Who cut deals on Osama?

For long, the world knew of Osama as the “most wanted” terrorist. But Seymnour Hersh tells you that he was a sick, old man, ‘purchased’ from his Pashtun tribal hosts by Pakistan’s intelligence who in turn ‘sold’ him, to be brutally killed. The US did the second ‘purchase.’ It paid millions to Pakistanis. The first one was one Brigadier Usman Khalid who shared information on Osama. The US then contacted the generals who then ran Pakistan. If Hersh is to be believed, deals were cut at institutional and individual levels

Talking about Osama bin Laden, killed just five years ago, seems like recalling history in this era of ISIS spreading its violent wings across West Asia, at the doorstep of South Asia, boasting of having billions, developing own missiles and planning to purchase nuclear device from “corrupt officials of Pakistan.” The ISIS makes Osama’s Al Qaida look almost benign.

At this juncture, unable to counter ISIS, which its own Congressmen say is the result of Bush era excesses in Iraq, the United States is playing its familiar game of ‘exposing’ Osama. Perhaps, he would have been alive today had he not masterminded 9/11. The US is de-classifying documents supposedly gathered from Osama’s hideout in Abbottabad where, it is now more than confirmed, he lived from 2006 to his being located and killed by US commandos in May 2011.

We get intimate revelations about Osama’s love for one of his wives and his son Hamza’s love for him. Crucial for India are accounts of how he kept track of his ‘brothers’ carrying out terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. He knew about Dawood alias David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American who scouted Mumbai locations for Lashkar-e-Toyaba’s Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi and Hafiz Saeed, and of Tahawwur Husain Rana, the Pakistani-Canadian “Doctor Sahib” who facilitated Headley’s travels to Pakistan and India.

The list is long, but all of it is focused on the activities of Pakistani-Americans working against India. Was Osama doing the bidding of his hosts who had held him under “house arrest”? Had he retained his American connect, having been a 1980s poster boy of the West during the fight against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul? The books he is supposed to be reading in Abbottabad were mainly American, albeit those critical of the American establishment.

Has this significant point been missed? Perhaps, because most people in India feel ‘soft’ about things American. Mumbai attacks happened towards the end of the tenure of George Bush, who had deeply indebted India with the civil nuclear deal and much else. India did not protest enough against the Headley’s role in Mumbai attacks, especially after it realised that Headley was America’s agent/informant of the drug trail leading to Pakistan.

He had used the immunity and funds he enjoyed to be trained in Pakistan. India was one big victim of his double-crossing and can do nothing since Headley has reached a settlement with the American authorirties under which he cannot be questioned. Washington is de-classifying Osama files when the official version of Osama’s killing trotted out by the Barack Obama administration has been seriously questioned by American journalist Seymnour Hersh.

He paints a vastly different picture of bin Laden, and talks of Pakistan military’s complicity in Osama’s detection and elimination. Making Osama papers public seems a way to obfuscate the issue. The official version came when Obama was seeking re-election and America is again preparing for elections next year. Obama would like to retain his image as the man who got Osama. For long, the world knew of Osama as the “most wanted” terrorist.

But Hersh tells you that he was a sick, old man, ‘purchased’ from his Pashtun tribal hosts by Pakistan’s intelligence who in turn ‘sold’ him, to be brutally killed. Denied a decent Muslim burial, Osama’s body parts were scattered over the Hindu Kush Mountains. The US did the second ‘purchase.’ It paid millions to Pakistanis. The first one was one Brigadier Usman Khalid, a former Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) operative.

He “walked in” to the US Embassy in Islamabad with information on Osama. Having authenticated this information with the help of Laden’s DNA gathered from a Pakistan Army doctor, the US challenged the generals who then ran Pakistan, including General Ashfaq Kayani and ISI chief Shuja Pasha. If Hersh is to be believed, deals were cut at institutional and individual levels. The title of Hersh’s story ought to be “Osama Betrayed.”

Published by London Review of Books, it lays bare the role of the Americans, Pakistanis and of the Saudis who financed Osama’s upkeep in Abbottabad. These are revelations that nobody is likely to own up. Only bland denials have come forth. Some analysts have gone about countering Hersh, the man who exposed the US role in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere. Hersh’s version is like bones stuck in the throat that authorities in the three nations can neither swallow nor spit out.

Hersh’s account puts on its head much that was claimed in 2011 about Osama. His target is basically the Obama administration, but he also talks of Pakistan’s perfidious role in getting rid of its ‘asset.’ The Americans played out “a political theatre” to regale audiences across the world. President Obama, who cleared the risky operation, it is now alleged, reneged on an undertaking to make the elimination of Osama appear a joint US-Pakistan operation. He took the credit and made Pakistan, especially its Army, look nasty.

The world found it difficult to believe that Pakistan’s military leadership, beginning with then President and Army chief, General Pervez Musharraf , was unaware of Osama’s presence in the country. After Obama went public, because one of the three US helicopters had crashed in Abbottabad operation, which could not be kept a secret, Pakistan was left fuming about the violation of its sovereignty.

While Obama ensured his 2012 re-election on the killing of Osama, Pakistan faced global odium. The delicate army-civil balance of its government went for a toss. Its army seethed in impotent anger, ready to topple, in a possible repeat of Musharraf removing Nawaz Sharif after the Kargil defeat, the hapless civilian government of Asif Zardari.

Significantly, there is hardly a mention of the civilian leadership of the day, simply because it did not matter. Desperate to survive, Zardari pleaded with the Americans to be saved from clutches of the angry generals, giving rise to the “Memo Gate” that damned Zardari, leading to the sacking of Husain Haqqani, the envoy to the US, who was close to Zardari. How the US ensured Zardari’s survival may be the subject of another future Hersh-like revelation.

Is the Hersh story an American way of making a clean breast about its role in Afghanistan-Pakistan, like it did in the past in Cuba, Chile, Iran, Vietnam and other bloody wars and intelligence operations?

The Hersh story gets confirmed by yet another American journalist, Carlotta Gaal, stationed in Af-Pak for 13 years and one who should know. She has accused the ISI of cutting deals on Osama. The two accounts reinforce the role that all-powerful Pakistan Army play and shall continue to play. And that of the US – to ensure hold over the region, it will continue to feed Pakistan’s military machine.