Tag Archives: osama bin laden

The Obama doctrine

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Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bill Daly during Operation Geronimo

Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power  

David E Sanger  

Crown Publishers  

New York, 2012

Price: 1,795 rupees

In Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, David Sanger has written the definitive account of President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign policy. Packed with information, it provides interesting details on how some significant decisions were made at the White House in recent years. It tells us how the Americans flooded the Pakistani market with digital cameras to determine Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. Each of these cameras contained a unique signature and sent out traceable signals. American administration officials were working on the assumption that the Al-Qaeda founder “loved nothing more than to make videos that kept his message alive” and his videographers might want to upgrade their equipment at some stage for better results. The strategy failed, but the Americans managed to discover bin Laden’s residence in Abbottabad using more conventional means.

As they started gathering intelligence, some interesting facts about the place emerged. “There were no phones or Internet at the compound,” writes Sanger. “The occupants were either hermits or desperately afraid of being traced. Garbage was burned in the courtyard rather than collected on the street. And the couriers, it became clear, drove at least 90 minutes from the compound before they turned on their cells to make a call.”
The book claims that some administration officials briefly discussed the possibility of sharing this intelligence information with Pakistan as they decided to raid the compound. But the idea was dropped since there “was story after story of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) warning potential targets of joint raids to get out of town”. The National Security Agency’s “computers were filled with intercepted conversations in which ISI officers played both sides of the war” and “not one person in President Obama’s team wanted the Pakistanis to be in the loop”.

Sanger’s work must be read by rightwing conspiracy theorists in Pakistan who always claim that our foreign policy is formulated somewhere in Washington. The book mentions how officials from the two countries debate contentious issues and how difficult it gets for them to reach a consensus.

This narrative should also be read by those interested in the future of warfare. Sanger’s account clearly demonstrates how American research in science and technology has rapidly increased its ability to target its enemies without using conventional means of combat.

He discusses in detail how the Americans gained access to Iran’s highly-fortified Natanz nuclear plant by simply infecting its computer systems. The idea was to get a clear picture of the inner workings of the facility. After the initial success of the programme, the US decided to embark on a joint venture with Israel and developed a worm that destroyed nearly a thousand centrifuges on the same premises without raising suspicion among Iranian nuclear scientists.

It is interesting to note that initial cyber attacks on Iran were authorised by President George W Bush whose administration was already targeting Iraq and Afghanistan. But while Obama was concerned about the other two wars, he decided to continue with his predecessor’s strategy of limiting Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon since it was a low-risk option. It also made it easier for him to dissuade Israel from launching a unilateral attack against Iran.

Sanger also points out that Obama relied too heavily on drones to meet his administration’s objectives. “Quietly, he is attempting to fit them into a new concept of how the United States can ensure its military predominance around the globe without resorting to the lengthy, expensive, and unpopular wars and occupations that dominated the last decade.”

But he also points out that the reliance on high-tech weapons raises a number of questions that the US must answer at this stage. “What is the difference – legally and morally – between a sticky bomb the Israelis place on the side of an Iranian scientist’s car and a Hellfire missile the United States launches at a car in Yemen from thirty thousand feet in the air,” he asks. “How is one an ‘assassination’ – condemned by the United States – and the other an ‘insurgent strike’? What is the difference between attacking a country’s weapons-making machinery through a laptop computer or through bunker-busters? What happens when other states catch up with American technology – some already have – and turn these weapons on targets inside the United States or American troops abroad, arguing that it was Washington that set the precedent for their use. These are all questions the Obama team discusses chiefly in classified briefings, not public debates.”

Sanger includes highly confidential information in the book which, not surprisingly, has generated immense controversy in the US. White House officials have been criticised for leaking top secret data to the author. Sanger, however, recently told the Columbia Journalism Review that the “whole story developed from the bottom up … I don’t like the phrase ‘leaks,’” he said, “because it conveys, in some sense, that you’re sitting on your back porch sipping an iced tea and someone calls you up and says, ‘Do you want to meet in a garage? I have this file for you on this highly classified programme.’ In 30 years at The New York Times, that has never happened to me. It happens in the movies, and I guess it happened to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, but it never happened to me.”

Sanger’s book is timely, important and elegantly written. It must be read by everyone who wants credible information on the prevailing foreign policy thinking in Washington.

