Is There a Pakistan Role in UBL’s Evasion of American Justice?

John R. Houk

© May 5, 2011

Sarah Palin correctly wonders how in the world Usama bin Laden could live in a life of luxury for quite some time near the Pakistani capital city of Islamabad when the public shpeel was UBL was hiding in caves along the AfPak border which suggested a life of asceticism. Well anyway she questioned Pakistan not knowing where UBL was. I was wondering the rest.

Pakistan looks extremely foolish and deceptive when that nation denies there was any knowledge of bin Laden’s whereabouts.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said bin Laden's ability to live undetected in the compound, apparently for years, "is an intelligence failure of the whole world, not of Pakistan alone." He made the comment Wednesday during a visit to Paris.

U.S. officials also have demanded answers as to how the al-Qaida leader could have lived at a luxury complex in Abbottabad without the knowledge of Pakistani authorities or help from a support network inside Pakistan. The area around the compound remained sealed off Wednesday by Pakistani police and soldiers. (“Afghanistan: Pakistan Must Have Known bin Laden Was Living in Abbottabad,” VOA News 5/4/11)

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi also accuses Pakistan of knowingly keeping bin Laden’s luxury compound a secret:

Speaking at a news conference Wednesday, Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said the location of the house in the military garrison town of Abbottabad would have ensured that Pakistani authorities knew who was living there.

Azimi said bin Laden's hideout would have been known not only to a "strong" intelligence agency such as Pakistan's ISI but even to a "very weak government with a weak intelligence service". He said the ISI faces many questions that need answers. (Ibid.)

Obviously Pakistan is covering its geopolitical butt with lies. UBL’s existence in a luxury compound in Pakistan shows a few possibilities.

One possibility is the government of Pakistan under the authority of either its President and/or Prime Minister is operating a duplicitous policy of favoring Islamists while pretending to be an ally with America in the fight against the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT).

Another possibility is that the Pakistan government is a byzantine-like government. This is to say internal government factions actively work against each other in the formation of policy. An example might be Pakistan’s intelligence community of which the Inter-Services Intelligence has been known to favor the Taliban by extension al-Qaeda.

I am guessing there is still a large element in Pakistan that is closely aligned to maintain a secularist Islamic State.  I know it sounds like an oxymoron to use the term “secular” and “Islamic” as a singular form of government but that the doctrines of Islam demonstrate that government and religion are an intertwined entity in the Muslim world. Thus a secularist-Islamic State would be secular in actions but Islamic in nature as in the code or rule of law.

The secularist element in Pakistan has this world view: Hindu majority ruled India is the enemy because Islam once dominated all of India by conquest. Pakistan Muslims thus are well aware that is a deep seeded animosity among Hindus who were the recipients of genocide, slave trade (including sex slavery) and when it became clear that killing all the Hindus that refused to convert to Islam would dry up the booty-cow that India represented to Islamic conquerors began to establish extremely harsh dhimmitude upon the population. In the long run the harsh dhimmitude probably won more converts to Islam than the typical Islamic axiom of for polytheists which was (and is) convert or die. The extremely harsh dhimmitude eventually converted large swaths of Hindus to Islam around emerging Islamic power centers built by attrition in India.

There thus is little surprise that there were horrendous acts of violence between India Muslims and India Hindus as the 1947 independence proceeded to emerge. Incidentally Israel was a tiny sliver in an ocean of hostile Muslims also in 1948. The same rage existed among Muslims toward a Jewish existence established by once Islamic conquerors. The difference between Jewish Israel and Hindu India is that the number of Hindus is in the hundreds of millions while the Jews represented a little less than a million in 1948 (Of course the Jewish population nearly doubled after Israeli independence because nearly 800,000 Jewish refugees received a vicious boot from Muslim lands after losing in 1948).

Hindu-Muslim violence or more precisely India-Pakistan violence has a 1947 pretext for occurring. The area known as Kashmir is roughly between Pakistan and India. In 1947 when a partition plan was devised by the exiting British, the princely States that governed themselves autonomously were forced to choose between merging with either Pakistan or India. Kashmir’s case was it was ruled by a Hindu Maharaja while the majority population was Islamic.

At any rate India and Pakistan have come close to nuclear war since both nations have nuke WMDs. In this paradoxical geopolitical world of lesser nations aligning with more powerful nations for their national interests, the largest democratic natured government in the world India gravitated toward the Communist Soviets and despotic Islamic Republic of Pakistan gravitated toward the Americans. I can understand that Pakistan’s government has become ironically byzantine because of the need to play off internal affairs and international affairs to maintain an Islamic Pakistan with a powerful neighbor India (comparatively powerful between India and Pakistan). However, the question becomes: Can America afford or count on a byzantine style government in Pakistan for our nation’s National Interests?

America has had a history of being burned when there was an expectation from another nation to agree with an American agenda. The Taliban and al-Qaeda evolved from American aid funneled through Pakistan in a long war that resulted in Soviet occupiers from leaving Afghanistan in disgrace. These terrorists then turned on their American supporters because as non-Muslims we are the despised kafir. Even though it was American aid that preeminently freed Afghanistan from Soviet oppression the Taliban and al-Qaeda called us the big Satan oppressors of Islam. Usama bin Laden’s leadership of al-Qaeda got the ball rolling for the moment when Muslim terrorists seized four jet airliners on American soil crashing three into building and one in a Pennsylvanian field resulting in the deaths of civilian noncombatant primarily Americans.

So should some kind of investigation as in Congressional or American Intelligence of Pakistan’s commitment to cooperation in the GWOT occur? I SAY YES! THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HAS A RIGHT TO KNOW IF PAKISTAN HELD UP THE NEAR DECADE LONG SEARCH FOR USAMA BIN LADEN!

JRH 5/5/11