Can Pakistan be Trusted?
May 3, 2011
How did the world's most wanted man live for years in a spacious mansion located near the headquarters of Pakistan's powerful army? Sen. Sanders asked that question after Osama Bin Laden was caught and killed - not hiding in a cave in the rugged mountainous border region straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan - but inside a large, heavily-fortified compound near Pakistan's premiere military college and a military base. "The fact that Bin Laden was located in a mansion almost adjoining a military installation in a large city in Pakistan maybe suggests to us that our friends in that country have not been as vigorous as they have suggested in pursuing him and terrorism in general," said Sanders. The senator last February visited Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of a congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission.
The circumstances surrounding the final chapter in the decade-long manhunt for Bin Laden raised questions that "threatened to unravel the remaining threads in a U.S.-Pakistan relationship that is severely strained by mistrust," according to an article in The Washington Post.
On Tuesday, the top U.S. counterterrorism official said that the U.S. would "get to the bottom" of whether the Pakistani government helped Bin Laden avoid detection. John Brennan told National Public Radio that "we're not accusing anybody at this point, but we want to make sure we get to the bottom of this."
For its part, the Pakistan foreign ministry on Tuesday bridled over the United States military operation inside its borders. "This event of unauthorized unilateral action cannot be taken as a rule," the foreign ministry statement said according to a Washington Post report from Islamabad.
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