Legend of Bin Laden dashed, West loses footing in Pakistan

A Fork in the Road of U.S.-Pakistani Ties
By Barbara Slavin

WASHINGTON, May 3, 2011 (IPS) – The U.S. discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden in a compound some 50 kilometres from Islamabad is a “defining moment” for a U.S.-Pakistan relationship fraught with duplicity and dashed expectations.

U.S. and Pakistani officials and foreign policy experts struggled Tuesday to find something positive to say about the relationship following bin Laden’s dramatic denouement. Some suggested that Pakistan would now have to be more forthcoming in rolling up remaining al Qaeda elements in the country and cutting back on sanctuary for Afghan militants.

Concerns mounted, however, that the fact that the al Qaeda leader had found sanctuary in Abbottabad for as long as six years would destroy what little trust remains between the two countries and dash hopes to forge a long-term relationship anchored by 7.5 billion dollars in U.S. economic aid over 10 years.

U.S. officials have not explicitly accused Pakistan of harbouring bin Laden but said that it strains credulity to believe that the Saudi fugitive – who had a 25-million-dollar price on his head – could have stayed in an Islamabad suburb that is also home to Pakistan’s most prestigious military academy and numerous military retirees without, as President Barack Obama’s intelligence adviser John Brennan put it Monday, “some kind of support system”.

On Tuesday, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters, “It’s kind of hard to imagine the [Pakistani] military or police did not have ideas about what was going on inside [the compound].”

The president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, denied the allegations in a Washington Post op-ed, calling it “baseless speculation”. But given the historic power of the military and Pakistani intelligence services compared to elected civilian governments, it is possible, even likely, that Zardari and much of the rest of his cabinet had no knowledge of bin Laden’s whereabouts until U.S. Navy Seals entered his hiding place. …more