Pak may have given Osama tip to US

Doha: The former head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency- Lt.General (retd) Asad Durrani has admitted that Pakistan probably sheltered Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the years leading up to the US raid in Abbottabad in May 2011.

He has suggested that his government may have revealed bin Laden’s whereabouts in exchange for “the necessary quid pro quo” which was probably an agreement on “how to bring the Afghan problem to an end.” These admissions contradict the official line of the government of Pakistan. Officially, the ISI maintains that it did not harbour bin Laden and played no part in the raid, which led to the killing of the al Qaeda leader by a team of elite US commando SEALs. 

General Durrani who was Director-General of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1990-1992, told Al Jazeera’s Head to Head programme that he doubts the ISI’s official line that it had been unaware of bin Laden’s whereabouts until his death.

General Durrani said, “I cannot say exactly what happened but my assessment […] was it is quite possible that they [the ISI] did not know but it was more probable that they did. And the idea was that at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been, when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.

The former ISI chief asserted that bin Laden was, in his opinion, handed over in exchange for an agreement on “how to bring the Afghan problem to an end”. 

Asked whether bin Laden’s compound was an ISI safe house, Durrani said, “If ISI was doing that, than I would say they were doing a good job. And if they revealed his location, they again probably did what was required to be done.”

Observers have questioned the ISI’s official line that it did not harbour bin Laden or play any part in the raid in 2011. They have wondered how bin Laden could have eluded the intelligence agency in the years leading up to his discovery, given the location of bin Laden’s compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad. The Abbottabad Commission, which was set up by the Pakistani government to investigate the circumstances surrounding the raid, charged the military and the government with “gross incompetence” leading to “collective failures” that enabled bin Laden to reside in Pakistan unnoticed, and that failed to detect the US mission in May 2011.

Interestingly, General Durrani explained that “The admission of incompetence was probably done (for) political reasons… As far as the people of Pakistan were concerned, it was going to be very uncomfortable for them that their government, you know, is in cahoots now with the United States and gets hold of Osama bin Laden,” adding that bin Laden “was an admired figure in Pakistan”.

The series of which the interview episode is a part, is scheduled to air in April 2015.

The latest revelations are consistent with those contained in a book by Richard Miniter called “Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him” which was released in 2012. 

The author, a former reporter with The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, says in the book that the Obama administration seemed to have acquired a “tacit consent” of the Pakistani military for the raid in Abbottabad in May 2011, that killed bin Laden.

He argues in the book that “the Obama administration’s account of Pakistan’s role (in the operation) is misleading and incomplete.”

The book claimed that in August 2010, the ISI actually offered valuable information about bin Laden’s hideout to the CIA.

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