Activists of Jamaat-ud-Dawa offer funeral prayers for Osama bin Laden ona street in Karachi on May 3, 2011. Hundreds of people offered specialprayers for Osama bin Laden in the populous Pakistani city of KarachiMay 3, where the organisers declared the Al-Qaeda chief as a martyr,police said.
When President Asif Ali Zardari's phone rang at 1.15 a.m. on Monday, itwas President Barack Obama on the line, with news that a U.S. operationto eliminate Osama bin Laden and retrieve his body had been successful.That phone call, Pakistani officials tell TIME, was the first that theirgovernment heard about a U.S. military operation conducted just threehours' drive from Islamabad. There was no mistaking the obvious mistrustfrom Washington in the timing: Pakistan's military establishment onlylearned of the raid when it was too late, according to government andmilitary officials. U.S. helicopters were able to swoop in fromAfghanistan undetected, as Pakistani radars had been jammed. ThePakistan government, in a statement, tried to explain this away bysaying, the choppers took advantage of "blind spots in the radarcoverage due to hilly terrain." By the time Pakistani fighter jets setoff to pursue them, it was too late.
The discovery and death of bin Laden on Pakistani soil has been a sourceof great embarrassment here. Throughout Monday, both the government andthe military struggle to form a response. Some officials made clumsyattempts to suggest that there had been some form of cooperation, but agovernment statement on Tuesday conceded that Pakistan had been kept outof the loop. A senior Pakistani military tells TIME that they did notknow of the raid, but calls attention to remarks by Obama and bySecretary of State Hillary Clinton, insisting that it had been Pakistaniintelligence cooperation that first put the U.S. on the trail thatenabled them to locate bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. (See pictures of Osama bin Laden's Pakistan hideout.)
Still, Pakistani officials believe the U.S. decision to leave them inthe dark was based on deep mistrust. "Such actions undermine cooperationand may also sometimes constitute [a] threat to international peace andsecurity," the Pakistan government statement added. The Pakistanimilitary official would not comment on whether the army or itsintelligence service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI), had been aware of the compound or of bin Laden's presence there.The ISI had raided the same compound in 2003, in pursuit of al-Qaedaleader Faraj al-Libi. That raid, they insist, was crucial to his arrestthe following year. Since then, their sights had drifted from the area,but officials insist that the ISI had as recently as last monthfurnished the CIA with intelligence about the presence of foreignersthere. U.S. officials, however, appear to believe that at least some inthe Pakistani security establishment had knowledge of bin Laden'spresence. And the Pakistanis believe that staging a raid of this typedeep inside Pakistani territory without first clearing the operationwith Pakistani authorities was "meant to teach a lesson," says a seniorPakistani official.
Despite the mistrust between them, however, the U.S. and Pakistan haveno choice but to continue their fractious relationship. Marc Grossman,President Obama's Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, arrived fortalks with senior Pakistani officials on Tuesday. His message,paraphrased by a cynical Pakistani official, was that Washington isprepared to work with Pakistan if they behave like "good boys".Grossman's visit came in the course of a prescheduled visit to meet withtop Pakistani and Afghan officials. But the bin Laden raid loomed largein his meetings with the Pakistanis. (Watch President Obama's announcement of Osama bin Laden's death.)
Relations between the two sides had reached a low point in the weeksbefore the bin Laden raid. Following the six-week standoff over the fateof Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who had killed two Pakistani men inan incident in Lahore in February, there were fierce disagreements overthe use of CIA drone strikes targeting suspected militants in the tribalareas.
Pakistani officials expect Washington to use their embarrassment overbin Laden to leverage more cooperation from them. One consequence isexpected to be a renewed escalation of the drone strikes — there havebeen just two since March 17. There may also be more pressure onPakistan to help the U.S. in Afghanistan. Washington is deeply concernedabout links between the ISI and the Haqqani network based in NorthWaziristan, whose fighters are among the most ferocious facing NATO inAfghanistan. Pakistan has long resisted against Taliban groups thatconfine their activities to fighting Western forces across the border.The Pakistan Army typically fobs off U.S. pressure with a plea that ittoo overstretched to launch a military offensive in North Waziristan,and that other challenges take priority. Now, it may find itself pressedinto launching the campaign the U.S. has long demanded. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)
Greater cooperation with the U.S. on Afghanistan would limit Pakistan'sability to shape the Afghanistan endgame to its own interests, whichinclude cementing a key role for its pro-Taliban allies in post-U.S.Where the Pakistani side had used the showdown over Davis to push backagainst the U.S., the bin Laden raid puts them back on the defensive.
Besides rising pressure from the U.S., Pakistan's security establishmentalso faces a challenge from within. The realization that it was eitherunable to find bin Laden in its own back yard, or else was hiding him,has further eroded public confidence. "They've been caught with theirpants down," says a senior opposition politician, asking to remainunnamed. Notably, there has been little public outrage at the raid,which will come to the combined relief of U.S. and Pakistani officials.While militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba condemned the killing andoffered funeral prayers in his honor, there has been no great show ofrage on the streets. But the Pakistani Taliban have made their intentplain. Regardless of the facts, they are convinced that the Pakistanishelped get bin Laden — and they have vowed to exact revenge inPakistan's cities.
