Pakistan army wants cuts in US military personnel

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's army on Thursday called for cuts in the number of U.S. military personnel inside the country to protest the American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and threatened to cut cooperation with Washington if it stages more unilateral raids on its territory.

The statement, the first since Monday's raid, signaled the army's anger at the unilateral operation, but was also aimed at pacifying domestic critics who have accused it of failing to protect the country's sovereignty — potent charges in a country where anti-Americanism runs deep.

Ties between America and Pakistan were already strained before the raid because of American allegations that Islamabad was failing to crackdown on Afghan Taliban factions sheltering on its soil, and Pakistani anger over U.S. drone strikes on its soil.

It did not refer to international suspicions that the army, or elements within it, may have sheltered bin Laden, but admitted intelligence "shortcomings" in not spotting bin Laden, who was living in a large compound in Abbottabad, an army town just a two hours drive from the capital, Islamabad.

The statement was issued after a meeting of top generals. It said Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani told his colleagues that a decision had been made to reduce the number of U.S. military personnel to the "minimum essential" levels. The statement gave no details on the numbers, and a spokesman declined to elaborate.

The U.S. has around 275 declared U.S. military personnel in Pakistan at any one time, some of them helping train the Pakistan army. U.S. officials were not immediately available for comment.

The Pakistani army also warned that it would review its military and intelligence cooperation with Washington if the United States carries out any more similar raids. Earlier, the government had warned of "disastrous consequences" if the U.S. staged a similar attack on its territory.

It said the Inter-Services Intelligence agency had given initial information to the CIA about bin Laden, but claimed the "CIA did not share further development of intelligence on the case with the ISI, contrary to the existing practice between the two services."

The raid on bin Laden has sharpened tensions between the two countries. But while some U.S. lawmakers have been calling on Washington to cut its aid to the country, the Obama administration and British Prime Minister David Cameron have indicated they would continue with their policy of engaging with the country.

"It is not always an easy relationship," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday in Rome. "But on the other hand, it is a productive one for both of our countries and we are going to continue to cooperate between our governments, our militaries, our law enforcement agencies."

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Photos show three dead men at bin Laden raid house

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.

The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.

The official, who wished to remain anonymous, sold the pictures to Reuters.

None of the men looked like bin Laden. President Barack Obama decided not to release photos of his body because it could have incited violence and used as an al Qaeda propaganda tool.

"I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk," Obama told the CBS program "60 Minutes."

Based on the time-stamps on the pictures, the earliest one was dated May 2, 2:30 a.m., approximately an hour after the completion of the raid in which bin Laden was killed.

Other photos, taken hours later at between 5:21 a.m. and 6:43 a.m. show the outside of the trash-strewn compound and the wreckage of the helicopter the United States abandoned. The tail assembly is unusual, and could indicate some kind of previously unknown stealth capability.

Reuters is confident of the authenticity of the purchased images because details in the photos appear to show a wrecked helicopter from the assault, matching details from photos taken independently on Monday.

U.S. forces lost a helicopter in the raid due to a mechanical problem and later destroyed it.

The pictures are also taken in sequence and are all the same size in pixels, indicating they have not been tampered with. The time and date in the photos as recorded in the digital file's metadata match lighting conditions for the area as well as the time and date imprinted on the image itself.

The close-cropped pictures do not show any weapons on the dead men, but the photos are taken in medium close-up and often crop out the men's hands and arms.

One photo shows a computer cable and what looks like a child's plastic green and orange water pistol lying under the right shoulder of one of the dead men. A large pool of blood has formed under his head.

A second shows another man with a streak of blood running from his nose across his right cheek and a large band of blood across his chest.

A third man, in a T-shirt, is on his back in a large pool of blood which appears to be from a head wound.

U.S. acknowledgment on Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead had raised accusations Washington had violated international law. The exact circumstances of his death remained unclear and could yet fuel controversy, especially in the Muslim world.

