Osama bin Laden killed: Changing face of relationship between US and Pakistan

Al Qaeda ideologue and mastermind of Sept. 2011 Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces on Sunday in a town two hours from Pakistan capital Islamabad raising questions about the U.S.-Pakistan ties.

CNN reported that Osama Bin Laden was killed in a mansion in the town of Abbottabad, some 62 miles from the Pakistan capital Islamabad.

U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking about the end to a decade-long manhunt said: Justice has been done.

However, the fact that the Laden was holed up in Pakistan in a mansion near a Pakistani military academy has raised concerns about Pakistan's credibility and U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan.

The Guardian reported that Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaking about Laden's presence in Pakistan said: Year after year, day after day, we have said the fighting against terrorism is not in the villages of Afghanistan, not among the poor people of Afghanistan, the fight against terrorism is in safe havens. It proves that Afghanistan was right.

Reuters reported President Obama as saying: But it's important to note that our counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.

The death of bin Laden comes at a juncture when relationship between U.S. and Pakistan are strained due to unmanned drone strikes within Pakistan border and the killing of two Pakistani men in Lahore by CIA contractor Raymond Davis.

Reuters stated that surroundings near Abbottabad, the town where bin Laden was killed has long been a joint for training Islamist militants, particularly those fighting in India-controlled Kashmir.

The New Yorker quoted Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as stating: It's fairly well known that the I.S.I. has a longstanding relationship with the Haqqani network, Haqqani is supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners.... So that's at the core-it's not the only thing-but that's at the core that I think is the most difficult part of the relationship.

The distrust between the two countries has been widening, a fact that The New Yorker said is reflected in American officials no longer keeping the Pakistani officials informed about the CIA drone attacks, out of fear of tip-offs.

However, IBN Live reported that former Pakistani intelligence agency chief Lieutenant General (retired) Hamid Gul as saying, It is wrong to say that the ISI or the Pakistani government was harbouring Osama. Let more information come in. It is not unusual to have compounds with huge walls and heavy security in this part of Pakistan. Pathans usually build huge compound walls.

While CIA accuses ISI of double-crossing the U.S., the fact that both organizations worked hand-in-glove during the cold war to oust the Soviet forces in Afghanistan was a well-known fact. Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, in an article titled Who is Osama Bin Laden? in Centre for Research on Globalisation said Saudi-born Osama bin Laden was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war under the auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet invaders. He further states that: With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI [Inter Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad. He argues that CIA in conjunction with ISI played a key role in training the Mujahideen.

It is with CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of US military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government.

The turnaround in relationship between the ISI and the US government will certainly be under duress until reports of how bin Laden found a safe abode in Pakistan tumble out.