Pakistan: our false friend

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/05/2011 (5448 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The killing of Osama bin Laden by American special forces in Pakistan last week was a remarkable achievement. The U.S. navy SEALs who shot him dead in his fortified compound in Abbottabad, just a short drive away from Islamabad, cut off the head of al-Qaida.

That was a triumph for America. But as subsequent events indicate, and as threatened terrorist attacks on the West may prove, the Hydra of terrorism has many heads — cut off one and another grows back. Contrary to what U.S. President Barack Obama is telling Americans on TV, the war on terror is not over.

And one can hardly guess where it might go and grow from here, although American strategy in the raid on Abbottabad gives an indication Washington is finally twigging to the fact the government of Pakistan is a frail reed on which to lean, even though it is ostensibly an ally in the war on terror.

Canada and other NATO nations should be paying attention to this, too, since we, like the Americans, count on our Pakistani friends to help us win the war in Afghanistan, where more than 150 Canadian soldiers and more than 1,500 American soldiers have already died.

The United States did not feel confident enough to inform its allies in Islamabad of the raid it conducted a week ago Sunday on bin Laden’s hideaway. The fear was — and it seems to have been a legitimate fear — that the Pakistani government itself, or elements within it, or within its intelligence services or within its military, were collaborating with al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden in hiding him and facilitating his terrorist plots. The Sheikh of Islam, as bin Laden liked to call himself, had, after all, been “hiding” under the noses of Pakistan’s military and intelligence elite for five or six years with no one, apparently, guessing he was there. It took CIA agents, working at an obvious disadvantage to their Pakistani counterparts, to track him down by tracing the couriers who went in and out of the compound — bin Laden, quite sensibly, trusted neither computers nor post offices to deliver his terrorist instructions.

The government of Pakistan, although it pays lip service to the idea that the elimination of bin Laden was a good thing, is furious with the Americans for their unilateral action in taking him out. Pakistani jets were scrambled when news of the SEALs raid leaked out, but they were scrambled too late to do anything about it. Bin Laden was already dead, his body headed for a burial at sea. Pakistan officials have refused to allow Americans to interrogate the survivors of the raid, including three of bin Laden’s wives, fearful, perhaps of what they might reveal about Pakistani involvement in the hideaway.

This is a diplomatic dog’s breakfast. The NATO forces in Afghanistan need Pakistan’s help in controlling Taliban and al-Qaida forces in the wild northwest frontier between those two countries. But the Pakistanis increasingly show they cannot be trusted to commit themselves to this war. They have at least one different agenda or, worse, they have several different agendas. The government of Pakistan is angry and offended by the raid, although it has no real right to be. Western governments involved in Afghanistan need to concentrate their diplomatic efforts now in convincing Pakistan its own future as a secular society depends on its commitment to the war against Islamic extremists in Afghanistan. Until it proves it understands that, it must continue to be treated as the false friend it seems to be.