Pakistan faced national embarrassment, a leading Islamabad newspaper said, in explaining how the world's most-wanted man was able to live for years in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, just north of the capital.

Pakistan blamed worldwide intelligence lapses for a failure to detect bin Laden, while Washington worked to establish whether its ally had sheltered the al Qaeda leader, which Islamabad vehemently denies.

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What did Pakistan know about bin Laden and when did it know it?

By Michael Hirsh
National Journal

"We are with you unstintingly." Those were the words that then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said to the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, just after 9/11. Musharraf's promise proved to be largely a lie—but not entirely untrue. Ever since then, whether the Pakistani regime was autocratic or democratic, Islamabad has played a well-thought-out double game with the United States that's involved handing over some jihadis and protecting others for Pakistan's own purposes.

And what of the biggest quarry of all—Osama bin Laden? Is there some way of explaining how the al-Qaida leader could spend the last six years ensconced in a large and obtrusive villa in Abbottabad, surrounded by the Pakistani military, without anyone in Pakistani officialdom knowing about it?

No, there probably isn't—and in many ways it's unsurprising that if the Pakistani authorities knew bin Laden was there, his whereabouts might have been, shall we say, closely held. CIA officials have known for years that when it came to the really big game, such as bin Laden, Pakistani authorities were unlikely to be cooperative: They feared that backlash from the Muslim world and their own society would be too great if they were seen as playing stooges to the Americans and violating Pashtun tribal loyalties.

"My bet is they knew he was there," Chamberlin told National Journal. "The fear of backlash is part of it. And Pashtun culture is you don't give up people who've helped you, and he goes back to 1980s," when the mujahideen movement bin Laden was a part of served both U.S. and Pakistani interests against the Soviets

Pakistan occupies a unique position in American foreign policy. "Any other country, we'd be calling them a state sponsor of terrorism," said a former senior U.S. diplomat. "It's inconceivable that we give $3 billion a year to a country that would harbor Osama bin Laden.

Why does Washington do this—and why is Washington virtually certain to continue providing aid to Pakistan despite the hue and cry in Congress over the bin Laden news? Because Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country that is still mainly secular. Washington has little choice but to support those secular strains and tamp down the Islamist ones, and it can't do this without the help of the Pakistani government, military, and intelligence apparatus, though it is shot through with Islamist sympathizers.

Critics such as Gary Schroen, the former CIA station chief in neighboring Afghanistan, have noted the Pakistani pattern of giving up second-rate Taliban or al-Qaida leaders only to ameliorate American mistrust, then retreating. To maintain his power, Musharraf cut deals with the religious parties that gave extremists succor, in particular the coalition called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA, or United Action Committee). In the last decade it was Pakistan's rogue chief nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan (who is still under government protection)--not Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Kim Jong Il--who was the most dangerous liaison to would-be nuclear terrorists.

At the same time the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus has grown more cooperative in certain areas as they have become convinced the jihadists they once nurtured as an Islamist counterweight to their fearsome rival, India, have also turned against them. Pakistan helped capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational kingpin of 9/11, in 2003, and in the years since it has turned over other leading al-Qaida figures. This was partly the result of foolish overreaching by the extremists. As Taliban forces moved into Swat Valley they sought to impose harsh Islamic law and sowed indiscriminate violence that left a bitter taste, prompting support when Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kayani directed a successful offensive there. Ironically, Pakistani authorities grew so consumed by their own homegrown threats that they may have paid less attention to al-Qaida figures such as bin Laden in their midst, says Seth Jones of the RAND Corporation.

 "When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say."

All of which helps to explain why President Obama's counterterrorism coordinator, John Brennan, declared on Monday: "Pakistan has been responsible for capturing and killing more terrorists inside of Pakistan than any country, and it's by a wide margin. And there have been many, many brave Pakistani soldiers, security officials, as well as citizens, who have given their lives because of the terrorism scourge in that country."

