Worldwide reactions to Osama’s death
By
Musa Khan Jalalzai
People ask why Pakistan considers non-state actors like the Afghan Taliban strategic assets, why it allows terror networks on its soil and why the country provides terror-training facilities to such groups
The sudden death of Osama bin Laden has left devastating effects on the jihadi networks of the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban, including the Punjabi Taliban, in the UK, US and the Arab world, but this does not mean that al Qaeda and the Taliban insurgents will end their terror operations. His death is very irksome for the extremist elements in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In London, radical clerics repudiated the method of the operation against him in a protest outside the US embassy. A British Pakistani extremist, Anjum Chaudhry, said that he was going to lead the ‘funeral prayers’ of bin Laden and call on the US government to return the body of Osama to his family.
After Osama bin Laden was killed, five suspected terrorists were arrested near a UK nuclear plant trying to take pictures of the nuclear installations. In an online message, al Qaeda vowed to carry out revenge attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan over the killing of Osama bin Laden. Funeral prayers for bin Laden and protests against the US violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty were held in various cities. On May 3, 2011, members of the Punjabi Taliban and Jamaat-ud-Dawa held bin Laden’s funeral in Karachi, Pakistan. In Indian Occupied Kashmir, members of Kashmiri extremist groups offered special prayers on Friday for the al Qaeda chief. In Indonesia, a Muslim fundamentalist organisation, the Islamic Defenders Front, held a prayer service. In Afghanistan, the reaction focused on the criticism of Pakistan. President Hamid Karzai said the death of Osama in Abbottabad proved Kabul’s stance. Afghan intelligence claimed they had helped the US pinpoint Osama’s hideout in Pakistan.
Notwithstanding all these reactions, most states in the Middle East kept quiet. Experts say that the death of Osama bin Laden will not affect the terror operations of al Qaeda across the globe, but how US Special Forces tackled the operation and how they treated the dead body of Osama bin Laden is being considered as wrong. The US violated the principles of Islamic tradition by burying Osama’s dead body at sea. Muslim and non-Muslim leaders strongly reacted.
Former chancellor of West Germany Helmut Schmidt told German TV that, “It was quite clearly a violation of international law.” According to an Australian human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, “It is not justice.” The man had been subjected to summary execution. Pakistan’s foreign secretary said that the American action involved legal issues concerning the violation of sovereignty and that these should be addressed for the sake of global peace and stability. Osama bin Laden has died, but the alleged connivance of Islamabad put on spike the reputation of the Pakistan Army, ISI and the government.
The Pakistan Army and the ISI have been critical of the deployment of a large number of American intelligence contractors in Pakistan’s cities in the past. They reluctantly warned that if the US carried out any more raids inside Pakistan (like the one that killed Osama bin Laden) in future, it would result in a terrible catastrophe. Moreover, Pakistan’s army chief warned that more such raids would not be tolerated and would lead to a review of our cooperation with the US. But the sudden death of Osama bin Laden has triggered a barrage of questions about whether the Pakistan Army and the ISI knew of the assault or not; the CIA chief ended the confusion by confirming that Pakistan was neither consulted nor even informed about the Abbottabad raid.
In a series of reactions to this incident, newspapers in Pakistan carried sharp editorials against the army and ISI reaction. The statement of the Pakistani prime minister that the entire world should share the blame for the intelligence failure was repudiated in the western media. The situation is going to get worse in Pakistan. People ask why Pakistan considers non-state actors like the Afghan Taliban strategic assets, why it allows terror networks on its soil and why the country provides terror-training facilities to such groups. Intellectual and diplomatic circles understand that this policy of indirect interference of the Pakistani government and the army has brought nothing positive but has only brought shame. Destabilising neighbouring states through these irregular forces has badly isolated the country. Now Pakistani citizens demand that this misunderstood policy be changed and a coordinated effort be undertaken to free Pakistan of its bondage to the concept of a restrictive, misunderstood and violent Islam.
The death of Osama bin Laden and his presence in the country for a long time enraged Pakistanis enough to challenge their leadership. Pakistan’s Pashtun and Punjabi Taliban networks both in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have put the civil and military establishment at the top of their hit list. The army has come under constant threat from al Qaeda and the Taliban. To clear the position of the army and the ISI on the US Abbottabad operation, the ISI chief recently met the CIA station chief in Pakistan first, and then set out to Washington to meet President Obama and his friends.
Pak-US relations may further deteriorate as American taxpayers are pressing President Obama to pressure Pakistan to do more. The international community has now come to know that Pakistan has been using a double-edged sword in the war on terror. Since 2001, the US government, CIA and the international community have been accusing Pakistan of protecting and sheltering bin Laden but the civil and military establishments in Pakistan have constantly denied this accusation.
President Hamid Karzai has already claimed that the war on terror should not be fought in Afghanistan but in Pakistan. Experts say that in the future, attacks on the US forces in Afghanistan will continue because the extremist groups have already sent threatening messages to retaliate over the arrests and deaths of key figures. Now the main question is: what will now be the level of cooperation between the US and Pakistani intelligence agencies and how can they rebuild trust deficits? Now, after the death of Osama bin Laden, Pakistan is facing one of its worst crises. The situation on the Afghan border has become alarming and the increasing drone attacks have further enraged the Pashtun population of FATA and the Waziristan regions. Poverty and unemployment benefit the Taliban insurgency.
The social and physical infrastructure of the country, which forms the backbone of the economy, is in a deplorable state. Finally, the international community understands that the war in Afghanistan and the military operation in Pakistan are critical in the war against terrorism. Both the states surrendering to the extremist forces would mean leaving the fate of the war undecided.
The writer is author of Britain’s National Security Challenges and Punjabi Taliban. He can be reached at
zai.musakhan222@gmail.com
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