How not to capture Osama bin Laden
Six days after the attack on the World Trade Centre, former US president George W Bush declared that the capture of Osama bin Laden was his prime objective. “I want justice”, he said, “There’s an old poster out West that I recall that said ‘wanted dead or alive’.” He also said that the purpose of going to war was to “smoke him out”.
The US and the UK then unleashed their bombs all over Afghanistan, killing far more innocent Afghans than were killed on 9/11. It did no good at all, and it certainly didn’t touch Bin Laden and his team who were safely hidden in caves in the impenetrable mountains of Pakistan. Not long after Bush turned his attention to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Less and less was spoken of the need to hunt down Bin Laden. None of this made sense. Afghanistan is now in a mess.
Today the Western powers say their aim is to change the nature of Afghanistan society – ending Islamic militancy, liberating women, educating girls, building clinics and roads. But are we there to re-fashion a conservative society? That is not our business.
What should have been done? There never should have been any bombing neither immediately after 9/11 nor today. The US should have chosen to run Bin Laden to earth as the wartime allies and Israel hunted down the big Nazis who were on the run.
It was hard, dogged police work over decades. In numerous cases, including Adolf Eichmann, the concentration camps’ supremo, it worked. What was needed after 9/11 was the recruitment of the most motivated Pashto speakers from the Pakistani army, intelligence service and police force and then their training for the task ahead by the FBI and Scotland Yard. That should have been backed up by CIA and MI6 field officers working with all the tools of modern detective work (which the Israelis didn’t have for their pursuit of Eichmann) – forensic science, infra red capabilities and so on.
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