Osama commission’s call for intelligence reforms ignored

 

ISLAMABAD: The debate on bringing the intelligence agencies under legal oversight has not popped up suddenly after the attack on Hamid Mir, as even the Abbottabad Commission represented by an army general had also made strong calls for intelligence reforms.
However, like all other reports, the government and intelligence agencies did not pay any heed to the recommendations of the commission and, as a result, the gulf between the ordinary people and intelligence agencies is widening.

The Abbottabad Commission, constituted by the Supreme Court after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a covert CIA operation, had called for comprehensive reforms to improve the working of intelligence community, both in terms of effectiveness and respecting human rights and the rule of law.

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Javaid Iqbal headed the commission while its members included Lieutenant-General (retired) Nadeem Ahmad, former Pakistani envoy Ashraf Kazi, civil servant Nargis Sethi and former Inspector-General of KP Police Abbas Khan.

While criticising the intelligence agencies for failing to detect OBL in the country for nine years, the commission said: “There is an urgent need for the scrutiny of the power and mandate of security agencies, the laws under which they are supposed to work, the nature of oversight and accountability mechanism.”

The commission also stressed that intelligence agencies must not overstep their mandate. “Unless this happens, relations between the intelligence community and the people will remain adversarial and counter-productive. Instead of Pakistan making the transition from a dysfunctional security state to a functioning development state it will run the risk of becoming further degraded to an intelligence and police state.”

The report pointed out that in the absence of proper accountability procedures, the intelligence agencies, including ISI, have lost competence. “The problem was apparent: none among the intelligence community, including the premier intelligence organisation, which is ISI, has ever been subjected to proper accountability procedures. It is a law of nature that under such circumstances, institutions degenerate and progressively lose competence. This has happened in Pakistan.”

Urging the political leadership to reform intelligence agencies through proper accountability, the commission endorsed the views of a Pakistan human rights activist who said: “Unless there is political initiative in this regard no technical, administrative procedure or other reforms of the military/intelligence system can happen.

“There are a number of reports that have been written, including Air Marshal (Retd) Zulfikar Ali Khan’s report and recommendations to redesign our intelligence system and make it more effective. The commission therefore recommends that these reports be studied,” the report said.

The attack on Hamid Mir and the allegations on the ISI by his family have once again brought the issue of intelligence reforms under public spotlight but the chances of any outcome in this regard are still very slim.

According to a report on international legislation on intelligence oversight, Pakistan is one of the few democracies in the world with no mechanism of parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies.

The report titled “Making Intelligence Accountable: Legal Standards and Best Practices for Oversight of Intelligence Agencies,” states that even countries which were previously governed by military rule under authoritarian regimes have carried out intelligence reforms, a study of legislation indicates.

Osama story blanked out

In a surprise for morning readers, the weekend International New York Times edition dated March 22-23, which is distributed along with The Express Tribune here, had a huge blank section on its front page.

The article that was blanked out was “What Pakistan knew about Bin Laden” by Carlotta Gall which appeared earlier in other editions on the front page and can be viewed online. The article, which is an extract from her forthcoming book, is continued on page two but in the edition in Islamabad, there is a full-page advertisement for The Express Tribune, which is the paper’s partner. It is printed in three cities in Pakistan.

Ms. Gall’s excerpt says, “Soon after the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden’s house, a Pakistani official told me that the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. The information came from a senior United States official, and I guessed that the Americans had intercepted a phone call of Pasha’s or one about him in the days after the raid. “He knew of Osama’s whereabouts, yes,” the Pakistani official told me. The official was surprised to learn this and said the Americans were even more so. Pasha had been an energetic opponent of the Taliban. “Pasha was always their blue-eyed boy,” the official said. But in the weeks and months after the raid, Pasha and the ISI press office strenuously denied that they had any knowledge of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.”

The director general Inter Services Public Relations on Thursday had said the allegations of Ms. Gall in her article which appeared on March 19 were baseless and ridiculous. Intelligence sources on Wednesday said there was no truth in The New York Times report which said that the then ISI chief Lt. General Ahmad Shuja Pasha knew of the presence of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.

US always suspected Pakistan for sheltering Osama

 

ISLAMABAD: In the aftermath of the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in a covert American raid in Abbottabad, the top most government and intelligence officials of the United States including President Obama and CIA Director Leon Panetta had pointed the finger of suspicion at the Pakistani establishment for sheltering the fugitive al-Qaeda chief.
The Pakistani authorities have strongly refuted The New York Times report which alleged that the ISI had established a special independent desk to handle bin Laden. There are reports in the media saying the US intelligence had recorded the telephonic conversation between General Ashfaq Kayani and Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha after the Abbottabad assault, which actually led Washington to believe that the Pakistani establishment did not know of Osama bin Laden’s presence.

