CIA and OBL
PROFESSOR ALI SUKHANVER
If we suppose for the time being that the intelligence agencies of Pakistan failed in tracing out the presence of Osama in Pakistan, what about the CIA; world’s most powerful intelligence agency? What had the CIA been doing for more than five years when allegedly Osama was residing here in Pakistan before his murder? This question leads us to a different story. If someone on the earth was sheltering Osama, it was none but CIA. Osama was in fact a character portrayed, refined, supported and favoured by the CIA but later on this character became so popular among all the Muslims throughout the world that it became a threat to the CIA itself. On 24th August, 1998, Michael Moran writes in a New York paper, “At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.” Most of the people in Pakistan still believe that the Abbotabad operation was simply an eyewash; there was no Bin Laden, no Al-Qaeda and no member of the Bin Laden family residing there in Abbotabad. The Americans did murder Bin Laden, but not in Abbotabad; they arrested him from somewhere else, slaughtered him, and kidnapped his family and boarded them all in US helicopters and ultimately landed there in Abbotabad; and then the story goes on. People have a very strong argument in support of their opinion; if Bin Laden was really there in Abbotabad, the US troopers must have tried their best to arrest him alive and produced him in front of the media at a symbol of their victory, success and achievement. And in case it was not possible to arrest him alive because of his strong resentment, they could have made a movie of the whole operation. Moreover, in their heat and haste the US policymakers forgot all the norms of diplomacy and all the requirements of a sovereign state. They ordered their troopers to cross the border violating the sovereignty of Pakistan in an unlawful and illegitimate rather criminal way. The situation could have been very much different if they had taken the Pakistani authorities into confidence before acting upon this 007 type of action. Keeping the details of the Abbotabad operation secret from Pakistan reflects lack of trust and confidence on the part of US policymakers. The whole of the Abbotabad Operation was nothing but simply an attempt of disfiguring and deforming the image of the security agencies of Pakistan. Since after the episode, CIA supported analysts are busy in concocting stories regarding the relationship between Laden and the ISI. They are trying to make the world realize that Osama Bin Laden had been taking shelter since long under the umbrella of ISI but the facts and realities are altogether otherwise.
