The plight of Dr. Afridi

Also published in Daily Trust

Five years ago, the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted one of its most audacious yet clandestine operations in which it killed Osama Bin Laden who was, until his death, the most wanted person in the world. Bin Laden was widely believed to be the mastermind behind some of the worst attacks that targeted the US interests within and outside the United States, e.g. the 1998 almost simultaneous terror bomb attacks on its embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the 2000 bomb attack on its giant naval guided-missile destroyer, USS Cole, in Aden, Yemen, and, of course, the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington DC. 

The United States, therefore, had launched a global manhunt to capture or assassinate him, in the context of its controversial global war on terror, which it declared in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the wake of which it literally went berserk breaching the sovereignty of many countries, and actually invaded some others, witch-hunted organizations, persecuted and victimized individuals, in a blatant disregard for its own relevant laws and the applicable international laws, as well, under the pretext of counterterrorism. Its arrogant and megalomaniac former President, George W. Bush Jr, in whose tenure the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred was particularly reckless in this regard. 
 

On his part, Osama Bin Laden, having definitely realized the sheer military, intelligence and technological capabilities of the United Sates, being the most powerful country in the world, militarily, and the most technologically advanced also, adopted probably the most sophisticated counterintelligence strategies, dispensed with modern communication technology facilities, including fixed and mobile telephone lines and the internet, for fear of being tracked, and instead relied on a tiny but extremely efficient network of highly trusted loyalists, hence he was able to indeed evade capture and/or  assassination for several years.

However, notwithstanding the authenticity or otherwise of the US official version of the details of the CIA operation that killed Bin Laden, which in any case obviously involved the most sophisticated intelligence gathering, processing and utilization techniques, as well as the cooperation of the intelligence agencies of various countries, organizations and individuals around the world, the role of one Dr. Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani medical doctor, is particularly interesting in the whole saga. 

The CIA’s global manhunt for Bin Laden had narrowed and focused particularly on Abbottabad, a city some 110 kilometers north of the Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. However, though Pakistan was/is a US ally, the CIA has always maintained serious reservations about the reliability of its intelligence agency i.e. Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which it (i.e. the CIA) and other western intelligence agencies have always suspected of not being cooperative enough particularly in hunting for some leaders of the insurgent groups operating in the region and beyond.

By the way, though the ISI, or rather, some influential personnel within, are rightly or wrongly believed to have maintained some sympathy for some of such insurgent groups’ leaders, it’s obvious that, just like other foreign governments, including the purported spearheads of the global war on terror i.e. the United States and its western allies, which, after all, have effectively politicized the war on terror and turned it into a tool for international political blackmail, in pursuit of their individual and collective interests, Pakistan equally manipulates it the same way, too.  

Anyway, the CIA, therefore, maintained parallel sources of intelligence to close in on Bin Laden, capture and/or kill him, without the knowledge, let alone the involvement of the ISI. To achieve this and in order to confirm whether Osama Bin Laden was actually in Abbottabad or not, the CIA, having already had a sample of the ancestral DNA of the famous Bin Laden clan to which Osama belonged, wanted to collect as many blood samples as possible from the residents of Abbottabad to check their respective ancestral DNAs, compare and see if any of them matched that of Bin Laden family. It, therefore, introduced a bogus free hepatitis vaccination program in the city, in collaboration with Dr. Shakil Afridi who it had tempted with offers of huge financial inducement and American citizenship. Consequently, the CIA confirmed the presence of some members of Bin Laden family in Abbottabad, and, in fact, located their residence, which further strengthened its hope about the presence of Osama Bin Laden himself in the same residence.  

After several months of preparation and close monitoring of the residence by the CIA operatives, some US military helicopters carrying more than seventy US commandos flew in from a US military base in the neighbouring Afghanistan, straightaway onto the compound of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad where a fierce gun battle ensued and resulted in his death.

Much has been said and speculated about the sheer technological sophistication of the helicopters, intelligence and warfare equipment used by the CIA in that particular operation, in view of the failure of the Pakistan’s defence radar system to detect the helicopters and discover what was taking place on its own territory, even though one of the helicopters developed a technical fault and crash-landed on the compound while the operation was still going on. The United States informed Pakistan only after the operation was over and the US commandos had flown back to their base in Afghanistan along with the dead body of Osama Bin Laden, which expectedly infuriated Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the CIA never seemed to have had any plan to immediately evacuate Dr. Shakil Afridi from Pakistan after all, even though it undoubtedly realized that Pakistan’s authorities would definitely and straight away launch an exhaustive probe into the circumstances of the raid, which would also certainly lead to Afridi’s capture. Realizing his dilemma and the magnitude of the risk, Dr. Afridi attempted to flee Pakistan, having realized how he had been betrayed by the United States. He was, however, captured by the Pakistan’s authorities while trying to cross the country’s border.

For tactical political reasons, Pakistan did not charge Afridi with treason, after all, for that would have unnecessarily attracted further reservations against it from the US and its other western allies over its commitment to the global war on terror, he was instead charged with having ties with an insurgent leader, and subsequently, with murder, in reference to the death of a patient he had treated eight years before that incident.

Ever since then, Dr. Afridi has been languishing in jail, and the US has effectively abandoned him. Though it occasionally calls for his release, it has actually never been serious enough, because if only it was serious enough, it would play some of its many political and economic ‘pressure cards’ in order to compel Pakistan to release him. But it simply wouldn’t do, because it pursues other strategic interests in which Pakistan is an important partner and/or facilitator, and which are worth sacrificing Dr. Afridi for, e.g. peace talks between it (US) and the Afghan Taliban, which the US is particularly interested in achieving.