The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of US forces will no doubt bring closure to many throughout the world who’ve lost loved ones to al-Qaeda’s terror campaign. But far from signalling the end of the battle for supremacy in South Asia, bin Laden’s demise only marks the end of the beginning.
The United States reportedly launched the attack on bin Laden’s luxury, Pakistani hideaway without informing the Pakistani authorities. The failure to gain prior consent lays bare the lack of trust which has characterized relations between Islamabad and Washington since the beginning of the War on Terror. Speculation has been rife for years that Pakistan has been playing a double game with the West – posing as a cooperative ally in the war in neighbouring Afghanistan while secretly aiding the Afghan Taliban which gave bin Laden sanctuary. Classified US documents posted online by Wikileaks repeatedly accuse the ISI, Pakistan’s most powerful intelligence agency, of supporting the Afghan Taliban. Continue reading ‘bin Laden’s Death: A Game Changer in Pakistan’
