The Hidden Life of Osama Bin Laden

[Savonarola]

Leaked report shows Bin Laden's 'hidden life' 


Government report obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera reveals results of investigation into AQ chief's life on the run.



Asad Hashim Last Modified: 08 Jul 2013 17:29 



Former al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was able to hide in Pakistan for nine years due to the "collective failure" of state military and intelligence authorities, a leaked Pakistani government report has revealed.

The report, obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, also outlines how "routine" incompetence at every level of civil governance structure allowed the once world's most wanted man to move to six different locations within the country.

The report of the Abbottabad Commission, formed in June 2011 to probe the circumstances around the killing of Bin Laden by US forces in a unilateral raid on the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, draws on testimony from more than 200 witnesses, including members of Bin Laden's family, Pakistan's then spy chief, senior ministers in the government and officials at every level of the military, bureaucracy and security services.

It was released by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit on Monday, after being suppressed by the Pakistani government.

It comes on the heels of a report by AP news agency revealing that top US special operations commander, Adm William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.

Following the US operation to kill Bin Laden in May 2011, which was avowedly conducted without the Pakistani government or military's knowledge, the Commission was set up to examine both "how the US was able to execute a hostile military mission which lasted around three hours deep inside Pakistan", and how Pakistan's "intelligence establishment apparently had no idea that an international fugitive of the renown or notoriety of [Osama bin Laden] was residing in [Abbottabad]".



The Abbottabad Commission was charged with establishing if the failures of the Pakistani government and military were due to incompetence or complicity, and was given overarching investigative powers.

The Commission's 336-page report is scathing, holding both the government and the military responsible for "gross incompetence" leading to "collective failures" that allowed both Bin Laden to escape detection, and the United States to perpetrate "an act of war".

Moreover, through the testimony of Bin Laden's family members, intelligence officials and the wife of one of his couriers, the Commission was able to piece together a richly detailed image of Bin Laden's life on the run from authorities, including details on the secluded life that he and his family led in Abbottabad and elsewhere.

It found that Bin Laden entered Pakistan in mid-2002, after narrowly escaping capture in the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001. Intelligence officials say he stayed briefly in the South Waziristan and Bajaur tribal areas of Pakistan, before moving to the northern Swat Valley to stay with his guards, Ibrahim and Abrar al-Kuwaiti, for several months.

While in Swat, Bin Laden reportedly met with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks against the United States, in early 2003. A month later, Mohammad was captured in Rawalpindi in a joint US-Pakistani operation, and Bin Laden fled Swat.

Bin Laden turned up next in the town of Haripur, in northern Pakistan, where he stayed for two years in a rented house with two of his wives and several of his children and grandchildren.

In August 2005, they all moved to a custom-built compound in Abbottabad, a military garrison town located about 85km away from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He stayed there for six years, until he was killed in the US operation in May 2011.

'Culpable negligence'

According to the Commission's investigations, Pakistan's intelligence establishment had "closed the book" on Bin Laden by 2005, and was no longer actively pursuing intelligence that could lead to his capture.



This [was] a case of nothing less than a collective and sustained dereliction of duty by the political, military and intelligence leadership of the country.

Abbottabad Commission report




Moreover, it found that there had been a complete collapse of governance and law enforcement - a situation it termed "Government Implosion Syndrome", both in the lack of intelligence on Bin Laden's nine-year residence in Pakistan, and in the response to the US raid that killed him. It finds that "culpable negligence and incompetence at almost all levels of government can more or less be conclusively established".

On the presence of a CIA support network to help track down Bin Laden in Pakistan without the Pakistani establishment's knowledge, the Commission determined that "this [was] a case of nothing less than a collective and sustained dereliction of duty by the political, military and intelligence leadership of the country".

It also found that the US violation of Pakistani sovereignty, in carrying out the raid unilaterally, had been allowed to happen due to inaccurate and outdated threat assessment within the country's defence and strategic policy establishments.

"It is official or unofficial defence policy not to attempt to defend the country if threatened or even attacked by a military superpower like the US?" the Commission asked of several top military officers.

Military officers, including the chief of the country's air force, testified that Pakistan's low-level radar was on "peacetime deployment", and hence not active on the border with Afghanistan, when the raid occurred.

The report concludes that unless there are major changes to Pakistan's defence strategy, it remains vulnerable to a repeat of such an airborne raid.

The Commission found that the country's "political, military intelligence and bureaucratic leadership cannot be absolved of their responsibility for the state of governance, policy planning and policy implementation that eventually rendered this national failure almost inevitable", and calls on key national leaders to formally apologise to the country for "their dereliction of duty".

