With the ISI being accused of both complicity and incompetence in Pakistan's inability to nab al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the civil and military leadership of the country on Thursday picked up cudgels for the beleaguered spy agency and sought to remind the world that its achievements in nabbing terrorists had no parallel.
At the same time, Pakistan Army admitted shortcomings in developing intelligence on Osama's presence in the country and ordered an investigation into the circumstances that led to the situation where the Central Intelligence Agency — after developing intelligence based on information provided by the ISI —did not share further leads contrary to the existing practice between the two services.
A decision to this effect was taken by the Army at the Corps Commanders meeting convened by Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on the one-point agenda of the Osama killing. According to a statement put out by the Inter Services Public Relations, another such violation of Pakistan's sovereignty by the U.S. would warrant a review of the level of military/intelligence cooperation with Washington.
Meanwhile, describing the charge that the ISI was in cahoots with the al-Qaeda as a false hypothesis, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir said “this cannot be validated and flies in the face of what the ISI has been able to accomplish against terrorism”.
More details
Giving more details about what transpired in Abbottabad in the early hours of May 2, Mr. Bashir said the first inkling of the operation came when one of the U.S. helicopters “crashed, mal-functioned or was destroyed”. Since helicopters normally do not fly in the dead of the night, relevant departments were alerted and it was established that it was not a Pakistani chopper. The General Headquarters then issued instructions to forces in the area to rush to the spot and two F-16 fighters were airborne.
The first Pakistani units reached the spot within 15 minutes by when the U.S. helicopters were on their way out. “That is how we found out from bin Laden's family members that he had been killed. Around 3 a.m., U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen telephoned Gen. Kayani and disclosed that this was a U.S. operation…. Subsequently President Obama spoke to President Zardari.”
Time and again, Mr. Bashir drew attention to the fact that this was a covert operation carried out by the U.S. and “had something gone wrong, it could have led to a terrible catastrophe”.
Though he flagged legal questions raised by such unilateral action against a sovereign country, he remained non-committal to a direct question on whether Pakistan considered the raid legal. “I'm not saying if it is legal or illegal; that is for historians to judge.”
