The US air assault which killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan threatens to blow apart the two countries’ strategic military alliance, if it transpires Pakistani forces were unaware of the impending action, a leading military analyst has warned.
Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said that if it was found that the killing of the US’s most-wanted terrorist on Monday had been staged unilaterally, that could undermine an already strained relationship and imperil stability in the region.
“I fear a much more serious issue arising between the US and Pakistan, if the Pakistani military was not a partner in this venture”, Nawaz said in a telephone interview yesterday. “I fear that that will seriously accelerate the declining trajectory of this relationship.”
“Big questions remain” about the nature of the US operation, Nawaz told Emerging Markets shortly before he was due to testify at a congressional hearing on security threats to the US emanating from Pakistan.
He said that the focus of attention should be on whether Pakistan’s military gave a green light to the operation, which led to the death of the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“A big question remains [about] the four helicopters – which flew over Afghanistan and penetrated Pakistani airspace under the radar for 120 miles did their job and then exited without being stopped. [Was that] the success of US [military] technology, or was it because they’d been given a route that was cleared by the Pakistanis?”
If the action was taken without prior knowledge by the Pakistani military, the result could be a breakdown of coalition efforts to combat insurgency in the region.
“It will slow down the cooperation on Afghanistan and related matters. That’s not good for either the US, the coalition, or Pakistan,” Nawaz said. “Pakistan and the US are co-dependent, at least for the foreseeable future.”
Nawaz’s comments came amid growing questions about what Pakistani officials knew about Bin Laden’s whereabouts. President Asif Ali Zardari lashed out at accusations his country secretly sheltered the September 11 mastermind.
“Some in the US press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing,” Zardari said yesterday. “Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t reflect fact.”
Nawaz suggested the civilian government did not call the shots and was subordinate to the military on security issues. “[The government] are out of the loop to some extent when it comes to security and cooperation of Afghanistan,” he said. “They haven’t really asserted themselves on policymaking inside Pakistan. The US pays lip service to their participation.”
He added: “The only thing that’s clear is that [President] Zardari learnt about it from Obama – not from his own people.”
A growing number of observers – including US lawmakers – have said it is inconceivable that Bid Laden was harboured unwittingly. The accusations have prompted talk that the US might cut off economic aid to Pakistan.
“If [US funding] goes then there will be a serious problem in funding the battle and you may find economic resource being redirected internally if [Pakistan] wants to continue the fight on their own,” Nawaz said.