by Shuja Nawaz
Timeline of Events of that Fateful Night
The gossip mill in Islamabad churned out various timelines for what happened in Abbottabad that night, and who knew what at what time. Adding to the churning was an attempt by the DG-ISI, Lt. Gen. Pasha, to privately brief selected journalists. In his telling, he was the one who first called Kayani.
Kayani recollects that he heard first from the Military Operations Directorate at General Headquarters. The DGMO called to report that a ‘ball of fire’ had erupted in Abbottabad following a helicopter crash. ‘I asked him: what type of helicopter?’ Kayani suggested that the DGMO check with the DG Aviation at Dhamial, near Rawalpindi, about any night flights. He got a rapid reply: ‘None of ours.’ Kayani suspected that it could have been ‘a sneak raid on an SPD [Strategic Plans Division, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons agency] facility nearby’. He immediately made a call to the air chief ACM Rao Suleiman Qamar (noting that the chairman of the JCS was absent). ‘I gave him an executive order within five minutes of the DGMO’s call. Scramble F-16s and anything that is coming in or out, shoot them down!’ Soon after, Sargodha airbase scrambled F-16s. Then Kayani says he called SPD. He recalls speaking to Pasha later. ‘He informed me about Osama being there.’ It is unclear how Pasha came to that conclusion. The F-16s missed the exiting American helicopters, probably because of the delay in the Pakistani reaction and because they may have been directed to the nuclear facility rather than Abbottabad itself. At that point, the Pakistani forces did not know for sure if the ingress had come from Afghanistan or India.
At 3.30 a.m., Kayani was informed that a secure line had been set up by the US embassy so he could speak with Admiral Mullen. ‘Mullen was the first to confirm the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden. He told me he was speaking from the White House and that the intention was to announce the news after twenty-four hours. I told him, “We know it. His family is there. Why wait for twenty-four hours?” He took my recommendation.’
At least one American report of this conversation raises the possibility of Pakistani foreknowledge of bin Laden’s hiding place. Mike Morell, the deputy director of the CIA, confirms that there ‘was discussion of possibly waiting till the next day, when we would have preliminary DNA analysis, or even the day after, when the final DNA analysis would be completed’. But ‘that all changed when Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, called his counterpart [sic] in Pakistan, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. Before Mullen could say anything, Kayani told Mullen that we had gotten Bin Laden. With this, and with the certainty that the news would start getting out, the president felt it safe to make his announcement to the world [emphasis added].’ 54 However, Kayani by that time had received reports from Abbottabad about the attack and the people who were killed or wounded in the target house. So, he could have surmised that bin Laden was the intended target.
A slightly different timeline emerged later when select Pakistani journalists were briefed by Pasha, among others, on the raid. Najam Sethi of the Friday Times reported:
Shortly after reports of a helicopter mishap in Abbotabad hit the media around 1.20 a.m., not so far away in Rawalpindi, the DG-ISI was woken up by a phone call about a crashed helicopter. He called his people to ask: ‘Is it ours?’ After a brief check, he was told, ‘No sir, it’s not ours.’ He called up DG-MO. ‘Is it yours?’ After a brief check he was told, ‘No sir, it’s not ours.’ He called up his boys and told them to rush to the scene of the incident. He also called up the COAS Gen. Kayani to brief him. [Note that Kayani states he first heard from the DGMO.] The COAS called up the top military man in Abbotabad who ordered forces to rush to the area. The COAS also called up the PAF Air Chief. The Air Chief checked, explained that radar hadn’t picked up any intruders, and ordered two F-16s to scramble. When the ISI team arrived at the compound, they reported the burning wreckage of the chopper and the markings on its fin. They reported three dead men and one woman. They reported a wounded woman who spoke Arabic and halting English, and two other women who were unharmed. They noted there were sixteen children aged six to eight years approximately. The woman said she was OBL’s wife, along with two other women, and confirmed that OBL and his family had been living in the compound for six years. She said the Americans had attacked them, killed OBL and taken his corpse. Soon thereafter, the army arrived to seal off the area and whisk away the occupants and dead bodies in the compound.
