Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 23, 2004
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/787882.cms
Far more than Iraq or Iran, Pakistan
played a frontline role in facilitating Osama bin Laden and the events
leading up to the world's deadliest terrorist attack, the report of the
9/11 commission has revealed.
A detailed reading of the 585-page
report shows the inquiry has indicted Pakistan and its intelligence agencies
in several places while obliquely criticizing Washington's feckless handling
of what was evidently a rogue terrorist state.
US counterterrorism officials recommended
tough action against Pakistan, including declaring it a terrorism sponsor
state, but they were repeated overruled by State Department mandarins.
At the very outset, in tracing the
growth and movement of Osama bin Laden, the report says "It is unlikely
that bin Laden would have returned to Afghanistan (from Sudan in 1996)
had Pakistan disapproved."
Even more damnably, the report says
"the Pakistani military intelligence service probably had advanced knowledge
of his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his travel." It also
goes on to say "Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced bin
Laden to Taliban leaders in Kandahar...out of hope that he would...make
his terrorist camps available for training Kashmir militants."
Elsewhere, the 9/11 commission report
notes that when National Security Adviser Sandy Berger wanted to send a
U-2 surveillance plane to track bin Laden, it was opposed by Richard Clarke
who wrote that this would require Pakistan's approval and ''Pak intelligence
is in bed with bin Laden'' and would warn him that the US was getting ready
for a bombing campaign.
The report also refers to Pakistan's
perfidious Kargil invasion in May 1999 and says patience with Islamabad
was wearing thin at that time in both the State Department and the NSC.
It then quotes NSC Director Bruce Riedel as writing a memo to Sandy Berger
saying "Islamabad was behaving like a rogue state in two areas - backing
Taliban/bin Laden terror and provoking war with India."
While the Clinton administration
dawdled over Pakistan's role in terrorism, the report suggests the Bush
White House did not do any better. Soon after taking over, Bush wrote to
Pakistan's military dictator Pervez Musharraf in Febraury 2001 telling
him that bin Laden and al Qaeda were "a direct threat to the United States
and its interests that must be addressed," the report reveals.
Bush's National Security Adviser
Condoleeza Rice also met Pakistan's foreign minister Abdul Sattar on June
18 and "really let him have it" on al Qaeda, according to what she told
the commission. But even as she was upbraiding Sattar, Rice tells the Commission
she recalled thinking that the Pakistan diplomat seemed to have heard it
all before and he instead asked the US to engage the Taliban.
Meanwhile, US counterterrorism official
Richard Clarke urges the White House NSC to split off all other issues
in US-Pak relations and just focus on demanding that Pak move more vigorously
on terrorism before an al Qaeda attack prompted Washington to do so. "He
had no more success with Rice than he had with Berger," the commission
report notes, concluding that the "administration was not ready to confront
Islamabad and threaten to rupture relations."
Obsessed with Iran, Iraq and other
distractions floated by the Bush administration, the US media has almost
entirely ignored Pakistan's role in terrorism, while toeing the official
line of Islamabad being a frontline ally. But the 9/11 report, while noting
Pakistan's about turn under US coercion in the post 9/11 scenario, still
casts aspersions on the country's dubious role in the war on terrorism.
However, despite the severe indictment
and doubts, the report recommends continued conditional support to Pakistan.
"If Musharraf stands for enlightened moderation...the United States should...make
the difficult long term commitment to the future of Pakistan," with support
extending from providing military aid to improving its education system,
the report says.
