Osama bin Laden’s death is, at the very least, a major psychological victory in the war on terror this nation has been waging for nearly a decade since 9/11. It is potentially a turning point in America’s difficult relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It is also the result of impressive intelligence and military teamwork — and the willingness of President Barack Obama to take the risk that the mission might fail.
In his first interview since commanding the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, CIA chief Leon Panetta tells TIME that U.S. officials feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation by leaking word to its targets. Long before Panetta ordered Vice Admiral William McRaven, head of the Joint Special Forces Command, to undertake the mission at 1:22 p.m. on Friday, the CIA had been gaming out how to structure the raid. Months prior, the U.S. had considered expanding the assault to include coordination with other countries, notably Pakistan. But the CIA ruled out participating with its nominal South Asian ally early on because “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets,” Panetta says.
Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders greeted the news of the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden with varying degrees of relief, regret and caution.
Considered the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. that killed nearly 3,000 people, bin Laden was killed by United States forces in Pakistan, U.S. President Barack Obama announced on May 1.
Some Muslim groups welcomed the news, with several stressing that bin Laden did not represent the values of Islam. “We hope his death will bring some relief to all the families of every faith and walk of life who lost loved ones on 9/11 and in every other terrorist attack orchestrated at the hands of Osama bin Laden,” the Islamic Society of North America said in a news release.
Pakistan criticized the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden as an “unauthorized unilateral action” and warned Washington on Tuesday not to launch similar operations in the future.
The comments laid bare the tensions triggered by Monday’s attack, which came at time when U.S.-Pakistani ties were already near rock bottom.
Schools and Christian institutions closed, churches and Christian areas guarded with utmost security measures, this is the situation that the Christian community recorded in the main city in Pakistan after the news of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The leader of Al Qaeda was killed yesterday by American special forces in a military operation in Abbottabad, around 60 km from Islamabad.
Local Fides sources report that even civil authorities have provided such security measures at Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Multan and other cities, because they fear violent attacks against Christian targets and reactions by the Taliban groups.
There are multiple reasons to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. special forces raid Sunday. Al-Qaeda has lost its founder and symbol, if not its operational commander. The prime author of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has finally been brought to justice. Moreover, the world has seen a formidable show of prowess by U.S. intelligence and military forces. The bin Laden compound was located not by a stroke of luck or a drone overflight, but by years of painstaking intelligence gathering ”” some of which, unfortunately, may have come in the unlawful interrogation of prisoners at CIA “black sites.” The final raid by helicopter-borne Navy SEALs appears to have been masterfully executed, with no U.S. casualties, a feat that may banish some memories of the failed 1980 hostage rescue mission in Iran.
President Obama, who closely oversaw preparations for the attack, was rightly credited by all sides in Washington for seeing it through; the operation provided a rare moment of common celebration and relief in a divided America.
But the practical importance of the strike may not match its political and moral resonance….
The fact that Osama Bin Laden has apparently been living for years under the nose of the Pakistan military also revives the question that has increasingly dogged the US-led coalition in Afghanistan: Why are we still fighting in Afghanistan when it is Pakistan from where the Taliban insurgency is being directed?
Both the Pakistanis and the US have said Pakistan was not given advance notice of the raid.
The official Pakistan response was low-key, saying only that Osama Bin Laden’s death “constitutes a major setback to terrorist organizations around the world”.
Read the tweets here–fascinating.
A Pakistani computer programmer, startled by helicopters, took to Twitter to complain about the noise Sunday — but inadvertently gave a play-by-play of the high-stakes capture of the world’s most-wanted man.
Everything we saw — the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers’ background and their behavior, and the location and the design of the compound itself was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden’s hideout to look like. Keep in mind that two of bin Laden’s gatekeepers, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, were arrested in the settled areas of Pakistan.
Our analysts looked at this from every angle, considering carefully who other than bin Laden could be at the compound. We conducted red team exercises and other forms of alternative analysis to check our work. No other candidate fit the bill as well as bin Laden did.
So the final conclusion, from an intelligence standpoint, was twofold. We had high confidence that a high-value target was being harbored by the brothers on the compound, and we assessed that there was a strong probability that that person was Osama bin Laden.
