Imtiaz Gul - Pakistan Before and After Osama

Imtiaz Gul

Lotus Collection

Imtiaz Gul, 2012

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First published in 2012

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Cover: Ritika Rai
Layout: Sanjeev Mathpal
Production: Shaji Sahadevan

ISBN: 978-81-7436-909-3

Preface

A round 07:45 in the morning of 2 May 2011 two consecutive calls on my cellphone pulled me out of bed.

Osama has been found and killed in Abbottabad, said the caller, my younger brother. This electrifying revelation worked more than what the early morning coffee does to you. Taken over by a strong feeling of shock and shame, I recalled what observation Amrullah Saleh, the former chief of Afghan intelligence National Directorate of Security (NDS), had made at a conference organized by the Jamestown Foundation in Washington on 13 December 2010.

Unless all these boys [OBL, Mulla Omar, Hekmatyar] are pulled out of the basements of their hideouts in Pakistan, there will be no peace in Afghanistan, nor will the violence come down, Saleh had thundered in a gathering of almost 350 people at the National Press Club, where I was also to read a paper on the troubles in the border regions.

Saleh repeated those words immediately after Operation Neptunes Spear and claimed his people had traced Osama bin Laden back in 2007.

I was pretty sure he was in the settled areas of Pakistan because in 2005 it was still very easy to infiltrate the tribal areas, and we had massive numbers of informants there, he said. They could find any Arab but not Bin Laden. Our intelligence became more precise in 2007 when we believed he was hiding in Mansehra, a town a short distance from Abbottabad where the NDS had identified two al-Qaida safe houses, Saleh said.

Saleh also sent former President Pervez Musharraf in a fit of rage when told Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. Am I the President of the Republic of Banana? Saleh recalled Musharraf reacting. Saleh adds, Then he turned to President Karzai and said, Why have you brought this Panjshiri guy to teach me intelligence? The spat happened during a meeting between Afghani President Hamid Karzai and Musharraf, Saleh had told us during the Jamestown Foundation conference.

Saleh, an ethnic Tajik from the Panjshir valley, northern Afghanistan, is known for his penchant for Pakistan-bashing, and this was one of the reasons why Karzai removed him from the NDS in summer 2010. His occasional public outbursts against Pakistan made it impossible for the two countries to even speak of intelligence sharing and thus was seen as the major hurdle in the way of better bilateral relations.

And now, on 2 May 2011, with the discovery of Osama bin Laden, the worlds most wanted and dangerous man in Abbottabad, Pakistans equivalent of the US West Point Academy named after Maj. Abbott, people like Karzai and Saleh felt vindicated.

I had lived in the town in the early 1980s, and have since been visiting friends there. In fact, we visited a special Pakistan Independence Day ceremony at the Pakistan Military Academy on 14 August 2010 when the Pakistan Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had addressed cadets in the presence of several hundred guests. A year later on 23 April to be precise, we were among a number of journalists and writers invited again to witness a graduation ceremony, where Gen. Kayani gave a passionate speech while addressing fresh graduates of the academy. Our security forces have broken the back of terrorists and the nation will soon prevail over the menace, Kayani promised. The general also asserted that the Pakistan army was completely aware of internal and external threats to the country. Ironically, none of us would have imagined that Osama bin Laden and his family lived within 2 kilometres of the academy, and probably listening to Kayanis speech, which was resounding across the valley because of multiple loudspeakers placed around the parade ground.