Laura Lucas Magnuson, a spokesperson for the United States National Security Council, has been quoted as saying that the US has no reason to believe that senior Pakistani officials had knowledge about the location of Osama bin Laden.

However, allegations of a support system in Pakistan for bin Laden had been made by senior American officials both before and after he was hunted and killed in a compound in Abbottabad which was located half a mile from the Kakul Military Academy. As far as the allegations of ISI’s involvement in sheltering Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad are concerned, the first such claim was made by none other than Obama, asking the Pakistani authorities to investigate the network that had been sheltering him.

“We think there had to be some sort of support network for Osama bin Laden inside of Pakistan and that’s something that we have to investigate. More importantly, Pakistani government has to investigate”, said Obama in ‘60 Minutes interview’ of CBS news on May 6, 2011.

In addition to this, in an interview with the TIME magazine on May 7, 2011, the CIA Director Leon Panetta had stated that Pakistan was either involved in sheltering Osama or it was incompetent. “Obviously, the American concern has always been how could a compound like the one in Abbottabad, how could Osama bin Laden be in an area where there were military establishments, where we could see the military operating and not have them know. The concern we had is that we had provided intelligence to them with regards to other areas and unfortunately, for one way or another, it got leaked to the individuals we were trying to go after, so as a result of that we were concerned that if we were going to perform a sensitive mission like this, we had to do it on our own”, he added.

President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan had reacted by saying: “It is inconceivable that Osama bin Laden did not have support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for extended period of time. People are referring to this as hiding in plain sight. We are looking at how he was able to hide out there for so long.”

Carl Levin, the chairman US Senate Committee on Armed Services, stated that the Pakistani officials knew the location of bin Laden and had no doubt they also know the location of other senior al-Qaeda operatives.

He said Pakistan’s intelligence and army have got a lot of explaining to do, given that bin Laden was holed up in such a large house with surrounding buildings.

The US government files leaked by WikiLeaks subsequently disclosed on February 27, 2012 that American diplomats were told that the Pakistani security services were tipping off bin Laden every time the American forces approached. WikiLeaks claimed while citing secret documents seized from Abbottabad compound of bin Laden that the al-Qaeda chief was in routine contact with several ISI officials. The claim was made by US intelligence analysis firm Stratfor in emails which were made public by WikiLeaks. Stratfor was shown the information papers collected from Laden’s compound after the May 2, 2011 raid. As per the WikiLeaks claims, up to 12 ISI officials knew of Osama’s high-walled three-storey compound.

Quoting unnamed senior US intelligence officials, the British newspaper The Telegraph had claimed on August 10, 2011 that Osama was protected by elements of Pakistan’s security apparatus in return for millions of dollars of Saudi cash. And his whereabouts were finally revealed when a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to claim the $25m bounty on his head. The Pakistani officials have always denied that Osama was sheltered or that Islamabad had any knowledge of the secret mission that killed him.

The Telegraph report stated: “The ISI officer came forward to claim the reward and to broker US citizenship for his family”.

In November 2011, Chuck Pfarrer, a former US Navy Seal, in his book “Seal Target Geronimo”, wrote: “The ISI was aware of Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad and the spy agency officials also provided protection and safe houses to his then deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri”. The ISI knew exactly where he was, but did not inform the US. They continued to let bin Laden pace back and forth in his compound,” Pfarrer wrote in his 225-page book which gave a blow by blow account of the Osama killing, claiming that the ISI officials periodically checked on Osama.

The American allegations apart, a high-level judicial commission set up by the Pakistan government to investigate the Abbottabad raid had observed: “Collective negligence by the intelligence agencies was the main reason the al-Qaeda chief remained undetected for so long. However, it could not rule out some degree of plausibly deniable support at some level outside formal structures of the intelligence establishment”.

According to the leaked contents of the 336-page Abbottabad Commission report [which has not yet been made public under the pressure of establishment], “there was evidence of incompetence at every level in Pakistan’s intelligence and security services”. It found that by 2005, Pakistani intelligence was no longer actively pursuing intelligence that could lead to his capture. The report called the handling of the bin Laden situation a “natural disaster” and even asked the national leadership to apologise to the people of Pakistan for their dereliction of duty.