The helicopter carrying Navy SEALs malfunctioned as it approached Osama bin Laden’s compound at about 3:30 p.m. ET Sunday, stalling as it hovered. The pilot set it down gently inside the walls, then couldn’t get it going again.
It was a heart-stopping moment for President Barack Obama, who had been monitoring the raid in the White House Situation Room since 1 p.m., surrounded by members of his war cabinet….
The killing of Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan in an American operation, almost in plain sight in a medium-sized city that hosts numerous Pakistani forces, seems certain to further inflame tensions between the United States and Pakistan and raise significant questions about whether elements of the Pakistani spy agency knew the whereabouts of the leader of Al Qaeda.
The presence of Bin Laden in Pakistan, something Pakistani officials have long dismissed, goes to the heart of the lack of trust Washington has felt over the last 10 years with its contentious ally, the Pakistani military and its powerful spy partner, the Inter-Services Intelligence.
With Bin Laden’s death, perhaps the central reason for an alliance forged on the ashes of 9/11 has been removed, at a moment when relations between the countries are already at one of their lowest points as their strategic interests diverge over the shape of a post-war Afghanistan.
Details are emerging of how al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was found and killed at a fortified compound on the outskirts of Abbottabad in north-west Pakistan.
The compound is just “a stone’s throw” and less than 200 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy, an elite military training centre, which is Pakistan’s equivalent to Britain’s Sandhurst, one local journalist from Abbottabad told the BBC.
Other reports have put the distance at 800 yards.
Anglican leaders have condemned the act of burning of the Qur’an on March 20 in Florida, United States. Bishop Alexander Malik of the Diocese of Lahore, Pakistan, said that “Such acts were in flagrant contradiction to the teaching of Christianity”¦ They were the manifestations of sick minds busy in spreading hatred, bigotry and unease in society.”
In Peshawar, Pakistan, Bishop Humphrey Peters noted that this was a “shameful act” performed “only to gain cheap popularity”. Bishop Peters was speaking at a press conference alongside members of a Peshawar based inter faith group ”˜Faith Friends’ at which colleagues from the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities also expressed their anger at the action.
The American strategy for handing over security responsibilities to the Afghan government rests on a similar strategy: putting local militias on the government payroll. Such “recruits” are supposed to be vetted. But in the months it will take to complete that process, American commanders are counting on ragtag militias like Rozeboi’s to fight the Taliban.
Many of the militias are controlled by strongmen who traffic in drugs and weapons and pay their soldiers by taxing the locals, as the Taliban do. Indeed, several militias in Kunduz fought alongside the Taliban before switching to the government’s side.
Can the Karzai government provide the food, clothing and salaries needed to keep those militias friendly? “If they do not have income, they will return to their old bosses,” the mayor of Imam Sahib, Sufi Manaan, warned American officers in February. He should know. Some American commanders believe that he has links to a militia that fought against their soldiers last fall.
Dr. Paul Bhatti, elder brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, the slain federal minister for minority affairs in Pakistan, has expressed his “grave concern” over the probe into the murder of his brother.
Dr. Bhatti, the newly elected Chairman for the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), said, “Three weeks have been passed, but nothing has been shared with the nation and mourning minorities in Pakistan. No replacement has been announced yet in the National Assembly after the martyrdom of Mr. Bhatti.”
Dr. Bhatti has demanded that government of Pakistan establish a “judicial commission” to probe his brother’s murder which took place at the start of this month.
(ACNS) Preaching at the memorial service held at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster , London , on 17 March 2011 for Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan Minister of Minorities, Bishop Tony Robinson, Chair of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pakistan Focus Group, reflected, “Death came with the fire of the gun. There was no gentle death for Shahbaz Bhatti ”“ as there is also not for many other Christians who are suffering as part of the of minority population of Pakistan.”
Shahbaz Bhatti, a Roman Catholic Christian who was part of the Cabinet of the Federal government of Pakistan was murdered by gunmen in Islamabad on March 2.
The service, held in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the High Commissioner of Pakistan was a tribute to a remarkable man who had made a practical difference for the minority populations in his country even though his life was cut short at the age of 42, but also an act of dedication by those present to seek to continue the tasks he had set himself.
Christians in south Punjab Province are accusing senior district officials of supporting local Muslims who allegedly demolished 150 Christian graves and desecrated holy relics ”“ and are now threatening Christians seeking legal redress.
