Pakistani military had ties with Taliban and possibly even Al Qaeda: Ex-US President Barack Obama

Former US President Barack Obama in his autobiographical memoir: ‘A Promised Land’ has revealed about the Pakistan establishment’s links with terrorist organisations, especially Al Qaeda.

The book has already generated ripples across the world. Obama through his book has also remarked about several political personalities like India’s Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh along with Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, wife of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

He found Rahul Gandhi, who is likely to be next chief of India’s main opposition party Congress, as a kid or teenager who is always found trying to impress his teacher. He remarked about Rahul’s mother Sonia Gandhi in terms of her beauty rather than her political acumen. But he had all the praise of Manmohan Singh, whom Obama found as an honest man.

Obama has also highlighted watershed events that shaped the contemporary world.

Among other things, the most important event that Barack Obama described in vivid detail is the US operation that eliminated the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden, and the doubts
harboured by the former US President in informing Pakistan about the covert operation.

Obama provides a blow-by-blow account of the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader Laden in 2011.

Obama reveals American misgivings on Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, as he provides a glimpse into the fading American trust on Pakistan. The former US President sharply notes that though they had allied with Pakistan on a range of counterterrorism operations and the country had acted as a crucial gateway for the American forces in Afghanistan, it can no longer be treated as a trustworthy partner in America’s battle against terrorism.

Obama writes that the elements in the military, and intelligence services, used the terror groups as strategic assets against Afghanistan and India.

“The fact that the Abbottabad compound was just a few miles from the Pakistan military’s equivalent of West Point only heightened the possibility that anything we told the Pakistanis could end up
tipping off our target,” Obama wrote, expressing the fear that if Pakistan was informed about the mission, it would be leaked.

The former president also revealed that the then defence secretary Robert Gates and his vice president Joe Biden had opposed the secret operation inside Pakistan. Both of them were worried about
possible consequences if the mission fails.