Certain elements inside Pakistan’s military had links to al Qaeda, reveals Barack Obama on Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden

Washington: Former United States President Barack Obama has mentioned that he had dominated out involving Pakistan within the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout as a result of it was an “open secret” that sure parts inside Pak’s navy, and particularly its intelligence providers, maintained hyperlinks to the Taliban and maybe even al-Qaeda, typically utilizing them as strategic belongings towards Afghanistan and India.

Giving a blow-by-blow account of the Abbottabad raid by American commandos that killed the world’s most needed terrorist on May 2, 2011, in his newest e-book “A Promised Land”, the previous US president mentioned that the top-secret operation was opposed by the then defence secretary Robert Gates and his former vice chairman Joe Biden, who’s now the President-elect.

In the e-book that hit the stands globally on Tuesday, America’s first Black president described the assorted choices of killing bin Laden as soon as it turned more and more clear that the elusive al Qaeda chief was dwelling in a secure hideout on the outskirts of a Pakistani navy cantonment in Abbottabad.

 

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“Based on what I’d heard, I decided we had enough information to begin developing options for an attack on the compound. While the CIA team continued to work on identifying the Pacer, I asked Tom Donilon and John Brennan to explore what a raid would look like,” Obama wrote in his memoir.

“The need for secrecy added to the challenge; if even the slightest hint of our lead on bin Laden leaked, we knew our opportunity would be lost. As a result, only a handful of people across the entire federal government were read into the planning phase of the operation,” he mentioned.

“We had one other constraint: Whatever option we chose could not involve the Pakistanis,” he wrote.

“Although Pakistan’s government cooperated with us on a host of counterterrorism operations and provided a vital supply path for our forces in Afghanistan, it was an open secret that certain elements inside the country’s military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaeda, sometimes using them as strategic assets to ensure that the Afghan government remained weak and unable to align itself with Pakistan’s number one rival, India,” Obama revealed.

 

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“The incontrovertible fact that the Abbottabad compound was only a few miles from the Pakistan navy’s equal of West Point solely heightened the likelihood that something we instructed the Pakistanis may find yourself tipping off our goal.

“Whatever we chose to do in Abbottabad, then, would involve violating the territory of a putative ally in the most egregious way possible, short of war raising both the diplomatic stakes and the operational complexities,” he wrote.

In the ultimate levels, they have been discussing two choices. The first was to demolish it with an airstrike. The second choice was to authorise a particular ops mission, through which a choose crew would covertly fly into Pakistan through helicopter, raid the compound, and get out earlier than the Pakistani police or navy had time to react.

Despite all of the dangers concerned, Obama and his nationwide safety crew opted for the second choice, however not earlier than a number of rounds of discussions and intensive planning.

The day earlier than he gave the ultimate approval for the raid, at a Situation Room assembly, Hillary Clinton, the then Secretary of State, mentioned that it was a 51-49 name. “Gates recommended against a raid, although he was open to considering the strike option,” he mentioned.

“Joe (Biden) additionally weighed in towards the raid, arguing that given the large penalties of failure, I ought to defer any determination till the intelligence group was extra sure that bin Laden was within the compound.

“As had been true in every major decision I’d made as president, I appreciated Joe’s willingness to buck the prevailing mood and ask tough questions, often in the interest of giving me the space I needed for my own internal deliberations,” Obama wrote.

“After the successful Abbottabad raid, Obama made a number of calls domestically and internationally, the toughest of which he expected to be that with the then Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari,” he wrote.

 

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“I expected my most difficult call to be with Pakistan’s beleaguered president, Asif Ali Zardari, who would surely face a backlash at home over our violation of Pakistani sovereignty. When I reached him, however, he expressed congratulations and support. ‘Whatever the fallout,’ he said, ‘it’s very good news.” He confirmed real emotion, recalling how his spouse, Benazir Bhutto, had been killed by extremists with reported ties to al-Qaeda,” Obama wrote.

“Mike Mullen had put a call in to Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and while the conversation had been polite, Kayani had requested that we come clean on the raid and its target as quickly as possible in order to help his people manage the reaction of the Pakistani public,” he mentioned.

Laden, the world’s most needed terrorist, was the chief of al-Qaeda that carried out the 9/11 assaults on twin towers in New York, killing practically 3,000 folks. He was killed in a covert raid by a US Navy SEAL crew at his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan.