides to put extra pressure on Pak Military.
Politics within Obama Administration was also at its full swing. Petraeus was pulling all the strings to take the credit, while trying to lay out a plan to get Osama bin Laden’s body out of Pakistan. President Obama on the other hand in one smooth move decided to “promote” Petraeus to the head of the CIA. The news got out in the first week of April that Petraeus was being transferred to the CIA. While at the main front, Obama continued to pressurize General Kayani and General Pasha and on April 5, Obama Administration submitted a report to the Congress that Pakistan government had no clear strategy to triumph over militants. Alongside the report the media campaign against Pak Military and the ISI continued.
The second week of April began with a bang for top Pak Military brass. On April 7, Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and White House advisor wrote a report arguing that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not only a deterrent to India but also to USA. The obvious had now become clear that Obama Administration has indirectly sent a clear threat to Pakistan’s nuclear assets. The timing of the report was perfect with Centcom Chief Gen James Mattis meeting with General Kayani next day. In the meeting General Mattis asked about Pakistan’s cooperation in capturing Osama bin Laden.
This was ironically one of typical Hollywood thriller scene. Pakistan knew that US knew that Pakistan knows that US knows that Osama is dead.But Pakistan continued the naive game of “Osama Who?” while US continued to play the game that “Osama must be captured”. General Mattis leaves with veiled threats and stresses that Pakistan must do more to against the Al Qaeda and Taliban, or indirectly saying that Osama bin Laden must be handed over.
For the next ten days US waits and sees how Pakistan responds to the threats, but Pakistan acts by burying its head in the sand – see no evil, hear no evil. Obama Administration ups the ante and on April 18 on Pakistan’s Geo TV, Adm. Mike Mullen said Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence “has a longstanding relationship with the Haqqani Network.That doesn’t mean everybody in the ISI, but it’s there.” Again, international media had its field day against Pakistan’s ISI and its links with Taliban.
After putting pressure on General Kayani, Adm. Mike Mullen meets with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Khalid Shameem Wyne and General Kayani on April 20. Admiral Mullen again demands indirectly that Pakistan needs to help USA in locating Osama bin Laden. Pakistan’s response was again, “Osama, Who?” Admiral Mullen however, left with another threat that if they came to know about Osama bin Laden’s location they would go ahead and take unilateral action. This is the same message which President Obama repeated in his announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death, when he said, “We will take actions in Pakistan, if we knew where he was.”
In response to continued threats from USA, Pakistan starts taking back its air bases from US in an attempt to avoid launching of any operation from its own soil. As a result on April 22 the news appears that Pakistan had taken back Shamsi Airbase from CIA/US forces. While Obama Administration was piling pressure on Pakistan, General Petraeus visited Pakistan on April 26 and met with General Kayani openly asking him to hand over Osama bin Laden, otherwise get ready to face the consequences. Same day Washington also critically attacked Pakistan Army’s counter-terrorism efforts. General Petraeus left with a clear message that unless Pakistan hands over Osama, US forces would be forced to take action over Pakistani soil. Pakistani Military knowing that US knew that Osama bin Laden was dead couldn’t understand Obama Administration’s continued stance on capturing Osama bin Laden. General Petraeus left with the ultimatum that either Pakistan handed over Osama or US would get him.
Same day meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC) is held at Rawalpindi, one week ahead of schedule at the Joint Staff Headquarters. The top brass discussed the Osama issue and decision is reached to work out the Obama’s strategy leading to continuous threats for capturing Osama bin Laden alive, even after knowing that he was dead. While in Pakistan intelligence community starts using all of its sources to reach to the bottom of US’ demand of capturing Osama bin Laden. On April 28 President Obama signs General Petraeus’ transfer to CIA and next day signs the orders to attack the Abbottabad compounds. Thus Osama bin Laden’s credit is assured to President Obama.
On 29 April after President Obama signed the orders to “bring back” Osama bin Laden,Pakistani security agencies get a report that another order had been signed which had authorized US forces to neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear assets, if needed. The report was nothing short of seeing a death angel for the top Pak Military brass. Seeing the imminent threat, General Kayani tried his last shot when on 30 April 2011 he clearly stated in his Youm-e-Shuhada address: “Pakistan is a peace-loving country and wants friendly relations with other countries and our every step should move towards prosperity of the people. But we will not compromise our dignity and honour for it”. However, it didn’t stop what was about to come 24 hours later.
As night fell on Sunday, 1st May four choppers from a US Afghan base at a low altitude towards its destination in Abbottabad, to the same compound where Osama’s children were in the hiding. Without any detection courtesy of their latest stealth technology and Pakistan’s outdated technology the choppers continued over the Pakistani territory. Ironically, ten years ago a Pak Air force air commodore had raised concern about the outdated radar technology citing that US or worse India could fly helicopters into the country and take out nuclear installations and in reply he was shown the boot while no upgrades to the systems were made.
Anyway, the four choppers made it to the compound in Abbottabad. It is then that PakArmy was notified that they have a choice. Either face an entire barrage of US choppers attacking Pak nuclear assets or hand over Osama’s body. In the meanwhile the small gun battle at the Abbottabad compound continued and to give the drama some authenticity the US forces torched one of their own choppers. Pressed for time a Pakistani helicopter flew from Tarbela carrying dead body of Osama bin Laden which was stored in a cold storage there. While at Abbottabad Pak Army soldiers encircle the entire area around the compound within five minutes of the start of fire fight. The firefight continued for 35 more minutes, waiting for the Pakistani helicopter. Once the Pakistani helicopter reached the compound the three US choppers and the Pakistani helicopter flew towards the Afghan border, this time without the need to fly below the radar detection altitude.
Next day, the world woke up to the news that Osama bin Laden was dead and President Obama had delivered what President Bush and Dick Cheney couldn’t. But the Pak Military brass did not wake up, because they never slept the night before. Last night they had woken to the realization that US could fly under the radar and take out Pakistan’s nuclear assets at any time.
© 2024, All Rights Reserved by Pakistan Think Tank.