Perhaps aware of the implications of its findings, the Commission noted that it had "apprehensions that the Commission's report would be ignored, or even suppressed", and urged the government to release it to the public.

It did not do so. The report was buried by the government and never released.

Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit obtained a copy of the Commission's report, and has now released it, in full, along with accompanying coverage to help unpick the details, and implications of its findings.

Al Jazeera has received credible reports that its domain (www.aljazeera.com) was blocked for users in Pakistan shortly after it released the Bin Laden Files at 15:00 GMT.

Page 197 of the report, which contains part of the testimony of Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, then director of the ISI, was missing from all copies of the report that Al Jazeera obtained from multiple sources. It is unclear what was contained in that page, but the contextual implication is that, among other things, it contains a list of seven demands made by the United States of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

A scanned copy of the actual report can be found on Al Jazeera's website:  http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/07/20137813412615531.html

[Jacob]

Solid investigative journalism there by Al Jazeera.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't believe it for a second.

[Jacob]

I don't believe it for a second.

The content of the report, you mean?

[Admiral Yi]

The content of the report, you mean?

The part about misplacing Bin Laden.

[Jacob]

The content of the report, you mean?

The part about misplacing Bin Laden.

Heh. Yeah.

I think you probably had a small group of people being complicit amidst a larget sea of incompetence, but the complicit can convincingly act merely incompetent and not stand out.

[Admiral Yi]

Heh. Yeah.

I think you probably had a small group of people being complicit amidst a larget sea of incompetence, but the complicit can convincingly act merely incompetent and not stand out.

That's one reasonable interpretation.  Another one is that the whole government percieved Bin Laden as a valuable bargaining chip and useful leverage in Afghanistan and with the jihadist groups in Pakistan.

[Barrister]

The content of the report, you mean?

The part about misplacing Bin Laden.

Been reading the report (though not sure how far I'll go).  The introduction though makes it quite clear that this commission thought it was not being given sufficient information from various sources, including Pakistani Army and ISI.

It also makes clear this was no great act of investigative journalism by Al Jazeera - the report itself strongly recommends that it be made public.  Obviously the Pakistani government didn't follow that advice, and one or more commissioners took it upon themselves to hand it over to Al Jazeera.

[frunk]

Heh. Yeah.

I think you probably had a small group of people being complicit amidst a larget sea of incompetence, but the complicit can convincingly act merely incompetent and not stand out.

That's one reasonable interpretation.  Another one is that the whole government percieved Bin Laden as a valuable bargaining chip and useful leverage in Afghanistan and with the jihadist groups in Pakistan.

I think it's unlikely that a large number of people in the Pakistani government knew for sure that Bin Laden was in Pakistan, and almost certainly very few knew where he actually was.  The more people involved the more difficult it would be to keep secret.  It's possible that high level officials or even the leaders knew, but not the whole government.

[Admiral Yi]

I think it's unlikely that a large number of people in the Pakistani government knew for sure that Bin Laden was in Pakistan, and almost certainly very few knew where he actually was.  The more people involved the more difficult it would be to keep secret.  It's possible that high level officials or even the leaders knew, but not the whole government.

Fair enough.  By "whole government" I meant the civilian leadership too, not just the ISI acting rogue.

[frunk]

Fair enough.  By "whole government" I meant the civilian leadership too, not just the ISI acting rogue.

No argument with that.

[Jacob]

Fair enough.  By "whole government" I meant the civilian leadership too, not just the ISI acting rogue.

Quite possibly.

Though I think it's also likely that significant parts of the leadership, one way or the other, could have been kept in dark by other parts. I get the impression that factionalism is rife, as it were.

[Admiral Yi]

Quite possibly.

Though I think it's also likely that significant parts of the leadership, one way or the other, could have been kept in dark by other parts. I get the impression that factionalism is rife, as it were.

As I said earlier, that's a reasonable conclusion.

What I think is not so reasonable is to view this report as gospel truth.

[Jacob]

What I think is not so reasonable is to view this report as gospel truth.

For sure.

[grumbler]

I very much doubt that the top civilian leadership in Pakistan knew about bin Laden's presence in the country.  That secret would never have been kept in such a set of circumstances, particularly with the size of the reward on bin Laden.

I think that the section of the ISI responsible for Afghanistan knew of his location, and viewed him in the light Yi has suggested.  But we have always known that Pakistan's government doesn't really have all that much authority over the military or the ISI.  There would be no reason for the ISI conspirators to inform the government, and many reasons why they shouldn't.