Osama’s death leaves Pakistan isolated: politicians

ISLAMABAD (PAN isolated, dealing a major blow to its already fractured international image, politicians said on Thursday.

US commandos in a nighttime raid killed the Al Qaeda leader in the Abbottabad town of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Monday, ending a frustrating 10-years manhunt for the world‘s most wanted man.

The fragile Pakistani government is under harsh criticism from the outside world and at home over the intelligence failure to the track down the Saudi dissident and detect the US helicopters that entered the country without informing Pakistani authorities.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad, former chief of Pakistan’s largest religious political party, Jamaat-i-Islami, said: “It is so dangerous that the government was caught unawares.” The sensitive area was home to an elite military academy and nuclear sites, he added.

No Pakistani felt secure after the US operation, he said. But he added it was impossible to believe the US had conducted the raid without cooperation from Pakistan’s intelligence service. “Cooperation does not matter; what does matter is that Osama was killed insaid Pakistan.”

Another religious party leader, Maulana Samiul Haq, the founder of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, hailed the Al Qaeda chief as a pure Muslim. “Osama was brought into the limelight and killed by the US,” he remarked.

Haq termed the killing a drama and called on the US to provide the world evidence of his death. He asked why the US released the videos of Saddam Hussain from his trial to death and was keeping secret the circumstances that led to Osama’s killing.

The leader of Tehrik-i-Insaf, Imran Khan, a cricketer-turn-politician, suggested Pakistan should review its ties with the US after the Abbottabad operation. He said the raid was an effort by the US to show the world that Pakistan was a terrorist country. Imran blamed the current government for Pakistan’s isolation.

ma/mud