In the Kot Addu area of Muzaffargarh district, Waseem Shakir told Compass by telephone that an influential Muslim group last Nov. 6 took illegal possession of a 1,210-square yard piece of land designated as a Christian cemetery and set up shops on it. Official records state that the portion of land was allotted as a Christian cemetery, he said.
“Local Muslims demolished 150 Christians’ graves and desecrated the cross and biblical inscriptions on the graves in a bid to construct shops on the property,” said Shakir, a resident of Chak (Village) 518, Peer Jaggi Morr, Kot Addu. “Only five marlas [151.25 square yards] are all that is left for the Christians to bury their dead now.”
If the American-led fight against the Taliban was once a contest for influence in well-known and conventionally defined areas ”” the capital and large cities, main roads, the border with Pakistan, and a handful of prominent valleys and towns ”” today it has become something else.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the United States military has settled into a campaign for scattered villages and bits of terrain that few people beyond their immediate environs have heard of.
As 2.5 percent of the population in a Muslim state of 170 million people, Christians in Pakistan are “a fly on the wall” that can sometimes be treated as a nuisance, says the Rt. Rev. Munawar K. Rumalshah, Bishop Emeritus of Peshawar.
The church’s minority status manifests itself regularly, the bishop said ”” from Islam’s effects on how Christians conduct themselves to the threat of death for converts and the martyrdom of Shahbaz Bhatti, a Roman Catholic who was minister for religious minorities in Pakistan.
The bishop spoke at St. Stephen’s Church, Richmond, Va., March 6, concluding a fundraising tour of the United States. The bishop spoke on the theme of “Wishing for an Embrace: Minority Faith in an Islamic World.”
Bhatti, 42, was shot repeatedly Wednesday as he left his mother’s home in Islamabad. As the Federal Minister for Minorities, he was an outspoken opponent of Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws, which can impose the death penalty for actions judged to insult Mohammed.
He is the second Pakistani official to be murdered for his opposition to the laws in as many months. Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province, was killed in early January by his bodyguard.
“Both were killed for the same reason,” said Father Lombarid, “because they opposed the blasphemy law, a law that is itself truly a blasphemy, because in the name of God it causes injustice and death.”
Shahbaz Bhatti will not be remembered as a quiet man. As Pakistan’s outspoken Minister for Minorities Affairs, the only Christian member of Parliament, and a tireless advocate for Pakistan’s imperiled Christian community, Bhatti was accustomed to standing out in a crowd.
Bhatti’s impassioned defense of Pakistan’s minority Christian community moved and motivated human rights advocates and government officials around the world. “He never achieved what he dedicated his life to ”“ the eventual repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws,” saidStuart Windsor, National Director of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, “But he tried, bravely and with indefatigable spirit, and his life was a blessing to many.”
In the history of some countries there comes a period when political and factional murder becomes almost routine ”” Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, Germany and its neighbours in the early 1930s. It has invariably been the precursor of a breakdown of legal and political order and of long-term suffering for a whole population. And last week, with the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, Pakistan has taken a further step down this catastrophic road.
To those who actually support such atrocities, there is little to say. They inhabit a world of fantasy, shot through with paranoid anxiety. As the shocked responses from so many Muslims in this country and elsewhere make plain, their actions are as undermining of Koranic ethics as they are of rational politics.
But to those who recognise something truly dreadful going on in their midst ”” to the majority in Pakistan who have elected a government that, whatever its dramatic shortcomings, is pledged to resist extremism ”” we have surely to say, “Do not imagine that this can be ”˜managed’ or tolerated”.
(This article is based on the piece just preceding it posted on the blog below–KSH)
One prominent figure on Pakistan’s religious Right, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of Jamiat Ulema-iIslam-Fazl, yesterday warned the West not to use international disgust at Mr Bhatti’s murder to put pressure on them to moderate their behaviour. He said: “I have already condemned the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti in the Parliament but it seems as if an international lobby is using such incidents to gain a leverage on religious parties.”
Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, told a memorial service for Mr Bhatti at the weekend that the Government “will try our utmost to bring the culprits to justice”.
But Dr Williams makes clear that patience in Christian-dominated donor countries is wearing out. “To the majority in Pakistan who have elected a Government which, whatever its dramatic shortcomings, is pledged to resist extremism, we have surely to say, ”˜Do not imagine that this can be managed or tolerated’.”
