'Post-bin Laden, The ISI may not want to work with the CIA again'
A former senior intelligence official in Pakistan’s intelligence service tells John Sparks that the US has badly damaged relations between Washington and Islamabad, and fears the ISI may be unwilling to continue working with the CIA.
Asad Munir, who was a station chief in the country’s northern tribal regions, led the hunt for Osama Bin Laden for two and half years on behalf of the organisation.
He left the ISI in 2005 and remains proud of what he and his fellow officers accomplished. He says they detained more than 400 al-Qaeda suspects – often in close cooperation with the US spy agency, the CIA.
However, he told me that he is unhappy with a series of statements from US government officials and the CIA, made after the raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad – and he says they may have serious repercussions.
Significantly, he takes issue with the American position (confirmed by President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor on 3 May) that bin Laden lived in the small garrison town for five years. This has caused the ISI much embarrassment.
Mr Munir says he has spoken directly with the first person to enter the compound after the raid. This person, who he has declined to name publicly, related a conversation with a female Arab doctor who lived in the building. He said: “There was an Arab lady doctor and while they were conversing she said one thing. The sheik Abu Hamza (another name for Osama Bin Laden) was only here for the last two months in this compound. This was the first conversation that I know took place.”
Mr Munir says it is possible that the family of bin Laden lived in the compound full-time – but he thinks the al-Qaeda chief would not have taken such a risk. “I personally feel he could never stay in one particular place for five years,” he said.
“You know he has been moving. I had been chasing him for more than two-and-a-half years and whenever we got information. One particular (bit of) information was about South Waziristan, and once we went there he was (no longer) there and we found out two things. He doesn’t keep (a lot) of people around him, and he doesn’t stay in one place.”
His account contradicts the US line; military officials have said that the compound was “an active command-and-control centre for al-Qaeda’s top leader”. Here in Pakistan, many are dubious. They point out that the building didn’t have a phone or an internet connection. Mr Munir believes bin Laden was a more elusive – and a far less ‘stationary’ – figure than the Americans have portrayed him as.
The former ISI station chief is particularly upset with comments made by the head of the CIA – Leon Panetta. In an interview last week with Time magazine, Panetta said “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets.” This comment has particularly angered Mr Munir. He said: “The most disturbing statement came from Mr Panetta – that he thought we would leak (information). He is such a big man, he knows everything. He was the person directly responsible dealing with Pakistan. You know he should have respected Pakistan. We have given them 400 people from al-Qaeda that they could never have captured.”
Mr Munir told me that the CIA did not have to inform Pakistani authorities of what they were doing in certain circumstance, so the issue of a ‘leak’ should never have arisen. He says there was a special understanding between the two sides. “There was an understanding at high level that if (bin Laden) is found and there is actionable intelligence, so the Americans can react and use their force,” he said.
Mr Munir says top ISI commanders are embarrassed by their failure to capture bin Laden. But further humiliation was heaped on the organisation unnecessarily, he says, by US government officials questioning their professionalism.
And, he says, there will be consequences. Intelligence officers working for the service may refuse to work with the CIA in future.
“You have to see that these operations are conducted by field operatives on the ground. They would feel that they have been betrayed. I don’t think these relations will be again like they were. They are the ones conducting the operations and sharing the intelligence and doing all these jobs. It will take a lot of effort to normalise relations.”
Mr Munir is highly critical of his former employer for not finding bin Laden, but he thinks it is unlikely that ISI officers conspired with al-Qaeda to protect him. He said: “There may be sympathisers (within the ISI). But they cannot do anything. There is a system. If am a sympathizer of Osama Bin Laden in an organisation I cannot do anything on (my) own. People are not familiar with the working of ISI. Even as a station chief I can’t do things that my government or my (Director General) doesn’t want me to do. I just can’t do it because somebody within my organisation, (on) the same day would report (it).”
So how does Mr Munir explain the ISI’s failings in this case? “Incompetence and inefficiency – nothing more….. I have no doubt in it…. Nobody has ever told me ok don’t catch such and such person. I was the station chief, I (would) have been informed.”
The Americans have killed bin Laden in Abbottabad but the war on terror is not over. They still need the Pakistanis. The authorities here hold three of Bin Laden’s wives and the ‘Arab lady doctor’ – all left behind after the raid.
On Sunday, a US government official publicly complained that the Pakistanis were refusing to give them access to these individuals. They may have to wait for some time.