I had written this piece in the aftermath of the Osama assassination. The situation seems to be no different for MH 370 as I watch inane speculation on the media. US over Abbottabad: Whodunit? Much is being preached about the bona fide of the US raid to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad. For a start, Jalalabad in Afganistan is 260 km away while the nearest link to the Arabian Sea is 1537 km away. The choppers reportedly used were Sikorsky UH-60L series that can carry 11 troops with equipment, lift 1170 kg of cargo internally or 4050 kg of cargo externally by sling and carry 2500 litres of extra fuel at a top speed of 309 kmph. The choppers shown in TV grabs also appear to be painted white, the universal colour of navies across the world. Their service ceiling is 19150 ft. and range without supplementary tanks is 550 km. Assuming these were US Navy choppers and based on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, the choppers would have flown about 3500 km from their base and returned to the carrier with Osama’s mortal remains and last rites. This would have surely taken at least nine hours each way at top speed. En route the choppers would have flown over or close to Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan, Multan and Faisalabad, most of which have sizeable Pakistan army and air force presence and civil air traffic. Add to this 45 minutes hovering over Abbottabad during the operation. Supplementary fuel tanks apart from slowing down the choppers would have also made them more easily detectable for their bulk. It is therefore quite likely that the choppers either resorted to mid-air refueling or else stopped for fuel en route INSIDE Pakistan. Fearful of public discovery, these choppers may have surreptitiously landed at a PAF air base for refueling. Or else the Pakistan government permitted USAF tanker aircraft in their air space for in-flight refueling of these choppers. Turning to the Pakistan political establishment’s stand that they were unaware of any foreign air raid on their soil as it happened, it is likely that the US Navy may have deployed Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler aircraft for jamming Pakistani radar signals so long as the choppers were in Pakistani air space. For the attack to have taken place at approximately 0100 hours, the choppers would have entered Pakistani air space at least at about 1700 hours Pakistan Time which is the beginning of peak time for all PIA and many international passenger flights to land in or fly over Pakistani air space. It is therefore inconceivable that a non-functional radar system would have remained undetected for over 18 hours, even over Islamabad and Rawalpindi, the national capital and Pak Army’s HQ of War respectively, particularly with their anti-India paranoia! Further in summer, ambient light is adequate till at least 2000 hours for detection of such large machines of war even by the naked eye. It therefore seems most improbable that this was a sea-based attack. Now let us turn to the possibility of the raid having originated in Jalalabad, 260 km from Abbottabad. Let us also assume that half this distance was in Pakistan. At a top speed of 309 kmph, the choppers would have taken about 45 minutes flying time each way over Pakistani air space. Adding the actual operation time of 45 minutes, the total time these choppers were in Pakistani air space would be a quarter over two hours. Even if the Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler aircraft were deployed by the US Navy in this area, forward air bases of the PAF would have noticed their radars on the blink, all at the same time, and scrambled PAF aircraft. Incidentally, large number of India-bound international flights traverses Pakistani air space at this hour. Air traffic controllers would have noticed their radars on the blink and notified the PAF immediately. Or international flights navigated without radar support from Pakistani ATCs that would have raised international hue and cry. The most plausible explanation therefore is that radar systems were never deliberately shut down or even jammed since the international media did not carry any stories of either Pak air space being closed or the absence of ATC support from Pakistan. Let us now turn to Abbottabad which is located 115 km north east of Islamabad and 116 km from Rawalpindi at an altitude of 4010 feet. Abbottabad is home to several Pak Army regimental centers and the Pak Military Academy in the neighbouring suburb of Kakul, 800 metres from Osama’s home. The district of Abbottabad has a population of about a million with population density of nearly 475 per sq km. The online Guardian quotes local real estate dealers saying that Osama’s house was worth only about a crore of Rupees. Nonetheless, it had suspiciously high walls and no one, except a courier, ever ventured out of it. Would 475 people in the sq. km. surrounding this house not suspect a rat? Now juxtapose these facts and statistics with what the Chinese national news agency Xinhua had to say about this raid. Xinhua says electricity was cut off to Abbottabad by the local civil administration at the instance of the Army GHQ in Rawalpindi as the operation to kill Osama began. In the summer heat this would have forced 475 people per sq. km on an average outdoors cursing the electricity board’s inefficiency. Xinhua also says residents of Abbottabad took videos and cellphone pictures from their rooftops as the spectacular helicopter landing and firefight was under way. Obviously, since they were outdoors, they would. In any case, a large firefight with its attendant sounds and fires would attract inmates of densely-populated Abbottabad. Many would have also gathered to save the inmates of the house. Xinhua fills this in by saying Pakistani security forces cordoned off the entire area near Osama’s safe house before the Americans attacked it. No one was allowed to enter or leave the operational surroundings during the attack. Intriguingly, international media correspondents did not find too many civilian witnesses next day. Xinhua explains that Pakistani security forces went from house to house collecting memory cards from cameras and seizing videos from residents soon enough so that the pictures were not transmitted by freelance citizen journalists in search of a quick buck. You Tube does not abound with such uploads other than one which too appears to be an US official release. Xinhua’s version is therefore entirely plausible and most believable. Add to these, repeated failures of US covert civil and military operations in Cuba, Somalia, Iran, Vietnam, Lebanaon, botched SEAL raids in Pakistan in 2008 and the accidental killing by SEALS of British hostage Linda Norgrove, held by militants in Afghanistan in 2010. The Abbottbad raid was clinically precise as the Israeli Mossad mission to capture Adolf Eichman from Argentina in the early sixties and many others. Were the Americans alone in this raid to kill Osama? So was it a quid pro quo between the Pakistani military and President Obama? The Pakistanis would allow the Americans to kill Osama on their soil while President Obama made a case for releasing the balance $3 billion military aid to Pakistan to “engage in the fight against terror.” The killing also happily coincides with Obama’s declaration to run for a second term as a national hero, a modern day Abe Lincoln, who bailed out America from slavery in perpetuity to the Al-Qaeda. The US media’s elephantine memory also portrays Obama being part of the continuum in history when Presidents Bush and Musharraf agreed to help each other’s nations in tracking down Osama a decade ago. As for the now Late Osama, some sections of the international press made him out to be a pensioner, like many Pakistanis, settled into a peaceful and retired life in the salubrious climes of Abbottabad. Now the camera and lung focus shifts to Al-Zawahiryi and fifty others and military aid to Pakistan continues for God’s lifetime till these are caught or killed in ‘covert’ raids– sounds like a familiar fairy tale, doesn’t it? After all the US Administration has candidly observed that 9/11 was ‘different’ from 26/11. I have used extensive information freely available on the Internet for my above conclusions to further prove Pak’s complicity in the Osama killing.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 17:11:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015