A newly released book by former US president Barack Obama, A Promised Land, gives play-by-play details of the raid conducted in Abbottabad which resulted in the death of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden.
“Whatever we chose to do in Abbottabad, then, would involve violating the territory of a putative ally in the most egregious way possible, short of war- raising both the diplomatic stakes and the operational complexities,” he wrote.
Obama said in the book that he knew this raid would violate the sanctity of the US’s ally, but he felt this decision was needed to make sure they did not miss their chance to take out the Al Qaeda leader.
Furthermore, it was revealed that his closest aides – Former United States Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and then Vice President Joe Biden – had opposed the raid.
Obama, who called the world leaders shortly after the raid, wrote that the then president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, “showed genuine emotion, recalling how his wife, Benazir Bhutto, had been killed by extremists with reported ties to Al Qaeda.”
Obama wrote that he had expected the greatest backlash from the Pakistani premier, but instead he “expressed congratulations and support”, and called this incident “good news”.
Aside from Zardari, US officials also called the then army chief of Pakistan Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani who requested the United States to come clean about the raid so that the Pakistani public’s reaction could be managed.
“Mullen had put a call into Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and while the conversation had been polite, Kayani had requested that we come clean on the raid and its target as quickly as possible in order to help his people manage the reaction of the Pakistani public,” he said.
Obama, explaining his decision behind the secrecy, said that it was because he believed certain elements inside the country maintained links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
“The need for secrecy added to the challenge; if even the slightest hint of our lead on bin Laden leaked, we knew our opportunity would be lost. As a result, only a handful of people across the entire federal government were read into the planning phase of the operation,” he said.
“The fact that the Abbottabad compound was just a few miles from the Pakistan military’s equivalent of West Point only heightened the possibility that anything we told the Pakistanis could end up tipping off our target,” he added.
