announced<\/strong><\/a> the news, he had to walk a tightrope – he could not let on that Pakistani troops had also been involved but at the same time he could not make it look as though the Americans had violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.<\/p>\nBut given that such a killing could not take place in a suburb like Abbotabad, home to the wealthy and educated for the most part, without Pakistani cooperation at a very high level, it is impossible to believe any report that says Pakistani special forces were not involved as well. This will not win Pakistan’s rulers any brownie points with their own population.<\/p>\n
Pakistan has had few settled periods in its own history. It has been under martial rule for most of its existence after a painful partition from India in 1947. It has festering internal problems all over the place and is beholden to the US for aid. To the West and many other countries bin Laden was a terrorist; to Pakistan and many other countries who have suffered due to the wishes of American imperialism, he was seen as someone who had managed to gain some revenge.<\/p>\n
And to people like the Palestinians, who have suffered under the yoke of Israeli occupation for decades, bin Laden was a hero who kept to the straight and narrow, demanding justice for them while taking the fight to the one country which has ensured that Israel is not held to account.<\/p>\n
In Britain, there must be at least a few people who are old enough to recall the manner in which the colonial empire used its policy of divide and rule to ensure that India did not stay united and wonder if, with the benefit of hindsight, that was a wise policy. The child born of that policy, Pakistan, (which ironically means the land of the pure), has been implicated as playing some role or the other in practically every single notable act of terrorism in the last 30 years.<\/p>\n
Does the US now draw the curtain on Dubya’s war on terror? Can it pull back troops from Afghanistan now that the reason for them going there no longer exists? What does it do with the body? Muslims bury the dead as soon as possible; the Americans have removed bin Laden’s body to the Bagram air base in Pakistan and will have to decide whether they show it to the world or else quietly bury it. Either option will create its own problems.<\/p>\n
The US has painted this as a major victory; yet is it really so? Is the fact that the most powerful nation in the world took nearly 10 years to capture a man like bin Laden a demonstration of superior military and tactical ability? The killing has left as many questions as existed before. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan today means that the US President Barack Obama will have absolutely no problem getting re-elected. Bin Laden was killed by American secret service troops in Abbotabad, an affluent suburb close to the Pakistan capital, Islamabad. Not that Obama has looked like having a worthwhile challenger from the … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Bin Laden’s death: the fallout”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6,20,26,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-america","category-middle-east","category-pakistan","category-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":670,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=670","url_meta":{"origin":574,"position":0},"title":"Bin Laden's death: things grow curiouser and curiouser","date":"May 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"AS the days go by, the number of questions and lies around the killing of Osama bin Laden by American secret service troops seems to only grow longer. And the doubts emanate right from statements made by the head of the country and all the way down. (Reuters has posted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Afghanistan"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":611,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=611","url_meta":{"origin":574,"position":1},"title":"Bin Laden's death: the old American habit of lying is back","date":"May 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"THE US of A sure knows how to screw up things. For them, the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by American forces was an act that would have guaranteed a lot of good karma right across the world. The problem is, they tried to embellish the tale of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Afghanistan"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":895,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=895","url_meta":{"origin":574,"position":2},"title":"Afghanistan withdrawal timed for US elections","date":"June 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"NEXT year, Barack Obama will face the task of trying to get re-elected. In normal times, the elimination of Osama bin Laden would have sufficed to see him through. But these are not normal times; try what he does, the US economy does not seem to be responding. Hence, he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Afghanistan"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2384,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=2384","url_meta":{"origin":574,"position":3},"title":"Zero Dark Thirty is a work of fiction","date":"February 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"FOR Americans, September 11, 2001, is a date that tends to awake their sense of patriotism. 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Curiously, just a couple of days after this debate began, we witnessed the spectacle of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Afghanistan"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4937,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=4937","url_meta":{"origin":574,"position":5},"title":"Killing people remotely: the fallout of the US war on terror","date":"September 11, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"National Bird is a disturbing documentary. It isn't new, having been made in 2016, but it outlines in stark detail the issues that are part and parcel of the drone program which the US has used to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Afghanistan"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}