Geopolitics makes for strange bedfellows, few stranger than Pakistan and the United States.
In theory, the two countries share common objectives – especially the defeat of the Taliban and other jihadists, who kill far more Pakistanis than they do Americans.
Why, then, doesn’t Pakistan show more interest in rounding up people who massacre its own citizens with suicide bombs and help perpetuate the guerrilla war in Afghanistan?
Its lack of interest has been conspicuous over the last month and a half. When U.S. Seals killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, curious people wondered how the terrorist chief lived comfortably for years under the very nose of the Pakistani army. Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point stands not far from the big new compound where bin Laden was holed up.
Leaders of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency expressed outrage that the Americans kept them out of the loop as the U.S. closed in on Public Enemy Number One.
But not long after, reportedly, the Americans brought the ISI into the loop by asking it to target two guerrilla bomb-making factories inside Pakistan. Result: The Pakistani army found the two sites abandoned when it showed up. To all appearances, someone in the ISI had tipped off the militants, who were fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Now comes the capper. It appears that the ISI has been arresting Pakistanis who fed the CIA the intelligence it needed to nail bin Laden.
You would think the ISI might have higher priorities, such as figuring out who’d been protecting the al-Qaida leader and who might still be protecting his surviving associates. No – it wants to round up the people who helped catch him.
In fairness, you’ve got to also look at the situation from Pakistan’s point of view.
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