With Pakistan Under Fire Over Bin Laden Hideout, Officials Urge Patience

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As elite opinion rapidly sours on Pakistani’s government following the revelation that Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate compound outside a major city there, key officials and regional experts are counseling patience with what they admit is a tense and difficult alliance.

While lawmakers on the relevant House and Senate committees acknowledged that bin Laden’s discovery raised new questions about whether elements of Pakistan’s government and military are tied to terrorism, many also warned that there are few alternative options when it comes to engaging the government. In doing so, they pushed back against growing calls from some lawmakers to review America’s aid and ties to the country.

“Pakistan,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said at a press briefing Tuesday. “You can’t trust them and you can’t abandon them.”

Sen. John Kerry (R-MA), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, warned reporters the same day that Americans needed to be careful not to go overboard in assigning blame to Pakistan for not locating Bin Laden sooner.

“I think people need to think twice before they go off on a haphazard hasty way that actually injures our efforts,” Kerry said. “We just got Osama bin Laden, and one of the reasons we got him is that we had intelligence people who were there and able to do the work. If we lose that, you put America at greater risk in my judgment, so I’d be very careful.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told TPM on Monday evening that while the issue merited further investigation, it would be premature to accuse the Pakistani government of involvement in Bin Laden’s hideout.

“People have been able to conceal themselves in urban areas, we ought to give the Pakistanis a chance to respond,” he said.

But in hearings and interviews, lawmakers repeatedly expressed deep frustration with Pakistan’s divided government. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chair of the Homeland Security Committee, said in a hearing on emerging threats from Pakistan that bin Laden’s location suggested only two conclusions: “a direct facilitation by elements of the Pakistani government or Pakistani intelligence is entirely inept.”

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) said in her opening statement at the hearing that “our relationship with the Pakistani government is dependent on what we discover” regarding how Bin Laden was able to elude capture “in plain sight.” But she also suggested that increased American investment in economic and social programs in the country might be the best way to counter terrorist ideology.

Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA), chair of the Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee, told reporters after the hearing that questions about Pakistan’s double dealings were “the elephant in the room.” While he stressed that the country faced “tremendous challenges,” there were serious hurdles to selling the American people on continued aid given recent revelations and skepticism of foreign aid in general.

“I’m trying to assess the political realities in the kind of circumstance in which those apparent facts present themselves,” he said. “When I go to town hall meetings, I often hear people ask about our continuing commitment to the region and the desire to tone down our presence.”

Underscoring those political pressures, Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) called for an end to all aid to Pakistan on Tuesday unless they could explain Bin Laden’s presence in their country. Meehan said that he hoped “the Pakistani government can give a sufficient sense of confidence to the Congress, to the administration, to the American people that they should continue to receive that kind of funding.”

At a separate hearing Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Afghanistan, experts expressed deep concern that without a more concentrated effort from Pakistan to root out Taliban forces militants would threaten Afghanistan’s ability to build a stable government. Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, expressed extreme pessimism whether this was even possible.

“There is no way the United States will be able to persuade Pakistan to become a full partner in Afghanistan (and stop providing sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban) given
Islamabad’s obsession with India and its view of Afghanistan as a critical source of strategic depth in its struggle with India,” he testified.

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