One big clue into understanding Pakistan's double game can be found in the scholarly work of the country's current ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani. In 2005, when he was still considered a dissident to Musharraf's regime, Haqqani published a book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, which said radical Islamists would always have a safe haven inside the country as long as military strongmen ran Islamabad. Haqqani argued that Pakistani leaders going back to the nation's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Pakistani generals have constantly used the unifying principle of Islam and the perceived threat from Hindu India to build a national identity. This helps explain everything from the military's decades-old effort to build up an Islamist insurgency in disputed Kashmir to Islamabad's successful strategy of aiding and building up the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan during the 1990s.

But it has proved to be something of a Faustian bargain. Many jihadists the Pakistanis once considered "theirs" have since aligned themselves with the Taliban or al-Qaida, and even launched plots against Kayani and other Pakistani officials. Because the Pakistani military's main strategic imperative continues to be building counterweights to India--including Islamist insurgents--only democracy "can gradually wean the country from Islamic extremism," Haqqani wrote.

Haqqani's thesis is still untested, to a degree. While Musharraf has been ousted and Pakistan is nominally democratic under President Asif Ali Zardari—the husband of assassinated Pakistan Peoples Party leader Benazir Bhutto—the country is still effectively ruled by the military. And the Pakistani military's interests haven't changed.

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Photos of the royal wedding

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Why Obama decided not to release Bin Laden photos

The operation to get Osama bin Laden was meticulously planned and carefully thought through, including the decision to bury the terrorist leader's body at sea--a move that would deny the Saudi a grave and, potentially a shrine.

But no one in the administration seems to have decided what should have been a pressing question: What about photos from the operation?

It came down to this: President Obama asked his advisers for a solid reason to release photographs of Osama bin Laden's dead body.

Nothing compelling came forth. The arguments against were clear: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton consulted with allies in the Middle East and reported back that none thought the release of the photos would be in their interests.

She and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also worried that the images would provoke anti-American violence at embassies, consulates and military bases overseas. The Muslim world might look askance at a desecrated dead body, even if it was Osama bin Laden's.

Accounting for the morbid curiosity of human beings, there is little appetite, outside the media and some political elites, for the photos. The White House does not think that their release would bring psychological closure to the families of victims -- and this fact is derived from interviews with family members. Obama has plenty of cover from Congressional Republicans, many of whom have asked the White House to keep them secret. One question remains to be answered: there are many things that a White House can't anticipate after events of this nature, but surely, at some point before bin Laden was killed, someone brought up the question of what to do with the photos that would be taken.

There is an argument to be made that Obama was correct to wait and see if a scenario developed where the release would advance the interests of national security.

No such scenario developed. So that's why the photos won't be released by the White House. Though the White House won't say it, not releasing the photos means that the images one associates with the death of bin Laden are those of Obama making the announcement and Obama and team waiting in the Situation Room. Not releasing the photos helps Obama own this event even more.

Obama gave an insight into his thinking in an interview for CBS News's 60 Minutes. His words, relayed by White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday, dismissed any release of photos of a dead Osama as "an incitement to violence."

The president also put the decision in the context of American values: "That's not who we are. We don't trot this stuff out as trophies."

Now that the decision has been made not to release the photo of a dead bin Laden, presumably recognizable but severely wounded, the administration has taken a gamble.

They've bet that the conspiracy theorists who don't believe in Osama's death won't be convinced anyway. In an age when everyone has photo editing software, why should they?

More importantly, the administration likely bet that the last image of bin Laden would be the most enduring--a grotesquerie, an Arab man--albeit a murderous one--felled by a western bullet. Is that really going to enhance America abroad? No, the president decided.

Of course, this may not be the last word. The decision's been made, but any decision can be revisited. (President Obama once vowed to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, too.) And it's always possible the photo could leak. It's not like we're in the old days where someone can destroy the negatives. If it's digital, it's fungible. If it's fungible, it can leak.

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osama bin laden death news.......

By the time Pakistani soldiers lifted the cordon around Osama bin Laden's house in the garrison town of Abbottabad, triggering a media stampede, the most obvious traces of its infamous resident had been effaced.

