Pakistan Denies Bin Laden Gets a Pass

Posted on September 6, 2006

Wow! All kinds of reaction on the peace agreement between Pakistan and the Taliban this morning. Raw Story quotes ABC news as reporting that Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, press secretary to the president of Pakistan, as stating Osama bin Laden won’t be arrested, as long as he promises to behave like a “peaceful citizen.”

They also include this video:

“If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden ‘would not be taken into custody,’ Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, ‘as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen,” report Brian Ross and Gretchen Peters at ABC’s blog, The Blotter.
“No, as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen, one would not be taken into custody,” said Khan. “One has to stay like a peaceful citizen and not allowed to participate in any kind of terrorist activity.”

“The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a ‘peace deal’ with the Taliban,” reports ABC.

Pakistan will also be returning many Taliban prisoners and seized weapons.

If this is true it would be terrible news for the war on terror. I advise taking a deep breath before jumping to too many conclusions however. Pakistan is of course denying the charges according to ABC’s blog the Blotter.

The government of Pakistan today denied it would allow Osama bin Laden to avoid capture under terms of a peace agreement it signed with Taliban leaders in the country’s North Waziristan area.

“If he is in Pakistan, today or any time later, he will be taken into custody and brought to justice,” the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in a statement.

The ambassador said a Pakistani military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, had been “grossly misquoted” when he told ABC News Tuesday that bin Laden would not be taken into custody “as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen.” The comments were recorded in a telephone interview with ABC News.

According to MSNBC Pakistan is totally commited to the war on terror.

“Pakistan is committed to its policy on the war on terror and Osama, caught anywhere in Pakistan, would be brought to justice,” he said.

It sounds to me like a misunderstanding. It would have been a shocking about face if the accusations were true. But while speculation on this is still up in the air, the reactions on what this peace agreement means are mixed. Most reactions are not optimistic.

Rusty at My Pet Jawa:

Don’t worry, the Pakistani equivalent of the Taliban have promised not to harbor foreign troops or launch raids over the Afghanistan border in return for Pakistani troops leaving the area. With no Pakistani troops in the area, we’ll just have to take the Taliban’s word for it. They can be trusted, right?

Michelle Malkin has hoisted the the black flag of surrender.
Dhimmi This is more optimistic and wonders the same thing I do.

Is this bad news for the US or is it a strategic softball being thrown to us by Pakistan? It has been my understanding that the hands of the US forces have been metaphorically tied by the refusal of Pakistan to allow our troops unfettered access to this region. If Pakistan cedes its claim to this area does this allow the US to go into the region at its own will? Pakistan is out and is no longer providing the protection of a “soveriegn state”. No protection from the UN, since it is not a member. No diplomatic ties with any other nations. The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan is now a rogue state. To me it sounds like a new front in the war on terror has opened.

Captain Ed is cautious on speculation as well:

This could be a key development in Afghanistan’s efforts to secure its borders and gain control of its nation. Musharraf may have many poor qualities, but thus far he has not surrendered to the Islamist terrorists. He understands that their survival decreases the odds of his own. His trip to Kabul has to have more in play than just a photo op.

My initial reaction was similar to Rightwing Nuthouse but as the news is shaking out I am not sure what report is accurate and find it difficult at this time to come up with a final analysis on it.

Hot Air asks the question: Is it a free pass for Osama or are the gloves off now?

Bill Roggio says it is surrender pure and simple:

The Pakistani government has ceded a region the size of New Jersey, with a population of about 800,000 to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan is not the end of the Taliban’s expansion, however. An intelligence source indicates similar negotiations between the Taliban and the Pakistani government are being held in the agencies of Khyber, Tank, Dera Ishmal Khan and Bajaur. The jihadi dreams of al-Qaeda’s safe havens in western Pakistan have become a reality. And the gains made by the Coalition in Afghanistan have now officially been wiped away with the peace agreement in the newly established Islamic Emirate of Waziristan.

I am with Dan Riehl on this one. He remains cautiously optimistic and reminds us of the Bush Doctrine:

Unfortunately, all we can do is hope there is some form of strategy going on behind the scenes that Musharraf wouldn’t want to acknowledge due to its causing him political grief at home. Either that, or an important ally in the war on terror has just blinked, only a day after Bush clearly stated that Nations which give safe harbor to terrorists groups will be held to account.

I’m sure more news on this will follow. Until then, we can only speculate and remain cautious in analysis. It is difficult to see any good news in this so called “peace agreement”. However, like Dan Rhiel says, at this time we can only hope that there may be a deeper strategy behind this.