On the May 1, 2011,Americans learned that US Special Ops had found and killed Osama bin Laden in the dead of night in Pakistan. He was hiding in “plain sight,” less than a mile from the military academy. The US released a picture showing President Obama, Secretary Clinton and other cabinet members glued to a TV screen watching the operation live.
Asked by reporters about what had just happened, General Musharraf, never shy of commenting, said that Pakistan was incompetent in not detecting the US intrusion into its airspace. Perhaps he did not want to take any credit for killing Osama because the latter was popular in Pakistan.
A year later, the movie “Zero Dark Thirty”was released. Secretary Leon Panetta spoke favourably about the film. I saw it in an IMAX 3D theatre and felt the vibrations of the helicopters as they entered Pakistani airspace.
The movie raised several troubling questions. How long had Osama been living there? Did the army know that he was there? There were no immediate answers.
How did the helicopters penetrate undetected into Pakistan? I recall the Air Chief saying that our radars were pointed east. Somehow, they detected the Soviet intrusions along the Durand Line in the 1980s. Moreover,if the radars could only detect movements from the east, would the Indians not come around from the west?
Ah, but the US had used stealth helicopters. I spoke to a former fighter pilot who is familiar with the terrain. He said it was impossible for a helicopter flying at 150 feet above ground to go undetected. Several populated areas lay underneath their flight path.
Then there is the issue one of the helicopters crashing into Osama’s compound. The fire and noise would have been hard to ignore. So why did the army not respond?
There was a third opportunity to intercept them when they flew back to Afghanistan.By now the east-facing radar should have picked them up. But nothing happened.
Pakistan did not want to take any credit for killing the world’s most wanted man. My mind flashed back to a conversation I had in 2005 with a military attaché. I asked him where is Osama. He said:How would I know?I said OK I will grant you that. But suppose you found him hiding in a hut, and he was killed, what would you do? He said we will dump his body on the other side of the border.
General Durrani in “Spy Chronicles,” which he co-authored with a former head of the RAW, says that Osama was not found just by Dr. Afridi but also by “a retired Pakistani officer who was in intelligence walked in and told the Americans.” Durrani would not name him but is confident that the officer had left Pakistan and collected the booty.
Perhaps Pakistani cooperation was necessary to reduce the risks of the US operation.Durrani says that Pakistan is not accepting its part in the operation for political reasons. The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Seymour Hirsh, had said the same thing in 2015.
Durrani also comments on the other thorny issue in Pakistani military history, the Kargil operation of 1998/99. He calls Kargil a foolish operation and says that it was a setback for the Kashmir cause. Air Marshal Asghar Khan had said the same thing.
Kargil had been Musharraf’s obsession ever since Pakistan lost it in 1971, according to Durrani. Cocksure that Pakistan enjoyed “nuclear immunity,” Musharraf launched the mission. He misjudged India’s strong reaction. And he failed to anticipate the world’s reaction. Even China said: “Are we not friends? You’ve made your point, now withdraw.” Kargil misfired and the tactical gains vanished in a few months, as detailed in Nasim Zehra’s recent book.
Durrani said he was not amused when he read the transcript of the taped conversation between Musharraf and General Aziz, a senior Pakistani general, which India released during the Kargil operation to prove that regular Pakistani troops were involved in it. Musharraf acted “unwisely, talking on an open line.” He also blames Musharraf for starting “the current phase of militancy” by sending the troops into South Waziristan in 2004.
The book has evoked the ire of the former dictator. Musharraf said Durrani acted foolishly by writing the book. He claims he had dismissed Durrani from the ambassadorial post in Riyadh because he was not performing well.
Durrani says that Kayani, the army chief when Osama was killed, was “professionally sound” and his favorite student at the National Defence College. But Kayani is keeping away from him “lest I ask if he made a deal [with the US to get Osama killed].”
The former army man also says that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a figurehead who “commands one PA and one orderly.”I had made the same point in 2003 while discussing Pakistan’s failures in wartime. The Chairman should be the senior most military officer in the country who can enforce inter-service coordination.
And he does not spare the US in his remarks. He says all the US can do to enforce its will is bomb and bomb. He calls Leon Panetta “obnoxious.”When asked why he had ordered a drone to hit non-combatants in a tribal area, Panetta said,“heartlessly it was not a glee party.” In other words, he was telling Pakistan: “How dare you keep our guy [Raymond Davis] in prison for six weeks?”
Durrani admires how the British calmly handled the 7/7 attack and contrasts that with the rash and clumsy manner in which the US reacted after 9/11. He says the British are a hundred years ahead [of the US]. “The Americans were more powerful than Britain ever was when they became the sole superpower in 1990-91… Ten years later, the decline began. Now no one takes them seriously.”
Despite these harsh words, there is no sign that the US is coming after Durrani.However, in Pakistan,the general’s name has been placed on the exit control list and his behaviour is under investigation.
Durrani has not said anything new. However, being a retired three-star general and the former head of the ISI, he is not expected to contradict the official narrative about national security. Given his long career in the army, he must have known that unwritten rule. So why did he break it?
Perhaps his bigger sin was not saying what he said but saying it jointly with his Indian counterpart.
The author has written,”Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, June 9th 2018.