On Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, US and Pakistan really are on the same team
A similar interest results in Pakistan consistently turning a blind eye towards groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba that serve as asymmetrical proxies against India along its eastern border.
Pakistan has caught more terrorists than any country
But after three joint US-Pakistan operations since 2001 – the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Rawalpindi, Ramzi bin-al Shibh in Karachi, and Abu Zubaydah in Faisalabad – netting three top Al Qaeda figures in three major Pakistani cities in operations led by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a narrative of Pakistani complicity when it comes to Al Qaeda becomes unsustainable.
As Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan noted, “Pakistan has been responsible for capturing and killing more terrorists inside of Pakistan than any country, and it’s by a wide margin.”
Here, US and Pakistani interests are one and the same: If 3,000 American lives demanded that bin Laden be brought to justice, so did the 30,000 Pakistanis killed or injured in the global war on terror since 9/11.