Around 3 a.m., Admiral Mullen called General Kayani, and CIA Chief, Leon Panetta, called DG-ISI, General Pasha. They explained the nature of the operation and why it had been kept a secret from them. President Obama called President Zardari at 7 a.m. to acquaint him with the facts. They thanked the Pakistanis for providing the initial clues that led the CIA to the compound. 55
Those clues were the transcripts of wiretaps of conversations in Arabic between someone in Nowshera and later Peshawar, Waziristan, and finally the bin Laden Compound in Abbottabad and someone in Saudi Arabia that the ISI shared with the CIA in 2009 and 2010. The information and location data in those wiretaps allowed the CIA to hone in on the compound and find bin Laden.
Kayani was ‘bitter’ against both Mullen and the NSA, Jim Jones. He recalled how, after the attempted bombing of Times Square by Faisal Shahzad, he had written a note to them warning against any strikes inside Pakistan. He said he signed the note so that it would be shown to President Obama. There was bitterness on both sides.
One of the first senior Americans to sense the Pakistani anger at the invasion and raid of Abbottabad was SRAP Marc Grossman. Pakistan had been his first foreign service posting in 1977–79 and retained a special place in his heart. He was in Kabul the night before the raid, getting ready to head to Islamabad for a core group meeting with his Pakistani counterparts, when he heard from William Burns in Washington: ‘Stay where you are. Don’t go to Pakistan!’ His US Air Force aircraft was parked overnight in Manas Transit Centre near Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan for security reasons. After about an hour, Burns called Grossman back: ‘We’ve changed our minds. Someone has to go right now to Pakistan and explain, and in public!’ Grossman had to alert the aircraft crew to get ready for a flight to Kabul en route for Pakistan. An hour later, Burns called again to ask, ‘How come you are not there yet?’ Grossman recalled with a smile that Washington thought ‘it was an Eastern [Airlines] Shuttle that we were going to catch: Washington, Boston, Washington.’ But he managed to fly to Islamabad in the morning.
There he saw the first Pakistani reaction, from the senior leadership and the Foreign Office. He recalled saying to himself, ‘This is fantastic!’ Everybody seemed to welcome the killing of bin Laden. Congratulations were being showered on the Americans for this action. ‘And then boom! It wasn’t twenty-four hours before they decided they wanted to be the victims of this and not stick with their first statement.’ Grossman was not clear who on the Pakistani side drafted and who approved the first statement. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar told me that the first statement had been drafted jointly by Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir and DG-ISI Pasha. It was released to the public by the Foreign Office spokesperson Tehmina Janjua. 56
The text of that first statement is worth reading carefully. It does not object to the raid. Nor does it claim Pakistani collaboration in the raid, though it gingerly hints at ‘extremely effective intelligence sharing arrangements’ with other agencies ‘ . . . including that of the US’. It appears to condone the US action and celebrates the raid as ‘a major setback to terrorist organizations around the world’. 57
Ambassador Cameron Munter, who had landed in the country in 2010 and had had to deal with a number of prickly situations from the outset, including the capture of Taliban leader Mullah Baradar and then the Raymond Davis fiasco, also recalled that in the core group meetings with Kayani and Pasha almost the first words out of their mouths on the raid were ‘Congratulations!’ He then noted, ‘If they were trying to be deceptive, they were wonderful actors!’ His conclusion was that they were genuinely surprised
by the discovery of bin Laden in Abbottabad. According to him, ‘Kayani was very concerned about reactions from the army.’ 58
Grossman met with the core group and then remembers being put before ‘a very large and hostile group of press, with people jumping up’. The main thrust of the local media was denial of the raid as reality. ‘It’s not true. This is like the moon landing. You did this. Disney did this. It was done in a studio. You have him. He is alive. You are going to use him against us some day.’ The normally soft-spoken Grossman leaned forward, grabbed the podium and said crisply: ‘Listen to me. He’s dead. We did it. That’s good. Next question.’ 59
Meanwhile, the Pakistanis had released a longer statement on the raid that hinted at their role in the search for bin Laden, and distanced themselves from assisting the raid itself. Unwittingly, the statement also acknowledged Pakistan’s clear inability to protect its borders and civilian installations as opposed to military and security installations. In words that reflected the legalese of diplomacy, the statement stipulated that the raid could not serve as a precedent for other similar actions. ‘The Government of Pakistan further affirms that such an event shall not serve as a future precedent for any state, including the US. Such actions undermine cooperation and may also sometime constitute threat to international peace and security.’