The protection of minorities of any and every kind is one acid test of moral legitimacy for a government; and such protection is built into Pakistan’s modern identity as an Islamic state with civic recognition for non-Muslims. Many are anxious about Pakistan’s future for strategic reasons. But those of us who love Pakistan and its people are anxious for its soul as well as its political stability. It is heartbreaking to see those we count as friends living with the threat of being coerced and menaced into silence and, ultimately, into a betrayal of themselves. This must not be allowed to happen. They need to know of the support of Christians and others outside Pakistan for their historic and distinctive vision.
Shahbaz Bhatti died, for all practical purposes, as a martyr ”” let me be clear ”” not simply for his Christian faith, but for a vision shared between Pakistani Christians and Muslims. When he and I talked at Lambeth Palace last year, he was fully aware of the risks he ran. He did not allow himself to be diverted for a moment from his commitment to justice for all.
That a person of such courage and steadfastness of purpose was nourished in the political culture of Pakistan is itself a witness to the capacity of that culture to keep its vision alive and compelling. And that is one of the few real marks of hope in a situation of deepening tragedy that urgently needs both prayer and action.
Hundreds of Christians have taken to the streets of Pakistan in protest at the assassination of the minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, who was gunned down outside his home on Wednesday.
As the government declared three days of mourning, demonstrations were held across Punjab, where the Christian community is concentrated, with protesters burning tyres and demanding justice.
Such a show of anger is rare among Pakistan’s Christian minority, who enjoy little political power and are more often in the news as victims of violence from Muslim extremists. One of the largest crowds gathered in Gojra, in Punjab, where nine Christians were killed ”“ seven of them burned alive ”“ in 2009.
Take the time to watch this video (at the top) made four months ago (it lasts a little over 1 1/3 minutes). When I saw it this morning on the BBC World News I burst into tears–KSH.
While most of those accused of blasphemy in Pakistan are Muslims, non-Muslim religious minorities suffer disproportionately: Though 5 percent of the population, they are half of those accused, and the testimony of one Muslim is sufficient to convict a non-Muslim. They also suffer increasing attacks by extremists. On August 1, 2009, after a Christian was accused of burning a Koran, a mob connected to the Taliban-linked Sipah-e-Sahaba attacked Christians in Korian and Gojra: They indiscriminately killed seven Christians, six of whom (including two children) were burned alive. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported that police knew of the intended attack but did nothing to prevent it. And while the government has so far not executed those convicted of blasphemy, dozens of accused people have been assassinated by fanatics, even when their cases ended in acquittal.
Two of the five blasphemy laws are specifically aimed at the 3-million-member Ahmadi community, founded in 1889 by Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian, now in India. Most Muslims reject Ghulam Ahmad’s teachings and believe that, contrary to Islam, he claimed to be a prophet. Although Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims, they may be imprisoned for three years if they call themselves Muslims or their meeting places mosques. They are singled out for special vilification in Pakistan’s constitution and, to receive a Pakistani passport, a Muslim must declare “I consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Quadiani to be an imposter Nabi [prophet] and also consider his followers whether belonging to the Lahori or Quadiani group, to be NON-MUSLIMS.” On May 28, 2010, gunmen attacked two Ahmadi houses of worship and killed 93 people attending Friday prayers.
The atmosphere stoked by the laws also contributes to violence between Sunni and Shia, as extremists castigate the others as blasphemers.
Cheering crowds have gathered in recent days to support the assassin who riddled the governor of Punjab with 26 bullets and to praise his attack ”” carried out in the name of the Prophet Muhammad ”” as an act of heroism. To the surprise of many, chief among them have been Pakistan’s young lawyers, once seen as a force for democracy.
Their energetic campaign on behalf of the killer has caught the government flat-footed and dismayed friends and supporters of the slain politician, Salman Taseer, an outspoken proponent of liberalism who had challenged the nation’s strict blasphemy laws. It has also confused many in the broader public and observers abroad, who expected to see a firm state prosecution of the assassin.
Instead, before his court appearances, the lawyers showered rose petals over the confessed killer, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, a member of an elite police group who had been assigned to guard the governor, but who instead turned his gun on him. They have now enthusiastically taken up his defense.