The American soldiers who had swept in aboard four helicopters on Sunday night had scoured the three-storey building, taking away computer hard disks and a trove of documents – as well as Bin Laden's bloodied body, which was later buried at sea.

The following day, Pakistani intelligence – angered at not having been informed of the raid, and embarrassed that it took place under their noses – made a second sweep. Tractors carted away furniture and other belongings. But it was impossible to erase every trace of the drama that ended the manhunt.

Beyond the gates, children in flip-flops and salwar kameez fished chunks of blackened helicopter debris from the surrounding fields, flung there after a US helicopter that failed to take off was blown up by its own soldiers.

One boy produced a jagged, soot-encrusted chunk of metal, perhaps part of an exhaust, from a drain. "This is silver!" declared 12-year-old Yasser. A nervous looking intelligence official, loitering nearby, grabbed the child by the hand and led him away.

Fascination with the raid was not confined to Abbottabad. In Washington, fresh details were being revealed by the White House, some which contradicted the earlier version of the demise of the world's most wanted man.

In the hours after Bin Laden's death, US officials briefed that he had put up a fight and shot at the Seal 6 team that stormed the second and third floors of his hideout. Other details suggested he used one of his wives as a human shield.

The White House confirmed that neither was true. Bin Laden was unarmed, was shot in the head and chest, and his wife had been wounded in the leg while rushing towards the special forces before he was killed.

The administration was considering whether to release the photos of the Saudi fugitive's body to counter claims in the region that he had not been killed at all. "There are sensitivities about the appropriateness," said spokesman Jay Carney. "It is fair to say it is a gruesome photograph."

CIA director Leon Panetta told NBC that the government had been talking about the best way to release the photograph. "I don't think there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public," he said.

Another shifting narrative concerned the property itself. Up close, Bin Laden's house, a tall, unlovely piece of architecture, towering over the policemen guarding the gate, was not quite the million dollar mansion described by officials. The walls were high, certainly, but not unusually so for north-western Pakistan, where privacy is jealously guarded. The paint was peeling, there was no air conditioning.

But it was the only house in the neighbourhood with barbed wire and surveillance cameras. And it towered over its only neighbour, a small, ramshackle dwelling made of rough bricks with plastic sheeting for windows. The people inside were scared and apprehensive.

Zain Muhammad, an elderly man perched on a rope bed on the porch, said Pakistani soldiers had come in the night and taken away his son, Shamraiz. He produced a photo of a smiling man with a moustache in his early 40s. "I've no idea where he is. The soldiers won't allow us to leave, not even to fetch water." The family did harbour some suspicions about the house 10 feet away, however – and in particular the pair of secretive, security-conscious brothers who owned it.

"They told us they had to protect themselves because they had enemies back in their home village. They had to screen off the house to protect their women. A lot of us thought they were smugglers," said Abid Khan. Stranger still, the two men had two cows and some goats, but had no discernible source of income.

Construction started around 2004. A year later Bin Laden moved in, according to US officials – perhaps around about the time of the devastating Kashmir earthquake that killed 73,000 people in October of that year. As the wounded flooded into Abbottabad's military hospital a mile away – so many that doctors set up a tent on the main lawn – the Saudi fugitive and his clan were settling into this house down the road.

There had been great speculation about his whereabouts. Across the border in Afghanistan, US soldiers distributed matchboxes with Bin Laden's picture and details of a $25m bounty.

In Pakistan, the US embassy paid for expensive television ads appealing for information. "Who can stop these terrorists? Only you!" implored a voice as images of Bin Laden and 13 henchmen flashed across the screen.

The then president, Pervez Musharraf, insisted the Americans were wrong. His security forces had "broken the vertical and horizontal command and communication links of al-Qaida" in Pakistan, he boasted. "There are a lot of people who say that Osama bin Laden is here in Pakistan," he said. "Please come and show us where."

