Pakistani’s jab: U.S. ‘martyred’ bin Laden
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, said Thursday that the United States “martyred” Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks — a term that reflected a subtle jab at Washington, as it’s used mainly for honorable figures slain in battle.
Meanwhile, Washington’s annual terrorism report said Pakistan was doing too little to counter terrorist groups, particularly those taking aim at rival India and the dreaded Haqqani network operating in Afghanistan.
Khan delivered his jab in a rambling budget speech in parliament, attacking his predecessors’ foreign policies and saying that Pakistan’s partnership with the United States in the war on terror was a mistake.
Khan also said Washington used abusive language against Pakistan, blaming Islamabad for its failures in neighboring Afghanistan.
Most of all, the U.S. refused to tell Islamabad of its operation against bin Laden in 2011 before carrying out the Navy SEALs raid. The special operations force swooped into Pakistan’s military garrison town of Abbottabad in the middle of the night on May 2, 2011, killing bin Laden and several of his operatives.
“We sided with the U.S. in the war on terror but they came here and killed him, martyred him and … used abusive language against us [and] did not inform us [of the raid], despite the fact that we lost 70,000 people in the war on terror,” Khan told Parliament.
Opposition lawmaker Khwaja Mohammed Asif slammed Khan for his remark. “[Bin Laden] ruined my country, but [Khan] is calling him a martyr,” said Asif.
Washington has repeatedly accused Pakistan of harboring the Afghan Taliban and giving safe haven to the feared Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate that has been blamed for some major attacks in Afghanistan over the years and was declared a terrorist group by the United States. U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had claimed the Haqqani network was run by Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, known by its acronym ISI.
Pakistan denied the accusations, saying Washington was blaming Pakistan for the failure of the U.S.-led coalition’s 150,000 soldiers to defeat the Taliban, who are now at their strongest since being toppled in 2001 and rule or hold sway in about half of Afghanistan.
Khan claims his government has reset the Pakistan-U.S. relationship, elevating it to one of mutual respect, for which he also credited the personal rapport he has built with President Donald Trump. “No one insults us now,” said Khan.
BLACKLIST FEARS
Islamabad bristled at the criticism in the U.S. State Department report, saying it has been relentless in its assistance to Washington as it brokered the peace deal with the Taliban signed in February.
Amir Rana, executive director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, which tracks militant groups, said Friday that the report is a warning to Pakistan that it needs to do more to target terrorist financing and dismantle terrorist networks if it wants to avoid being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force, the global money-laundering and terrorist-financing watchdog based in Paris.
Pakistan, which was put on a so-called gray list by the task force in 2018, was given a further reprieve this month to avoid the blacklist by meeting a series of benchmarks. If Pakistan is put on a blacklist, its international borrowing would be severely restricted.