Bin Laden’s death has exposed Pakistan’s double game with the West
Even those of us who did not believe that Osama bin Laden was producing his videos from a cave in a remote tribal mountain would never have guessed that he was, in fact, living in a ‘Come and Get Me’ three-storey house surrounded by cabbage fields just down the road from Pakistan’s top military academy.
To many in Washington, here was final proof — if any were needed — that its supposed ally has been playing a double game; that, for the past ten years, Pakistan has been playing the role of US ally (and taking more than $18 billion of American aid) while all the time sheltering the Taleban and al-Qa’eda. ‘The game is up,’ a senior Pentagon official told me the day after bin Laden’s killing, admitting he felt ‘a darned idiot’ for being played for so long.
Last year I went for lunch in Abbottabad, bin Laden’s adopted hometown, which nestles in green hills about 90 minutes’ drive from Islamabad.
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