OBL: Pakistan's convenient ignorance

Sure, Osama seems to have been shot dead. The doubts surround the question of Pakistani complicity. Last night professor Akbar Ahmed, formerly a commissioner in Abbottabad, a former High Commissioner to the UK, and a respected authority on Pakistan and on Islam, suggested on Channel 4 News that the Pakistanis had known of Osama’s whereabouts and effectively held him as a “last throw of the dice” in the event that relations with the US deteriorated… deteriorate they did. And the attack was triggered.

It is surely not credible that “the most wanted man in the world” lived undisguised in a middle class neighbourhood 35 miles from Islamabad unknown to anyone… we now know that children came and went to play with Osama’s own children for example. His kidney doctor came and went to give Osama dialysis. The nature of the compound has been well rehearsed.

You then have the “cover” of denial by the Pakistani authorities. “We never knew he was there” said President Zardari. How convenient… so that when America struck, no mud would stick that would ignite the fires of fundamentalist hatred within the country. Suited America too, so heroic, an attack in the face of potential hostility. Save that from Pakistan itself, there was none.

So US forces were “in country” for more than an hour, airborne for some thirty minutes of that time. The US UK trained Pakistani forces failed to scramble a single military boot, let alone a plane or helicopter.

I have always been taught as a reporter never to bank on conspiracy, never to underestimate incompetence. I am trying, heaven knows, I’m trying. But a seasoned nose, tutored in all sorts of trouble spots from El Salvador to Iran, suspects this doesn’t stack up.

I know this is a more than usually speculative Snowblog, but I thought I’d share it, in case it stirs someone else’s knowledge/experience/thoughts.