by VaneezaUnited States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said in an interview:
“The United States does not know where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is hiding and has not had any good intelligence on his whereabouts in years."This comes as a surprise to me, especially considering the fact that the United States has been pressuring Pakistan for quite some time to capture Osama bin Laden based on evidence that Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere in Pakistan.
If America were to ask the Pakistani government to close down madrassahs that are a breeding ground for Taliban or put a ban on TV channels and magazines that preach a message of hatred or have tighter border control so that Taliban cannot go from Pakistan to Afghanistan or from Afghanistan to Pakistan -- you know, stuff that matters -- then that would be fair. But pressuring an already weak government to capture bin Laden based on evidence that is false or rather that doesn’t even exist, is extremely unfair.
It must be kept in mind that while the Pakistani government might not be doing everything that can possibly be done to stop the Taliban, it is still doing a lot more than what America’s pet military dictator Musharraf was doing . “King” Musharraf ruled Pakistan for nine years after launching a military coup against a democratically elected government. During his days in power, his primary accomplishment was to mislead America into believing that he was doing a lot to fight the Taliban. In reality, he was siphoning in billions of dollars from America and didn’t do anything to tackle the issue of terrorism and actually made things even worse specifically to fool America into believing that he was the only one who would solve the problem.
So here we have a democratically elected government, that has launched military operations against the Taliban in different parts of the country, some of which have been quite effective. They should be urged to do more but only based on the evidence that is relevant and, well, which actually exists. Pressuring them for no reason will only weaken the government and if the military comes to power again, I can personally assure you that things are going to get much much worse. The situation in Pakistan is very volatile, the democratically elected government should be supported and strengthened and not pressured just for the sake of applying pressure. This will be a favour done both to the Pakistani people and to America.
