Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army chief of staff, spoke to cadets at
the Kakul Military Academy on April 23.
"The terrorists' backbone has been broken and, inshallah [God willing], we
will soon prevail," he said in his speech, which was broadcast on state
television.
The fact that Osama bin Laden was living roughly a mile away from Kakul in
a fortified compound has proved embarrassing both for the Pakistani
military and for its civilian government, calling into question whether they knew
about his presence in Abbottabad — or how they could have failed to know.
"I think that the Pakistani army and intelligence have a lot of questions
to answer, given the location, the length of time and the apparent fact that
this facility was built for bin Laden, and its closeness to the central
location to the Pakistani army," Carl Levin (D-MI), who chairs the Senate
Armed Services committee, told reporters Monday.
Another Possible Casualty?
"A lot of people on our side wonder how this could have happened without the
Pakistanis knowing," says Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations. "If they weren't complicit, they were incompetent, so
why should we bother partnering with them?"
A lot of people on our side wonder how this could have happened without the
Pakistanis knowing. If they weren't complicit, they were incompetent, so
why should we bother partnering with them?
- Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
Both the U.S. and Pakistan have depended heavily on each other over the
past decade. The U.S. has sent billions of dollars in military and economic
assistance to Pakistan, which has been an essential if not always perfect
ally both in fighting terrorism and prosecuting the war in neighboring
Afghanistan.
Relations had weakened during recent months, however. And the question of
how bin Laden came to be living in a densely populated city 35 miles from
the capital, Islamabad, is bound to cause further tensions.
"The best possible outcome of this is that it will cause both sides to do
some fundamental thinking about the relationship," says Richard Fontaine, a
former foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
But, he adds, "It's possible that the relationship with Pakistan will be a
casualty of this."
Hiding In Plain Sight
Abbottabad is home not only to the military academy but to a large number
of retired and active military officers. The compound in which bin Laden was
killed by U.S. Special Forces "has been in existence for roughly five
years," according to a senior Obama administration official.
Several Pakistani presidents have said they didn't know where bin Laden
was, notes Fontaine, the former McCain aide. That was easy to believe when it
was suspected the al-Qaida leader was living in the mountains of
Waziristan, he says. It seems like more of a stretch once it turned out he was living
relatively close to the capital in a structure far larger than the local
norm, behind high walls topped with barbed wire.
"That really deepens suspicions about Pakistani capability or intentions,"
says Fontaine, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American
Security.
What Did The Pakistanis Know?
President Obama took pains to praise the Pakistani government for its help
in fighting al-Qaida in his speech Sunday night.
"It's important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan
helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding," Obama
said.
Officials from both the American and Pakistani governments, however,
stressed that the operation was a unilateral affair carried out solely by U.S.
military and intelligence.
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