Part 2
- United Sates was able to get Pakistani cooperation by promising continuation of military aid, providing bullet proof limousines, security guards and housing for ISI leadership.
Pakistan was receiving billions of dollars over a decade and Pakistanis didn’t need to embark on such an adventure. Remainder conclusion about security guards and housing is simply laughable.
- CIA and ISI engaged in public feuds to cover their assess. The outing of name of Islamabad’s CIA station chief Jonathan Banks in December 2010 most likely by ISI was preparation of a cover up months ahead of the OBL operation.
This is really a stretch of imagination. Those who are familiar with U.S.-Pakistani military and intelligence relations of that time period know very well deterioration of relations on several fronts due to policy and personality clashes.
- In the whole operation, only one stray bullet hit knee of OBL’s wife. Nothing was left of OBL’s body except head because SEAL team members shattered it into pieces with rifle fire. This was done before they left Abbottabad because they threw some of the body parts over Hindu Kush mountains during flight.
Facts from various sources do not support this conclusion. One doesn’t need to be an ordnance specialist to figure out how many rounds of ammunition will be needed to shatter a six foot tall human body with rifle fire. If true, then it means that after completing operation, SEALs put in hundreds of bullets in OBL’s body in Abbottabad and then collect all body pieces, put it in a body bag and during the return flight throw these pieces over Hindu Kush therefore by the time they land in Jalalabad nothing is left to bury except bullet ridden head.
- Pakistanis decided to cooperate with Americans when confronted with the news of presence of OBL. After the operation, relations Pakistani-American relations soured but then Pakistanis decided to cooperate because of the threat from ISIS.
When Americans confronted Pakistanis about the presence of OBL, the simple solution for Pakistan was to eliminate him. They could eliminate him and tell the Americans to prove it that it was in fact OBL. Hersh wants us to believe that the powerful ISI that is allegedly supporting every bad guy of the planet is not able to eliminate one of its own prisoners. Hersh’s assertion that Pakistanis decided to embrace Americans again because of the rise of ISIS in Pakistan is stretching the truth to the extreme. No one with even rudimentary knowledge about Pakistan believes this claim. There is no evidence of any significant ISIS presence in Pakistan let alone Pakistan army’s fear to a level that they came running back to Americans.
The only Pakistani source which Hersh used is former DGISI Lieutenant General ® Asad Durrani. Hersh quotes Durrani’s interview with Al Jazeera that ‘it was quite possible that the senior officers of ISI did not know where bin Ladin had been hiding but it was more probable that they did know’. In addition, Durrani agreed with Hersh’s version but confirmed only one aspect that there had been an informant who alerted to OBL’s presence in Abbottabad through second hand sources from Pakistan’s strategic community. To be fair to Durrani, he has given his opinion candidly while acknowledging that he doesn’t have any proof or convincing evidence. Two former DG ISI have given their own take on the subject. Former DG ISI Lieutenant General ® Khwaja Ziauddin is on record stating in an interview on 11 December 2011 that he is convinced that former Director Intelligence Bureau (IB) Brigadier ® Ijaz Shah was responsible for hiding OBL with the knowledge of General Pervez Mussharraf. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DThgijCy9gA)
Former DG ISI Lieutenant General ® Hamid Gul in an interview on 11 May 2011 with CCN stated that he believes that OBL died from natural death several years ago and Abbottabad operation was a hoax to help Obama’s re-election. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWw6NI0nSLw)
Few words about Pakistani officer corps for the uninitiated are must to understand their statements and views. They are products of their society and like society they don’t trust official versions. In addition, society in general tends to view events through a conspiracy lens. The problem for officer corps is the choice between incompetency and failure versus collusion and there is no other option available. In my own conversations with dozens of officers of different ranks the score is fifty-fifty where half believe in incompetency while the other half believe that there was some element of collusion. Their opinion in either case is not supported by any convincing evidence.
I looked at one aspect in detail and that was Pakistan’s airspace issue. If army high command asked army and air force’s air defense to stand down to allow U.S. helicopters for the operation then there must be some clues left in the wake of the operation. A senior Pakistani air force officer who was given access to all records of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) during that time period provided many details. He also had access to the PAF’s inquiry headed by an Air Marshal after the incident. No country can afford a radar coverage capability that covers all areas at all times. Pakistan’s assignment of radars is based on threat perception and categorization as a Vulnerable Area (VA) or Vulnerable Point (VP). Pakistan’s high level radars (2000 feet and above) have extensive and overlapping 24/7 coverage. However, low level radar coverage is severely limited and most of these radars are on eastern border. Pakistan only had two low level radars in the area from where U.S. helicopters entered Pakistani airspace from Afghanistan. PAF's low level radar coverage doesn’t extend to the Abbottabad sector as it is not considered a VA or VP in peacetime.
The flight paths of the two Blackhawks and two Chinooks were not traceable as they had taken a route that was either beyond the low level range of the two radars or were in the shadows of the surrounding hills. Blackhawk has stealth technology but Chinooks don’t have this capability. Chinooks avoided detection by flying in the valleys. In the final assault only the two Blackhawks ventured in while the Chinooks were stationed at Kaladhaka about twenty five miles from Abbottabad.
According to PAF records, both radars were functional, did not pick up any incoming track nor were subjected to jamming. All flight, local or from abroad operate only after filing a proper flight plan with the relevant authority. Any track that cannot be identified is declared as hostile and emergency action initiated. When initial news reached General Kayani, he rang up air force chief to ask if there was any activity of PAF in the area. The only possibility would be night time flying exercise or a search and rescue mission. PAF chief confirmed no such activity and activated the response. A pair of F-16s was scrambled from Sargodha base and specifically ordered by the Air Chief to shoot down any intruders. By the time the scrambled pair reached over Abbottabad the American choppers had already crossed over to Afghanistan. Some have suggested another scenario where Americans informed General Kayani that they were launching an airborne operation in Waziristan against a high value target but then turned towards Abbottabad. In this case, Pakistan should have communication about the flight path of the choppers into Pakistani air space. However, there is no record of any such communication.
Hersh works for New Yorker magazine but its editors were not convinced with the story therefore they didn’t publish it and London Review of Books chose to publish it. Syemour Hersh is a first rate investigative journalist. We need journalist like Seymour Hersh who can hold the feet of those in power to the fire. However, no work is perfect and this story has many holes. It is nature of covert operations that only a glimpse is visible even to the well informed people and there will always be many unexplained chapters. Intelligence agencies create a façade of invincibility but in reality they are large bureaucratic organizations fully capable of royal blunders. Fifty years after the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy, there are many doubters and surely there will be many more in case of killing of OBL.
Link to the original LRB article:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour...sama-bin-laden
There are a number of previous SWC threads on the OBL raid, including the official Pakistani report on whether there was collusion. They are easily id'd by searching using OBL.
Bookmarks