PR. NO.152/2011
Date: 03/05/2011
Death of Osama bin Ladin—Respect for Pakistan’s Established Policy Parameters on Counter Terrorism
The Government of Pakistan recognizes that the death of Osama bin Ladin is an important milestone in fight against terrorism and that the Government of Pakistan and its state institutions have been making serious efforts to bring him to justice.
However, the Government of Pakistan categorically denies the media reports suggesting that its leadership, civil as well as military, had any prior knowledge of the US operation against Osama bin Ladin carried out in the early hours of 2nd May 2011.
Abbottabad and the surrounding areas have been under sharp focus of intelligence agencies since 2003 resulting in highly technical operation by ISI which led to the arrest of high value Al Qaeda target in 2004. As far as the target compound is concerned, ISI had been sharing information with CIA and other friendly intelligence agencies since 2009. The intelligence flow indicating some foreigners in the surroundings of Abbottabad, continued till mid April 2011. It is important to highlight that taking advantage of much superior technological assets, CIA exploited the intelligence leads given by us to identify and reach Osama bin Ladin, a fact also acknowledged by the US President and Secretary of State, in their statements. It is also important to mention that CIA and some other friendly intelligence agencies have benefitted a great deal from the intelligence provided by ISI. ISI’s own achievements against Al Qaeda and in War on Terror are more than any other intelligence agency in the World.
Reports about US helicopters taking off from Ghazi Airbase are absolutely false and incorrect. Neither any base or facility inside Pakistan was used by the US Forces, nor Pakistan Army provided any operational or logistic assistance to these operations conducted by the US Forces. US helicopters entered Pakistani airspace making use of blind spots in the radar coverage due to hilly terrain. US helicopters’ undetected flight into Pakistan was also facilitated by the mountainous terrain, efficacious use of latest technology and ‘nap of the earth’ flying techniques. It may not be realistic to draw an analogy between this undefended civilian area and some military / security installations which have elaborate local defence arrangements.
On receipt of information regarding the incident, PAF scrambled its jets within minutes. This has been corroborated by the White House Advisor Mr John Brennan who while replying to a question said, ‘We didn’t contact the Pakistanis until after all of our people, all of our aircraft were out of Pakistani airspace. At the time, the Pakistanis were reacting to an incident that they knew was taking place in Abbottabad. Therefore, they were scrambling some of their assets. Clearly, we were concerned that if the Pakistanis decided to scramble jets or whatever else, they didn’t know who were on those jets. They had no idea about who might have been on there, whether it be US or somebody else. So, we were watching and making sure that our people and our aircraft were able to get out of Pakistani airspace. And thankfully, there was no engagement with Pakistani forces. This operation was designed to minimize the prospects, the chances of engagement with Pakistani forces. It was done very well, and thankfully no Pakistani forces were engaged and there were no other individuals who were killed aside from those on the compound.’
. . . Notwithstanding the above, the Government of Pakistan expresses its deep concerns and reservations on the manner in which the Government of the United States carried out this operation without prior information or authorization from the Government of Pakistan.
This event of unauthorized unilateral action cannot be taken as a rule. The Government of Pakistan further affirms that such an event shall not serve as a future precedent for any state, including the US. Such actions undermine cooperation and may also sometime constitute threat to international peace and security . . .
Islamabad 03 May 2011 60
Pakistan had a deep-rooted fear that the bin Laden raid might not only set an unwelcome precedent for future raids against Pakistan’s nuclear assets and facilities, but also give India ideas for similar pre-emptive or punitive raids. Especially once India had the advanced technologies and aircraft that allowed the US raiders to evade and elude detection or interception by Pakistan’s relatively less advanced air force and air defences.