From the Editorial Desk – No method to the madness

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Often, the difference between being a genius and being crazy is the ability to structure your thoughts. A structured thought is highly likely to result in a structured action. And a crazy thought? Let’s not even go there. But the crazier an idea is, the more interesting it seems and the more structured a concept, the more boring it appears.

Apply this logic to the case of Dr Shakil Afridi, sentenced by a tribal court to more than 30 years for collaborating with a foreign intelligence agency. How interesting! Now we know what a spy looks like — they wear white overalls instead of bullet-proof jackets and they wield stethoscopes, not silencer-fitted guns. They don’t go around chasing bad guys in out-of-this-world vehicles, performing gravity-defying antics in their attempts to dodge a hail of bullets. Instead, they front a trumped up campaign to vaccinate children against a debilitating malady and may, in the process, snag the world’s most wanted man.

But take out the thrill – or whatever variant sensations Agent 007 this narrative inspires and Afridi’s story morphs into a dull and drab plot – a structured idea. The good doctor turns out to be a government servant, with a not-so-distinguished service record and a tarnished image as far as his interaction with his colleagues is concerned, looking to make a quick buck – lots of them, actually – by exploiting his official status in order to sustain his extra-curricular business. And what’s wrong with this? In a time of low salaries and perennially rising expenses, many of us are tempted by any opportunity to bolster our sagging incomes. How is this different to what Afridi chose to do? The difference lies in the details.

Firstly, Afridi misused his office and authority to do things that he shouldn’t have, just as many in government service do when they accept money to push the envelope on someone’s behalf, bypassing or even undermining official procedures as soon as their palms are greased; the rules are consistently tweaked, merits are ignored and job requirements disregarded by those in a position of authority in order to dole out employment or favours. Secondly, Afridi misspent precious government resources — financial and human. Thirdly, and most importantly, he collaborated with a foreign intelligence service which, according to Pakistani law, is a bigger crime than misusing power, authority and the government’s money.

Now, if we overlook two factors in this case – that the foreign intelligence agency Afridi worked for belonged to the United States, which enjoys the unenviable status of being the most hated country in Pakistan, surpassing even our traditional rival India, and that Afridi was complicit in breaching Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity – this story takes on an even duller quality.

Let’s look at this story without its embellishing accoutrements. Here is a civil servant who breached the law and, therefore, must be tried. Any other civil servant involved in the breach of the law still has his right to a fair trial intact. Following the due process of law, a case will be registered against him; he will be presented in a court which will examine the charges and the evidence for and against him before convicting and sentencing him. He will also have the right to hire a counsel and produce witnesses and evidence in his favour. But more fundamentally, the case will be registered where the crime was committed and the first trial that will examine the case should also have territorial jurisdiction over that area.

In Afridi’s case, due process was not followed. A few weeks after bin Laden was assassinated in Abbottabad, the world first heard about Afridi’s involvement in the operation when he was already in the custody of intelligence agencies. He then disappeared into thin air and has now made a sudden comeback with his conviction. Where he was held and interrogated in between, what were the charges against him, what was the quality of evidence against him, who was his lawyer, and did the trial follow the rule of law? These are questions for which nobody has any answers. And, wait a minute, why was he tried and sentenced by a court in Pakistan’s tribal areas? Wasn’t he running a catch-bin-Laden campaign in Abbottabad? Was the al-Qaeda chief traced and killed in the tribal areas?

Now bring back the snazzy stuff and you will realise that structured thought is not for us. We ran crazy, nay wild, with excitement at the mere mention of Uncle Sam and the CIA’s involvement in Afridi’s case, missing the most important news story of May 2, 2011, that the figurehead of a global terrorist organisation, the man responsible for the deaths of thousands and the man who set in motion a retaliatory war was killed that day in a house in a Pakistani city where he had been staying without any valid or legal documents, in complete breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. And it was Afridi, the abominable spy who we love to hate and condemn without a concern for the law and his rights, who found him out.

A structured, well thought-out way to handle this case would have required — well, a structured and well thought-out legal and judicial procedure which would have given the rest of the world the impression that we are capable of structured thinking. Or perhaps, we are terribly excited about being geniuses without the ability to rationally think through and act through our responses.