Osama bin Laden’s elimination though truly welcome is feeding new pressure for conflict between Pakistan and India. That would greatly complicate President Barack Obama’s efforts to drawn down US troops from Afghanistan starting July.
A visit to India and reports from Pakistan give reason for concern. It is quite likely that Pakistan will engineer a terrorist attack within India to draw domestic attention away from its humiliation by the US Navy Seals. The public authority and image of Pakistan’s generals and intelligence services have been seriously hurt by the impunity with which the Americans entered their sovereign territory for an intense military action just a couple of hundred meters from the country’s premier military academy. Worse, this happened just 35 miles from the capital city of Islamabad.
Nationalist pressure is building rapidly on both sides. Since Osama’s death, Pakistan’s government and top generals have warned India several times of catastrophic consequences if it tries a Navy Seals style operation. But many in India are baying for just such an incursion to kill the two persons sheltered in Pakistan who they believe guided the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai killing over 100 persons. For most Indians, those attacks were their 9/11/2001. Their beliefs were bolstered by US intelligence findings suggesting that the terrorists were trained by former or current members of Pakistan’s intelligence services.
Pakistan’s military and government are backed against a wall. They have received over $20 billion in US aid since 2001 and do not want lose it by refusing to cooperate with the Pentagon and CIA. But further cooperation could turn even more Pakistanis against them. The only way to suspend cooperation without losing the aid entirely would be to provoke India by another act of terrorism or a small war. That would allow the army to safely punish the US for its lese majesty by transferring the 100,000 troops in the Western tribal areas to face India in the East.
There is a surprising and disturbing blindness in Pakistan to the realities of Osama’s cruelty and the lethal impacts of his actions on non-Muslims and Muslims alike. He incited terrorist violence that killed many more Muslims than Westerners. Most Arabs have turned away from his particular brand of Islamic zealotry and there were very few demonstrations of grief at his passing. Even in Saudi Arabia, home of the holy shrines of Mecca, fundamentalist Salafi Muslims shed few tears for him.
Pakistanis are not Arabs and are far removed from Arab culture. They never cared much for Osama but are treating him as a holy warrior saint now to whip up a rage over the impotence of their generals in preventing the US military from having its way on their territory. At best, they think their generals are US lackeys who helped the Navy Seals. At worst, they think their generals are incompetent and regular liars.
Either way, large swathes of urbanites and intellectuals feel betrayed by their military, which they regarded as the only segment worthy of trust. Pakistan’s generals have never felt so isolated and unloved. In the past, whenever they felt threatened by domestic public opinion they manipulated patriotism by going to war or creating a climate of war with India. The two countries have fought three wars and have had numerous shootouts across their frontiers.
Obama has delivered on an electoral promise to eliminate Osama and greatly weaken or eradicate Al Qaeda. But there is significant likelihood that Pakistan’s military and intelligence services will pull him deep into a new quicksand.