By DECLAN WALSH
Published: March 7, 2012
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — In his quest for the truth about his country's
most notorious guest, Shaukat Qadir started where it all ended: the
room where Osama bin Laden was killed.
The house in Abbotabad, Pakistan, last November, several months after
Osama bin Laden was killed there by commandos from the United States.
Last August, Mr. Qadir, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier, retraced
the steps of the American commandos who stormed through the corridors
of Bin Laden's hide-out on May 2.
Climbing the stairs to the second floor, Mr. Qadir passed a body
outline that marked the spot where Bin Laden's 22-year-old son,
Khalid, was shot dead. Then he turned to a small room with a low
ceiling, an empty wardrobe and a tight cluster of bullet holes in one
wall, he said. Above that, on the ceiling, was a fading splash of
blood that, his Pakistani intelligence escort told him, belonged to
Bin Laden.
"As a former soldier, I was struck by how badly the house was
defended," Mr. Qadir said in an interview. "No proper security
measures, nothing high-tech — in fact, nothing like you would expect."
Mr. Qadir's quixotic investigation began as a personal attempt to
truth-check the competing accounts of Bin Laden's last years in
Pakistan. But his work has already come under scrutiny and criticism,
mostly on the grounds that his heavy reliance on Pakistani military
and intelligence sources leaves him open to official manipulation.
At the least, though, the end product — a novella-length report, still
officially unpublished — offers tantalizing possibilities about Bin
Laden's circumstances and the suspicions that drove relations between
Pakistan and the United States to the brink.
For instance, Mr. Qadir claims that Bin Laden's fifth and youngest
wife, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, told Pakistani interrogators that her
husband underwent a kidney transplant operation in 2002 — a claim
that, if proven, could help explain how the ailing Saudi militant was
able to survive with a known kidney ailment, but raises questions
about who was helping him. He also heard of poisonous mistrust between
Bin Laden's wives. In the cramped Abbottabad house, he was told,
tensions erupted between Ms. Sadah, described as "the favored wife,"
and Khairiah Saber, an older woman who occupied a separate floor. In
interrogation, Ms. Sadah accused her rival of having betrayed their
husband to American intelligence.
Bin Laden's youngest wife also told interrogators that her husband
shaved his beard and disguised himself as an ailing Pashtun elder as
he leapfrogged between safe houses across northwestern Pakistan,
eventually regrowing the beard after finally settling in the
Abbottabad house in 2005.
In one sense, Mr. Qadir's work is an interesting entry in a
decade-long parlor game among spies, soldiers and journalists, all
guessing the whereabouts and condition of the world's most wanted
fugitive.
Despite Bin Laden's death, many of the toughest questions remain. Who
helped him stay on the run? How did the C.I.A. track him down? And,
perhaps most important, did Pakistan's generals know he was living a
stone's throw from their leading military academy?
Pakistan's government says the answers will come from an official
commission of inquiry, led by a Supreme Court judge, that has been
working since May. Yet few believe the Abbottabad Commission, as it is
known, will succeed. And at times, the Pakistani government has seemed
more interested in moving on than seeking answers: on the night of
Feb. 25, the local authorities in Abbottabad sent bulldozers to
demolish Bin Laden's house after nightfall, erasing a painful symbol
of an embarrassing episode for the military.
Publication of the commission's findings, originally scheduled for
December, has been repeatedly postponed, and critics of the government
smell political pressure to tone down its findings.
Among those who have testified is Mr. Qadir, a 64-year-old former
infantry commander. Suspicious of official explanations of Bin Laden's
life and death, Mr. Qadir set out to find his own truth. He embarked
on a sleuthing expedition that would last eight months and has left
him $10,000 out of pocket. He traveled into the tribal belt and
Afghanistan to interview old tribal contacts, and into the hushed
headquarters of Pakistani military intelligence agency, the
Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, in Islamabad, where
officials provided briefings.