Freefalling Relationship
US–Pakistan relations then went into freefall, but both sides wanted the dialogue that had begun in earnest the previous year to continue. When President Obama had decided to send his SRAP, Marc Grossman, to Pakistan to mend the fraying ties, the CIA’s deputy director, Mike Morell, was with him. In a one-on-one meeting at DG-ISI Pasha’s home in Chaklala, Morell got an earful from his intelligence counterpart. ‘Pasha explained to me that the United States and particularly CIA had deeply embarrassed Pakistan. I clearly understood this. He explained that the embarrassment was twofold: one, embarrassment for his service because it had not found bin Laden, and two, embarrassment for the Pakistani military because it could do nothing to stop such a raid deep in its country.’ Morell reminded Pasha of the location of the hideout, near Pakistan’s military academy, and of President Obama’s public statement that ‘if we found Bin Laden we could come and get him’. Yet Morell assured Pasha that ‘while I knew that neither he nor the most senior officials in Pakistan had been aware of his presence in Abbottabad, it was impossible at some level to dismiss the notion that some Pakistani security officials at some level might have been aware of his presence’. Despite this contretemps, the discussion turned towards the future, and Pasha himself drove Morell to meet Kayani at the latter’s home to continue that discussion. 61
Inside Pakistan, the initial anger was against the military for having failed to protect Pakistan’s borders. Kayani, concerned about the rank-and-file reaction, undertook a series of five Town Hall–style meetings around the country. A senior commander, who was there, remembers at a training school in Nowshera a young officer standing up and declaring that he was ashamed that day to be wearing the army uniform, as a reaction to the failure to intercept the American raid. Kayani reportedly went silent for a moment and then whispered that he shared that sentiment. 62
A closed-door session of parliament was called that was to be briefed by the DG-ISI, the DGMO and the Deputy Chief of Air Staff Operations, though Minister of State Khar recalls that only Pasha spoke. Kayani sat in the visitors’ gallery, as parliamentarians initially demanded answers. Pasha informed them that there had been no complicity in the attack but that there had been failure to detect the raid. This ‘incompetence defence’ became the accepted narrative to justify Pakistan’s inaction. Pasha also informed the parliament that he had offered his resignation
to the army chief and the prime minister. This gave an edge to some hostile members of the assembly. But it prompted others to come to the aid of the military. Khar thought this may have been a planned action. Whether this was an orchestrated move or not, the debate turned then from an indictment of the guardians of the frontiers to the cursing of Pakistan’s American ‘friends’ who had infringed Pakistan’s sovereignty. This became the narrative of the day. No one asked for or got the resignations of Pasha or Kayani, or anyone in the civilian hierarchy. Instead, the parliament called for a commission to investigate the Abbottabad incident and report back.
Clearly, Pakistan continued to shield the reality of its CT operations from scrutiny by the people and their elected representatives. Though it helped capture Al-Qaeda operatives, based on US intelligence, there were few, if any, verifiable actions taken to track down and capture or kill Al-Qaeda leaders and Afghan Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.
Abbottabad Commission
The Abbottabad Commission was announced in June 2011 and its president was Justice Javed Iqbal. Members included Abbas Mohammed Khan, a retired IG Police, Ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, then DG, Institute of Strategic Studies, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed (retd) and Cabinet Secretary Nargis Sethi.
Key elements of the remit of the commission were:
Determine the nature, background and causes of lapses of concerned authorities, if any, and
Make consequential (sic) recommendations. 63
As a result, Pakistan went through yet another frustrating exercise in getting to the truth, following a national disaster. Over a period of nearly one year—from 11 July 2011 to 25 May 2012—the Abbottabad Commission ‘held 52 closed door hearings, conducted 7 field visits, examined 201 witnesses, and held numerous brainstorming sessions among its members’. It also benefited from documents and publications as well as reports from other agencies. Among these, ‘The Pakistan Army Board of Inquiry informed the Commission that the stealth helicopters were probably guided by ground operators who were already in place around the OBL Compound.’ Given the statements of the army chief to the author and other information given to Shaukat Qadir and Pakistani journalists, it is worth highlighting some portions of the timeline for events of that raid on 2 May 2011, Pakistan time, established by the Commission: