The release by US intelligence of an inventory of books and documents recovered from the house of Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden raises questions for India regarding its policies pertaining to Pakistan and the US. Among the books found in the terrorist mastermind’s Pakistani safe haven are those pertaining to the 26/11 attack on Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists, and the documents resting in Osama’s lair included testimonies of David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, involved in the preparatory stage of the 26/11 plot, in a US court.
Whether there was an Osama bin Laden factor in the Mumbai attacks cannot be concluded at this stage. But what is hard to discount after the knowledge of the nature of the inventory in the bin Laden compound is that the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment had propped him up there, and that it kept him updated on the goings-on in the world.
Were it not so, it is hard to see how the Al Qaeda chief could have gained access to any contemporary books and documents at all, leave alone those with a bearing on the attack on Mumbai.
In the matter of the Pakistani security establishment having a link with Osama, when it was internationally assumed that the man had vanished into thin air, the Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh recently wrote a detailed account in the London Review of Books outlining the cooperation between the US and Pakistan in getting the Al Qaeda founder, an account that the Obama administration has strenuously sought to refute.
But in the light of the recent find of books and documents, it is evident that the Americans knew that the Pakistanis knew where the terrorist leader was. The US’ official denunciatory refutation of Mr Hersh thus stands on a diminished footing today. The inference can now be plausibly drawn that the US kept mum about Pakistan’s dark secret because it did not wish to put at risk the long-term association between Washington and Islamabad’s security establishment.
Had the Pakistani involvement with Osama become public knowledge, it may have been difficult to keep in the shadow ISI’s and the Pakistan Army’s suspected hand in terrorist-training and operations, including the Mumbai attacks. While it is convenient for America to be open about its deep cooperation with the Pakistani secret grid in propping up the so-called Afghan “jihadis” through the 1980s, it is deeply embarrassing to admit such a nexus after the 9/11 attacks on America.
