The Pakistan army will have to end its double game, but the United States must make the first move, writes Graham Usher The killing of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces has caused the worst rupture in US- Pakistani relations since the 9/11 attacks on America. Barack Obama's meek call for a government investigation into how the world's number one fugitive could be hiding in plain sight in a garrison town deep in Pakistan has been amplified by demands from Congress for cuts in an aid bill that last year topped $4.5 billion, most of it military. On 14 May US Senator John Kerry arrived in Islamabad to mend fences. Long a supporter of Pakistan, he admitted relations were at a "critical moment". He acknowledged that evidence of the Pakistan army sheltering on its territory the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan insurgent Haqqani network was "very disturbing". But he called on both states to "find a way to march forward". Pakistan is staying stubbornly put. At a special parliamentary session on 13 May General Ahmed Shuja Pasha -- head of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) -- confessed "negligence" for not finding Bin Laden. But his main ire was reserved for the Americans. The CIA "conducted a sting operation against us", he charged, referring to US forces entering Pakistan without permission or coordination. CIA chief Leon Panetta said the ISI had not been informed in advance for fear it would "alert the target". Calling for a review of all US ties, Pasha said henceforth no CIA agent would be allowed to operate in Pakistan without the ISI's "full knowledge". Pakistan's 400 lawmakers and senators clapped, cheered and thumped their desks in agreement. American anger is understandable. How could Bin Laden live for five years undetected in a leafy suburb under the noses of an army that had received upwards of $20 billion in US aid primarily to achieve his death or capture? The short answer is he couldn't without the connivance of the ISI or elements of it. That view is shared near universally not only in Washington but also in Pakistan, including by former ISI chiefs. The ISI was always a reluctant convert to the "war on terror". If for Washington the enemy was Bin Laden and the pro-Pakistan Taliban regime that harboured him, for the ISI the enemy was and is India: in its eyes massively strengthened after 9/11 by a pro-Delhi tilt in US foreign policy and by an avowedly pro- Indian (and viscerally anti-Pakistani) government in Kabul. The result was a "double game". The army would go after certain top Al-Qaeda leaders in return for US bounty. It would also mount campaigns against Al-Qaeda inspired militants inside Pakistan that had taken up arms against the state. But at the same time it sheltered Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network: both were patronised to project Pakistani power in Afghanistan and serve as a hedge against widening Indian influence there. It's possible the ISI or parts of it also saw Bin Laden as an "asset": his ongoing absence ensured vast amounts of US largess, his eventual "capture" would rehabilitate a roguish army in Western eyes and he could be used to mediate between warring militant factions inside Pakistan. It was a gamble. But high-risk duplicity has long been a feature of Pakistani foreign policy. Will Obama call Pakistan's bluff? Few believe America would cut aid to a state that is already in economic freefall. Flush with the success of the Bin Laden hit, the greater temptation is to do similar CIA hit-and-run jobs against Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar (thought to be in Quetta) and Jalaluddin Haqqani (thought to be in Peshawar). Nothing could be more dangerous, say Pakistani sources. The reason the ISI was so outraged by the CIA raid was not just the "embarrassment" of exposing Bin Laden in Pakistan. It was because it could be a dry run for a US-Indian invasion aimed at disabling Pakistan's 100 or so nuclear weapons, a fear that amounts to almost paranoia among ISI and army officers. Further raids would incur reprisals. At the parliamentary session the government resolved that more CIA drone attacks inside Pakistan may force it to "consider" suspending supply lines to NATO in Afghanistan. It's no idle threat. Last October the army froze supplies in retaliation for an unauthorised NATO incursion into Pakistan: 40 per cent of all NATO materiel goes through Pakistan. There was a lot of fakery in the umbrage taken by Islamabad over the US raid: the ISI permits the use of bases for CIA drone attacks inside Pakistan. But one charge rang true: that the single biggest cause of the unprecedented violence now routinely seen in Pakistan has been the US-led war in Afghanistan. In perhaps the most lethal consequence of the "war on terror" the US has helped create in a nuclear armed state the very conditions it invaded a mediaeval one to destroy. Bin Laden's death offers a chance to end that war. Since October the US has been in quiet talks with the Afghan Taliban. They've snagged on the demand that the latter renounce all ties to Al-Qaeda. With its leader gone -- and fewer than 200 Al-Qaeda men in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- that should no longer be an insurmountable condition. For ten years the Afghan Taliban has been an ethnic Pashtun insurgency focussed more on expelling foreign forces from Afghanistan than waging global jihad. Pakistan could sink the reconciliation. It has been in talks with the Karzai government in Kabul, urging it to loosen ties to Washington in favour of Pakistan-friendly China. But Islamabad also wants to be an integral part of an Afghan peace process: it wants clarity about the depth of India's role in Afghanistan and an end to irredentist claims by Kabul on Pastun areas in northwest Pakistan. It wants an India-Pakistan peace process, with serious negotiations about the fate of Kashmir. As Obama has acknowledged, peace in Kashmir would help bring stability to South Asia more than any other single issue. But it is up to him -- not a sullen Pakistan -- to make the first move.