In Abbottabad, the two Pashtun brothers had finally completed their house, less than a mile from the Pakistan Military Academy where Musharraf himself had been trained.

One of them was Bin Laden's courier, the man trusted to take his messages to the outside world. CIA officials subsequently learned his nom de guerre from an al-Qaida militant picked up in Iraq: Sheikh Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. US officials described him a Pakistani brought up in Kuwait.

To the locals, however, he was simply a Pashtun businessman with an identity card issued in Charsadda, north of Peshawar. He and his brother seemed to be known by several names: Arshad and Tariq Khan, but also Rasheed, Ahmed and Nadeem. The gas bill was in the name of the elder brother, Arshad Khan, presumed to be the "courier" sought by the Americans. Oddly, the house had four separate gas connections. They kept largely to themselves, coming and going in a small white Suzuki van and a red jeep. But they joined in with the everyday rituals of life, condoling the bereaved, celebrating weddings and births. It may have been a necessary part of the cover story; to have done otherwise might have aroused greater suspicion.

"They weren't chatty," said Rasheed, a 32-year-old local shopkeeper, lounging behind his counter who said he sold the brothers salty biscuits and chewy toffees when they arrived with their seven children. He refused to believe they had any links to Kuwait. "We absolutely believed they were Pashtuns," he said.

But the young trader did notice one strange thing. Seven years earlier he had worked on the house as a labourer when it was being built, and had wondered why the brothers insisted that the walls should be 3ft thick.

In the end, the two brothers were Bin Laden's downfall. The CIA learned of Arshad Khan's identity four years ago, and after a two-year search traced him to the Abbottabad area.

Then, last August, a Pakistani working for the CIA spotted one of the brothers as he drove his Suzuki van from Peshawar, leading them to the house. In February, the CIA became convinced Bin Laden was inside, leading to last Sunday's raid.

The two brothers were killed in the opening moments of the assault, according to the CIA, along with Bin Laden and one of his sons, thought to be Khalid.

Many details, however, remain blurred. US officials amended their initial version to reveal that a woman who was killed during the raid on the compound was not Bin Laden's wife.

It is also not clear how Bin Laden, who was cornered in a third-floor room now marked by a shattered windowpane, resisted as the US soldiers barged into his room.

President Barack Obama insists the Navy Seals would have detained him if they could, but it is hard to imagine US officials would have relished either a trial or the spectacle of the al-Qaida leader being held in Guantánamo Bay.

Bin Laden's erstwhile neighbours, now in the gaze of the world's media, congregated outside his house. Some seemed angry, others bemused. One bearded man scolded his friends for speaking to the foreign press; others seemed to relish the attention, presenting themselves for detailed interviews about their brushes with the neighbour they never knew. A few displayed pro-Osama bravado. "I would have opened fire on the Americans myself if I had to defend him!" declared one man.

Others worried about more material problems. "It's going to destroy property prices in this area," muttered one. And there was a surreal moment when an Osama lookalike – a man with a thin face, a large white turban and a full, scraggly beard – turned up at the front gate, triggering laughs and a flutter of camera shutters.

But there was no sign of life from a nearby property, about 50 metres from Bin Laden's back wall, with a high perimeter wall and two watchtowers. Neighbours said it had been built three years ago by a man whose family has long owned property in the area. The nameplate read: Major Amir Aziz. Locals said he was a serving Pakistan army officer. Despite repeated rings on the doorbell, he refused to answer.

It is unclear what will happen now to the house that Osama built. It has become an embarrassment for Pakistan, a reminder of the fact that the world's most famous fugitive managed to live in suburban comfort, apparently undetected, for up to six years.

Some fear it could become a shrine of sorts for al-Qaida supporters, and so it may be destroyed. But failing that, it may simply be rented out again. It is, after all, an attractive property – spacious, well located, and fully fitted with advanced security features. In fact it's just the sort of house that is favoured by security-conscious US diplomats elsewhere in Pakistan. Perhaps they might consider taking it.

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