Opinion Netflix’s new Osama bin Laden series: Why the US didn’t inform Pakistan govt about its mission in Abbottabad

It also briefly touches upon why Obama decided against alerting the Pakistan government about his decision to raid what they suspected to be bin Laden’s residence on the night of May 2, 2011.

How the bin Laden hunt led to Pakistan

The United States began the mission to find Laden even before the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon (headquarters of the US Department of Defence). Around 3,000 Americans died in what was the biggest terror attack on US soil.

Bin Laden, who hailed from Saudi Arabia, was known to US intelligence agencies because of his links to funding mujahideen. As far back as 1996, the CIA’s Counter-Terrorist Centre (CTC) set up a special unit dedicated to analysing his actions in the Middle East and Africa.

In the late 1990s, he shifted base to Afghanistan and formed al-Qaeda, intending to wage global jihad. The US government had earlier supported mujahideens in the country to push back against Soviet presence (1979-89). However, bin Laden was of the view that the United States was the real enemy that needed to be targeted for its interference in the Middle East, and its supposed incompatibility with Islamic values.

The manhunt intensified right after 2001, with US officials believing that the Taliban government in Afghanistan was sheltering al-Qaeda and bin Laden, and ultimately dislodging it from power. However, bin Laden remained at large. Finally, towards the end of the 2000s, his presence in Pakistan was zeroed in on through several clues, including tracking courier movements and satellite imagery.

This information led US intelligence officers to a three-story white mansion in Abbottabad, which had two families going in and out, but seemed to house a third set of inhabitants. It had high walls and a covered balcony, which stood out in a town known for its scenic views of mountains.

How Obama viewed the Pakistani government

However, US agencies still lacked definitive proof. The decision for the US SEAL Team 6, a specialised force, to reach Abbottabad via Afghanistan and not inform the Pakistan government was thus further complicated.

The Obama war cabinet gave mixed opinions on going in without concrete evidence. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lent her support, while Vice President Joe Biden opposed it. Ultimately, Obama decided in favour of it.

John Brennan, who was the chief counterterrorism advisor to Obama at the time of the mission, said in the documentary, “President Obama was clear that we’re not going to inform the Pakistanis, because Pakistani intelligence has worked both sides of the fence for many years, and they had relationships with a lot of the militant and terrorist groups in the areas, including with al-Qaeda.”

In his book A Promised Land (2020), Obama detailed this view. Even during the 2008 presidential campaign, he said during a public debate, “If I had Osama bin Laden in my sights within Pakistani territory, and the Pakistani government was unwilling or unable to capture or kill him, I would take the shot.”

He criticised the Bush administration for maintaining “the dual fiction that Pakistan was a reliable partner in the war against terrorism and that we never encroached on Pakistani territory in the pursuit of terrorists.”

A report by Bruce Riedel, a former National Intelligence Officer, is also mentioned in the book. It said that “Not only did the Pakistan military (and in particular its intelligence arm, ISI) tolerate the presence of Taliban headquarters and leadership in Quetta, near the Pakistani border, but it was also quietly assisting the Taliban as a means of keeping the Afghan government weak and hedging against Kabul’s potential alignment with Pakistan’s archrival, India.”

However, the US was still dependent on Pakistan for overland routes to supply their Afghanistan operations, and to “tacitly facilitate our counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaeda camps within its territory.”

Still, Obama was clear that for the bin Laden mission, “Whatever option we chose could not involve the Pakistanis. Although Pakistan’s government cooperated with us on a host of counterterrorism operations… it was an open secret that certain elements inside the country’s military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaeda.”

He added, “The fact that the Abbottabad compound was just a few miles from the Pakistan military’s equivalent of West Point (the Pakistan Military Academy) only heightened the possibility that anything we told the Pakistanis could end up tipping off our target. Whatever we chose to do in Abbottabad, then, would involve violating the territory of a putative ally in the most egregious way possible, short of war— raising both the diplomatic stakes and the operational complexities.”

What Pakistan knew about bin Laden

In the immediate aftermath of the mission, the Pakistani government denied having any information about bin Laden’s whereabouts. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US in 2011, later claimed that Pakistan would have gained in terms of its credibility on terror-related issues by cooperating on bin Laden, and would have actually helped the US if it knew his location.

Several commentators have questioned the possibility of the Pakistan government being totally unaware. A report in The New York Times claimed in 2014 that over time, US officials would deny any culpability of the Pakistani government to journalists. “It was as if a decision had been made to contain the damage to the relationship between the two governments,” it said.

One source also told The NYT that the ISI “ran a special desk assigned to handle Bin Laden. It was operated independently, led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior.”

Further, the files collected from bin Laden’s house revealed regular correspondence between Bin Laden and leaders such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, whom the Pakistan government is known to have supported in the past.

On its part, Pakistan set up a commission of inquiry after the Abbottabad raid. Its contents were never made public, but Al Jazeera claimed to have unearthed it in 2014. It said, “The Commission’s 336-page report is scathing, holding both the government and the military responsible for “gross incompetence” leading to “collective failures” that allowed both Bin Laden to escape detection, and the United States to perpetrate “an act of war”.”