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Journalism of Courage
A leaked Pakistani government report on the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden has revealed the fugitive al Qaeda chief had been in Pakistan since 2002 after escaping American troops in Afghanistans Tora Bora area and blamed his presence in the country and the US raid as an intelligence-security failure rooted in political incompetency.
Related: ‘Operation to kill Osama was risky’
It also says that President Asif Ali Zardari was the last to be informed about the raid in Abbottabad,with Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani calling him more than five hours after the operation,hours after the Prime Minister and foreign secretary were told about it.
The commission notes that Pakistan for years ignored the security of its western borders that had become far more immediately threatening than the eastern border with India.
Coming down hard on Pakistans military establishment,the report of the Abbottabad Commission released by Al Jazeera channel Monday also blames the army for its military exercise of authority and influence in policy and administrative areas for which it has neither constitutional or legal authority,nor the necessary expertise and competence.
The commission was formed in June 2011 to investigate the US raid the previous month,the circumstances leading to the presence of bin Laden in Abbottabad as well as to assign responsibility for the failure. Al Jazeera says one page that contained statements by then ISI chief Lt Gen Shuja Pasha is missing from copies of the commission report it could access.
The first official version of the raid,which relies on testimonies of several eyewitnesses,including the wives and children of bin Laden,says that the terrorist leader was shot dead in his room on the second floor of the fortified house and did not attempt to put up a defence. It says that bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot and did not attempt to use his wife or children as a shield against the attackers.
It had taken the US special forces approximately 36-38 minutes to complete the killing operation. Approximately 30 bullets were fired. All this time,one Chinook and one stealth Black Hawk kept circling the Abbottabad valley and came to the compound after the killings were completed and materials were collected, the report says.
Going into the details of the raid,the commission has noted that the Pakistani military completely failed to detect incoming aircraft and could not even reach the Abbottabad complex in time even though bomb explosions and the crashed chopper had made adequate noise.
The report says that the Pakistani air force had not deployed adequate radar coverage on its western border as it considered India as the primary threat and did not realign its security posture for over a decade despite consistent raids and cross-border violations by US troops.
India and not the US remained the focus of our security planning even when the western border had become far more immediately threatening than the eastern border. Needless to say,the front deserved the necessary security attention in view of the history and state of Pak-India relations – but it should never have been at the expense of the far more immediate,if lesser threat that had emerged in the west, the report notes.
The panel,which examined over 200 people,has said that the inability to detect the presence of bin Laden in the country for over nine years was a failure at all levels of the Pakistani government and security agencies. It has named the ISI,army,revenue department and even the local military area of Abbottabad for the failure.
