Osama bin Laden death: Pakistan's army fights to restore credibility

Osama bin Laden death: Pakistan's army fights to restore credibility
Testimony of 12 survivors released by spy agency as US ordered to cut military presence in Pakistan to a minimum

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Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Jon Boone in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 May 2011 21.39 BST
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Pakistani soldiers in South Waziristan. The 500,000-strong army has had to endure a barrage of accusations. Photograph: Nicolas Asfouri/Reuters
Battered by American accusations of duplicity and collusion with Osama bin Laden, and withering criticism at home, Pakistan's army is striking back with the main tool at its disposal: the word of his surviving relatives.

The military's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, or ISI, is releasing a steady drip of testimony from the 12 survivors of the US raid on Bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad. It includes the account of bin Laden's 12-year-old daughter, who said she saw her father shot, and information about his 29-year-old Yemeni wife, who is being treated at a military hospital in Rawalpindi.

Analysts said the army was seeking to deflect attention from angry questions about how the world's most famous fugitive could hide less than a mile from Pakistan's top military academy.

"A damage limitation exercise is going on," said Cyril Almeida, columnist with Dawn newspaper in Islamabad. "The army is scrambling to come out with a coherent response to questions that don't have easy answers."

In its first statement since the raid, the army ordered the US to reduce its military presence in Pakistan to a "minimum level". It was a symbolic move, given there are only 275 US soldiers in Pakistan, but one that sought to stem intense public anger over Sunday's unilateral American commando raid.

Some Pakistani officials would prefer if the world focused on the violence of the raid. Photos that emerged on Wednesday showed the bodies of three men lying in pools of blood, one being the "courier" whose calls led the US to believe Bin Laden was in the compound. Reuters, which published the photos, said they had been bought from a "Pakistani security official" who wished to remain anonymous.

The testimony of Bin Laden's family members, made public through the ISI, has helped focus attention on the circumstances of his death, a narrative in difficulty after the White House was forced to correct significant details, such as the initial claim that bin Laden used his wife as a human shield.

It later emerged that Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, a Yemeni aged 29, remains alive and is being treated for a gunshot wound at a medical facility in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, close to Pakistan's military headquarters.

A photograph of her passport was given to or obtained by the Pakistani press, and has been widely republished.

Pakistan's 500,000-strong army, which prides itself on its nuclear arsenal, has rarely had to endure such a barrage of accusations. In recent days White House officials, the CIA chief, and a host of senior US politicians have either insinuated or bluntly alleged that the ISI is playing a "double game" that may have included support for Bin Laden.

David Cameron joined the chorus of discord, saying Bin Laden's death left "lots of questions" to be answered.

The criticism is not just from the west. In Jakarta, officials say that an Indonesian terror suspect arrested this year in Abbottabad was intending to meet Bin Laden, raising questions over how isolated he was in his final months.

In Afghanistan, a former intelligence chief told the Guardian that four years ago Pakistan ignored a tip-off that Bin Laden was hiding near Abbottabad. Amrullah Saleh, former head of the National Directorate of Security, which has a long-standing rivalry with the ISI, said that he had believed in 2007 that Bin Laden was hiding in Mansehra,very near Abbottabad, in one of two al-Qaida safe houses. When he put this to Pakistan's then president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, he grew furious and smashed his fist on the table, said Saleh. "Am I the president of the Republic of Banana?" said Musharraf, Saleh recalled, leading an alarmed President Hamid Karzai, also at the meeting, to intervene.

Saleh, a fierce critic of Pakistan who has now entered Afghan politics, said he had no doubts that Mullah Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban, is hiding in an ISI safe house in Karachi: "He is protected by ISI. General Pasha [Lieutenant-General Shuja Pasha, the ISI director general] knows, as I am talking to you, where Omar is, and he keeps daily briefs from his officers on the location of senior Taliban leaders."

But the Pakistan army's greatest worry is at home, where it faces unprecedented criticism.

The Bin Laden operation has triggered a barrage of questions about whether the military knew of the assault, and, if not, how US helicopters managed to enter from Afghanistan without permission, carry out a violent 40-minute raid in a town teeming with soldiers, and fly out unhindered with the body of the world's most famous fugitive.

Pakistani newspapers have carried sharp editorials against the army, while even pro-army TV personalities (hugely influential in Pakistani politics) have made extraordinary attacks on the generals.

"Never before has there been such sustained and fierce criticism of the army," said Almeida. "You would have to rewind to 1971 [when east Pakistan violently seceded to become Bangladesh] to find this kind of national outrage and discontent."

"People are saying: 'We spend hundreds of billions of rupees on you guys every year, and what do you have to show for it?' It strikes at the heart of what this military feels that it exists for."

The accusations could cost Pakistan dear. Enraged by the idea that the military sheltered Bin Laden, some US politicians have called for the US government to slash the annual $3bn aid package, mostly to the military. Pakistan's Washington lobbyists, under orders from President Asif Ali Zardari have begun a public relations offensive on Capitol Hill to counter the American allegations.

But despite the invective, American officials have offered no hard evidence Pakistan was colluding with Bin Laden. Pakistani officials point to their role in arresting several senior al-Qaida figures, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, over the past decade.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/05/pakistan-army-osama-bin-laden