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Pakistan: The biggest loser in Bin Laden's death


Tue, 03 May 2011

The biggest loser in the successful US raid to kill and bury Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden within less than 24 hours is Pakistan, which has both harboured the Islamic terrorist movement while taking billions of dollars in western military aid.

The daring strike team of helicopter-borne US Navy Seals flew across and back through Pakistan airspace from a base in Afghanistan without being detected.

The target was a large, heavily fortified mansion in a Pakistan military border town of Abbottabad, which is in foothills near India and less than two hours by road northeast of the capital, Islamabad.

The area is home to the elite Pakistan Military Academy and occupied mainly by well-off retired military personnel.

US intelligence believes it was specially built six years ago for bin Laden – something that couldn’t have been done with the complicity of Pakistan’s military and own intelligence service.

So it's not a surprise the US carried out the raid without tipping off Pakistan, fearful that, once again, the elusive bin Laden – the world's most wanted man – would slip away after being forewarned.

The embarrassment to Pakistan’s all-powerful military and weak civilian government must be palpable. For years, Pakistan has fought on both sides of the anti-terrorist war. Its duplicity has been exposed for all to see and will discredit it in both the Western and Islamic worlds.

But the death of bin Laden doesn’t mean the world is safe from terrorism, as the Al Qeada network has evolved in the 10 years since the World Trade Center attacks, with smaller cells, new leaders and other sanctuaries.

The US issued a world travel warning at the moment of bin Laden's death and demonstrated the terrorist threat remained real. So far, none has occurred.

Many around the world will share Salman Rushdie's view that enough is enough from Pakistan and that "perhaps the time has come to declare it a terrorist state and expel it from the comity of nations." He continues:

India, as always Pakistan’s unhealthy obsession, is the reason for the double game. Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India’s supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.

For a long time now America has been tolerating the Pakistani double game in the knowledge that it needs Pakistani support in its Afghan enterprise, and in the hope that Pakistan’s leaders will understand that they are miscalculating badly, that the jihadists want their jobs. Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons, is a far greater prize than poor Afghanistan, and the generals and spymasters who are playing al Qaeda’s game today may, if the worst were to happen, become the extremists’ victims tomorrow.

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Pakistan: The biggest loser in Bin Laden's death
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