Obama shares the inside story of the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden

New Delhi : Former US President Barack Obama’s book ‘A Promised Land’ is removing the veil of mystery that is on the world’s diplomatic and strategic strategy. In his book, Obama has told the story of the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the world’s most dreaded terrorist, in a sequential manner. When Laden was killed in the US intelligence operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Barack Obama was the President of the United States, so he was also the Supreme Commander of the US forces and every intelligence information would come first and exclusively to him.

Barack Obama has opened the secrets of Pakistan in this book and said that he deliberately took the decision not to involve Pakistani agencies in the operation to eliminate Osama. Because many Pakistani military officers and ISI officials met Taliban and even al Qaeda militants, and this was an open secret, in such a situation, there was fear of disturbance or information leak if the Pakistani officers were involved in this operation. Obama has clearly said that Pakistan used these terrorists sometimes against India or sometimes against Afghanistan.

Biden was against the operation
Obama says that his defense minister Robert Gates and then Vice President Joe Biden were against the operation. Joe Biden has now been elected President of the United States.

In this book released worldwide on Tuesday, Barack writes, “As soon as I got information about Laden, I decided that we had enough information and we started considering the option of attack in that compound, while the CIA team was working on ground. I told Tom Donilon and John Brennan how it would be if we raid.”

Our mission would have failed if a little information was leaked
Obama writes that maintaining privacy in this mission was a challenge. If even the smallest details related to Laden were leaked, we would have missed the opportunity. Therefore, only few people in the whole government knew about the planning of this operation.

The former president further wrote, “We had more challenges, Pakistanis could not be included in whatever option we chose.”

Pak Army and ISI had relationship with Taliban, Al Qaeda
Underlining Pakistan’s complicity in terrorism, Barack Obama wrote, “Although Pakistan’s government helped us in the anti-terrorism campaign, it was an open truth that some of Pakistan’s military officers, especially its intelligence agencies, were from the Taliban and even al Qaeda, using it as a strategic force. They used it as a strategic power so that Afghanistan would remain weak and do not get involved with Pakistan’s number one enemy, India.”

Regarding the danger of Pakistanis being involved in the operation to eliminate Laden, Obama writes that a military base of Pakistan was only a few miles from Abbottabad, if we tell anything to the Pakistanis, Laden could have reached out of our target.

Obama wrote that what we would have done in Abbottabad would have violated the boundary of one of our allies, in a way would have been a war situation and this would have created diplomatic tension, as well as other complications.

Finally, in the final phase, the Obama administration was considering two options. The first option was to destroy the entire compound by airstrikes, the second option was to allow a special operation where a selected team would secretly fly to Pakistan by helicopter, carry out operations in the compound and before Pakistan police and army come to know and take some action, these teams come out from there in the blink of an eye.

Ultimately, the Obama government agreed to the second option after intense discussion and consideration. Barack Obama writes, “In a meeting before the final approval for the raids, the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was a 51-49 call, Defense Minister Robert Gates also gave an opinion against the raids even though they were air strikes.”

Obama further added, “Joe Biden’s opinion was also against the raids, arguing that there was a very high chance of the operation failing and that they wanted to make the intelligence agencies more sure that Laden was in the compound.”

When Obama called Zardari after killing Laden…
The former president has written that after the success of the operation, he made several calls. The most difficult and challenging phone call among these was the call made by Obama to the then President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari. Obama wrote, “I knew that after this incident there would be a lot of pressure on President Zardari, because we violated the sovereignty of Pakistan. However when I called him, he congratulated me, supported me, he said whatever the outcome is, this is very good news, he showed true sentiment and recalled how his wife Benazir Bhutto was killed by terrorists who had links with Al Qaeda.”

In the terrorist attack on the US World Trade Center on 9/11, about 4000 people were killed.