Frosty U.S.-Pakistan Relations Complicate Efforts to Keep Terror At Bay in Taliban’s Afghanistan – By Paul D. Shinkman (US News) / Aug 20 2021
Eroded relations with Pakistan threaten U.S. capacity to keep in check terror groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that operate in the Taliban’s Afghanistan.
The U.S. in August 1998 narrowly missed an opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida affiliates in Afghanistan with a series of missile strikes because, as one commander concluded, American officials alerted the Pakistan government in advance of using its airspace, and its intelligence agencies tipped off the insurgents in advance.
U.S. war planners avoided making the same mistake 13 years later and kept the Pakistanis in the dark about a highly secretive and daring raid to kill bin Laden in May 2011 at his mansion a mile from Pakistan’s version of West Point – but in doing so risked the lives of the U.S. commandos on board stealthy helicopters that Pakistan could have easily misidentified as an enemy attack.
The pair of historic moments in America’s counterterrorism dealings in South Asia now present it with a quagmire in part of its own making. As the U.S. now withdraws the last vestiges of its military presence in Afghanistan isolated at the airport in Kabul, it’s unclear how it will be able to maintain the heavily touted “over the horizon” operations into the land-locked country while protecting its forces and guarding the security of its missions.
