Pakistan Army and ISI Knew About Osama Bin Laden Hideout

Just yesterday evening, I was debating the extent to which the Pakistani military knew about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts in his Abbottabad safe house with my Fletcher friends, and the degree to which it can be held responsible as an organization.

As with many things at Fletcher, you often discover somewhere down the line that the current debates you have at the school often coincide in weird ways with future developments. Last night, fresh evidence surfaced by the Press Trust of India via a leaked Stratfor email that elements of the military knew about OBL’s whereabouts. Here’s what Fred Burton, the global intelligence firm’s vice president for intelligence, wrote to his company’s regional director for Middle East and South Asia Kamran Bokhari soon after the US commando operation last May:

Mid to senior level ISI and Pak military with one retired Pak Military General that had knowledge of the OBL (Osama bin laden) arrangements and safe house.

There were about less than a dozen people within the ISI and Pakistani military who had information on bin Laden. No word on the specific names or ranks, but apparently that’s information the US had. The Blackberry email goes on:

Names unk (unknown) to me and not provided. Specific ranks unk to me and not provided. But, I get a very clear sense we (US intel) know names and ranks.

Of course, questions of veracity arise since this is an email exposed via Wikileaks. Stratfor’s CEO George Friedman cautioned in a video on the company’s website yesterday that some of the emails may be “forged or altered to include inaccuracies”, such as his supposed resignation letter.

Nonetheless, this is an interesting insight into an important question by influential experts, and could have saved me and my Fletcher friends a few hours of debate.

US Talks With North Korea: Baby Steps, Not Breakthroughs

US and North Korean officials completed negotiations in Beijing on Friday, ending their third meeting in the last eight months and the first since the death last December of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-Un.

Any progress? Here’s Glyn Davies, the US special representative for North Korea policy:

I think the word ‘breakthrough’ goes too far, folks. I wouldn’t want anybody using the word ‘breakthrough’…The talks were serious and substantive…I think we made a little bit of progress…We have been able to illuminate the issues a little bit better, gain a better understanding of their point of view, their rationale and their position.

So, incremental progress in terms of sitting down and talking about key issues, but no real breakthroughs. There were reportedly some discussions on resuming food aid to Pyongyang, which was something that was discussed as part of a deal closed to being forged between the two sides before elder Kim’s death. Apparently the sticking points are still largely what they were before: monitoring of food-aid distribution and the type of aid provided. For instance, the US has placed a greater focus on providing vitamin supplements and high-protein biscuits for malnourished people, but Pyongyang wants food aid to contain more rice and other grains, which Washington is more reluctant to do since it is routinely siphoned off to the regime’s loyal backers in the cities. The New York Times also notes that “both sides had almost reached the goal of suspension of activities at the uranium enrichment plant but narrowly failed to bridge differences”.

Movement on the food aid question could be a critical first step in tackling the relationship’s tougher issues such as North Korea’s nuclear program. The idea would be to get some progress on the disarmament question from Pyongyang to then restart the six-party talks guided by an aid-for-denuclearization agreement reached in September 2005.

What about the near future? North Korea will have to show concrete steps toward suspending its nuclear program before six-party talks can resume. Former special representative to North Korea and my dean Stephen Bosworth thinks that while there is a possibility of talks resuming sometime this year, the fact that we are (believe it or not) seeing either elections or transitions in all members of the six party talks in 2012 – the US, Russia, Japan, South Korea, China and North Korea – means that various parties may not take the necessary strategic risk necessary to make talks productive. Here’s Bosworth:

I think that there is a good possibility that we may see a resumption of talks sometime in 2012. But I certainly wouldn’t bet on it….I think it’s unlikely – but not impossible – that the North Koreans are going to be prepared to take the sort of strategic risk that they would have to take in order to make talks with us productive. Neither do I think that it’s likely in an election year that we’re going to take the sort of public relations and strategic risk that would be required if we are going to make the talks productive. So I hope that we can do more than just manage to maintain stability over the current year, but I’m not all that optimistic.

But as with anything related to North Korea (and I’m sure Dean Bosworth would agree) the future is anyone’s guess.

Did the Washington Post Appease China?

I didn’t have time to post about it till today, but the Washington Post ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton had a great piece out Friday criticizing the Post for “caving in to China’s demands” and publishing a boilerplate interview transcript on Feb 13. with China’s visiting vice president Xi Jinping.

I too was struck by the flowery rhetoric in the transcript when I first read it. But I didn’t realize the process that resulted in it. Apparently, instead of just replying to written questions submitted by the Post as governments usually do (including last year with Hu Jintao’s visit), the Chinese this time modified, deleted and added questions to the ones that the Post submitted for Xi, and provided answers that did not address the paper’s original questions. The Post decided to publish just the answers, but then issued a correction the next day that read:

The introduction to a transcript published Monday of comments made by China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, inaccurately described the nature of that material. The Post had submitted questions to the Chinese government, which did not respond to all of them and provided questions and answers of its own. The vice president’s comments therefore were not direct answers to the original questions submitted by The Post, and The Post should have made that clear.

Pexton thinks the paper should not have published it:

Sure, The Post was the only U.S. newspaper to get even that much out of Xi. The transcript amounts to his only public statement during his trip. But his words were boilerplate, and they were studded with diplomatese that the U.S.-China relationship is built on mutual benefit, mutual respect, mutual understanding. Yawn.

Pexton also briefly delves into the dilemmas faced by the paper in dealing with the Chinese. He notes that there may be an incentive to appease the Chinese since they hold the cards with respect to visa approvals for correspondents – a typical access issue. More interesting was the dependence of The Post on advertising revenue from China:

Once a month The Post prints “China Watch,” an advertising supplement in English that consists of stories aimed at a U.S. audience but written by China Daily, the house organ of the Chinese government. And The Post’s Web site hosts a regularly updated version of China Watch.

Pexton concludes with a rather clear resolution on the issue:

That’s the thing about China, whether you are The Washington Post, the U.S. government or Apple computers. There is interdependence in the relationship, and constant negotiation and compromise. The Chinese know it, and they take advantage of it. The Post’s job is to point that out, be transparent about it and report the truth regardless.

As Pexton himself knows and has pointed out though, that position can be much more muddled in practice than it is in theory.