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In a speech to the nation, Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani publicly defended his intelligence service, ISI, and the army from American suspicions that elements within one or both institutions had a hand in harboring Osama bin Laden in a military garrison suburb miles from the capital and, instead, laid the menace of al Qaeda terrorism at the foot of the United States.
Gilani stated that it was America's 1980s' proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviets which established a beachhead for Islamic fanaticism in the region and it was America's current war in Afghanistan that pushed terrorists into Pakistan.
It is true that the United States had an alliance with Islamic fundamentalists, including bin Laden, in the 80s, but Pakistani intelligence and Saudi Arabia were part of the troika. And Pakistani intelligence cultivated Islamic militants for its purposes in the Indian Kashmir. American hardly acted alone and could not have done so with efficiency were it not for Pakistan also aligning with fundamentalists.
The war in Afghanistan naturally pushed al Qaeda to seek refugee elsewhere, but it is quite impertinent to lay the blame on America as if the United States should refrain from pursuit lest the targets flee into another nation. It is, instead, the responsibility of that other nation - in this case Pakistan - to know if terrorists are lying in its midst for years on end. bin Laden was not in a no man's land along the Af-Pak border, but in an affluent neighborhood next to a military base and the nation's premier military academy residing amongst general and intelligence officials only miles from the capital, and yet Pakistani officials argue that America is supposed to blame for bin Laden's choice of residency. It is not America, but Pakistan complicity or incompetence which is the culprit.
But this effort to dodge responsibility and erect a smokescreen will hardly convince anyone that Pakistan is not at some fault for the suspicious hideout of bin Laden.
And it will only worsen relations. Which brings us to the recent news that the ISI has deliberately revealed the name of the CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, to spite the United States in a reflection of the lingering acrimonious feeling by many Pakistanis that the United States violated their sovereignty and conducted a military raid in their country, and in doing so displayed a supercilious mistrust of their Pakistani counterparts.
This marks the second disclosure after the ISI revealed the past chief in December 2010. He left the country after facing death threats, but the current chief has thus far decided to stay in the country.
Pakistan's can only harm its long-term interests by alienating the United States, and a destabilized Afghanistan is also not in Pakistan's long-term benefit. The nationalist rhetoric of appease an angered population may be understood, but petty score-settling against a justified American act and revisionist history may carry consequences future Pakistanis will regret.
