“Osama Simply Got Shopped”

Did the Pakistanis know where Osama was hiding?

They knew where he was, of course they did. I think Osama had stopped being of use to the Pakistanis and so they gave him up. He was essentially in retirement, except for the odd audio tape here or there. He didn’t seem to be in operational control of Al Qaeda the way he was before. He simply got shopped. I know he was in Karachi at some point, a place he liked to go to as he was very friendly with a lot of imams there.

Why would the ISI betray Osama?

The ISI is not a cohesive group, there are factions that lean toward the Americans, the Islamists, the Taliban. I spoke to someone in the ISI who said sometimes surveillance is the better policy, suggesting they knew where Osama was and could keep an eye on him but to go charging in all guns blazing would have all sorts of repercussions.

There are many officers in the Pakistani military who believe, correctly in my view, that the United States is handing the whole Kashmir issue over to India to look after. The Pakistanis have long realised this, and decided that only by increasing the pressure against America in Afghanistan and then on Karzai, if necessary, by using the Taliban or even Al Qaeda, can they get the Americans to bring the Kashmir issue back into play.

Of course, the other elements in the ISI and the Pakistani army that oversee the relationship with America have sensed the way things were going.

What will Pakistan do next?

It will go on as it is, there will be more raids, more people will be found or ‘discovered’ and they’ll keep playing the game. The helicopters that came for bin Laden didn’t cross from Afghanistan, they came from an air base 30 miles south of Rawalpindi. The drones similarly are not being launched in Kandahar but from within Pakistan.