PAKISTAN’S MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE

IN PAKISTAN, RARE DOUBTS ABOUT MILITARY AND INTELLIGENCE SERVICE OVER BIN LADEN CASE

Karin Brulliard

The Washington Post, May 5, 2011

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As neighbors and reporters swarmed the streets around Osama bin Laden’s compound this week, men in sunglasses and white tunics lurked about on motorbikes. Residents presumed they were Pakistani intelligence agents, there to keep tabs on who spoke to whom.

That counted as nothing unusual in a nation where the security establishment has cultivated an image as a nearly omnipresent force that is watchful above all of foreigners who go near military installations.

Yet given the choice between pleading incompetence or complicity in bin Laden’s years-long stay in the garrison city of Abbottabad, Pakistani authorities have opted for the former. It is an explanation that strains credulity for many international observers, including U.S. policymakers, who have demanded an investigation into whether Pakistan sheltered the al-Qaeda leader.

Pakistanis have been more inclined to believe that their government was unaware of bin Laden’s presence. But the admissions of error by Pakistani authorities have prompted unusual questioning of a central tenet of the national narrative: that the military and intelligence services are untouchable guarantors of Pakistan’s safety.

Some of the discord centers on the United States, which the Pakistani government rebuked for carrying out an “unauthorized” operation when it choppered in Navy SEALs to raid bin Laden’s sanctuary.

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