His army background was crucial: Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's
top commander, approved two visits to Bin Laden's house; personal
connections led to an interview with the ISI brigadier who had
interrogated Bin Laden's three wives.
A former Obama administration official who read the report agreed with
some of Mr. Qadir's findings, like a claim that Bin Laden and his
deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, suffered serious disagreements that led to
Bin Laden's being pushed to the sidelines. "This divide grew with
time, and remained a source of tension until the day Bin Laden died,"
the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "His role
had been diminished."
The official was puzzled by the account about Bin Laden's wives,
saying that previous American intelligence reports had indicated that
the first wife, Ms. Saber, was the closest to Bin Laden. The C.I.A.
has since interrogated both women in Pakistan; Ms. Saber proved to be
"defiant, difficult and refused to engage," the American official
said.
Several of the conclusions that Mr. Qadir draws in his report are
highly contentious, like a belief that Qaeda operatives betrayed their
leader to earn America's reward money. "They wanted Bin Laden gone,
and they wanted a share of the $25 million," he said. Peter Bergen, a
terrorism analyst and author of a forthcoming book on Bin Laden's last
years, called that a "ridiculous" notion.
Mr. Qadir's report was "larded with strange conspiracies," Mr. Bergen
said, adding that it was indicative of a broader culture of conspiracy
theories in Pakistan. "When I was in Abbottabad in July, plenty of
people told me Bin Laden didn't live there. What do you say to that?
It's so untethered from rational discourse," he said.
Mr. Qadir, for his part, concedes that his conclusions are based on
conjecture, and admits that his ISI briefers may have concealed
crucial facts. "I'd be a bloody fool if I didn't see that," he said.
"I don't say this is the entire truth. But it's the closest you will
get at this point in time."
Other Pakistani soldiers have also theorized about Bin Laden. Last
fall Ziauddin Butt, a former ISI chief, reportedly told a conference
that while he was in power, Pakistan's former military leader, Pervez
Musharraf, had been covertly sheltering Bin Laden. Contacted by
telephone, Mr. Butt said he had been misquoted but declined to
elaborate. Another account that is popular on military message boards
claims that Bin Laden was betrayed by a retired Pakistan spy, who has
since fled abroad.
One question in particular has stayed at the heart of the mutual
distrust between Pakistan and the United States: was the ISI
incompetent in failing to spot Bin Laden under its nose, or complicit
in his protection?
Muhammad Hanif, a popular Pakistani novelist, recently suggested that
the answer was both; Mr. Bergen, the analyst, said it was neither.
"Bin Laden was a hyper-paranoid guy who went to extreme lengths to
hide himself. Don't forget that it took the U.S. government 10 years
to find him, with huge resources at its disposal. And we had the will
to look," he said.
Several American and Western officials, speaking in Washington and
Pakistan on the condition of anonymity, said that the C.I.A. had
scanned millions of documents taken from computer disks found in Bin
Laden's house yet found no evidence of official Pakistani support. But
for some analysts, that proves nothing.
"There is no smoking gun, but there is also no evidence that firmly
rules out complicity," said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer and
Obama adviser.
The official verdict will come from the Abbottabad Commission, which
on Wednesday heard testimony from the interior minister, Rehman Malik.
But many are skeptical about what will emerge, with at least one
commission member having apparently already made up his mind.
Just a few weeks into the commission's deliberations last July, Nadeem
Ahmed, a former general on the panel, told Australian journalists that
he had firmly believed "that no intelligence organization in Pakistan
would do such a stupid thing" as harbor Bin Laden.
Suggestions to the contrary were the product of an American news media
conspiracy, he added. "There is a deliberate design to undermine the
security establishment," he said.
With such high military and political stakes, many Pakistanis believe
that the truth will remain as elusive as Bin Laden once was. "You have
to ask the right questions to get the right answers," Mr. Qadir said.
"I doubt this report will explain anything to anyone's satisfaction."
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment