Pakistan jails doctor who helped CIA find Osama bin Laden - 33 year sentence

[chessdev]

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/23/11827022-pakistan-jails-doctor-who-helped-cia-find-osama-bin-laden?lite

Updated at 8:18 a.m. ET: PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A Pakistani doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden was convicted of high treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison on Wednesday.

Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination

Comments

[danalwyn]

3) The US has grown increasingly tired of hoping that Pakistan can secure its own country. Normally the US is perfectly happy to let military-run countries handle their own affairs, but after so many years of that behind-the-scenes and open rule in Pakistan, the place is still a mess. The US has begun signaling their dissatisfaction by warning about aid cutoffs. They might not pull the trigger, but the wording of the accountability portion of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act is a pretty openly worded message. They have already threatened to withdraw troops from their own border regions, where they claim they are carrying on a critical fight, if the US doesn't pay up (and repeated this several times). HR 2583 follows up, as does the attempted enforcement of the EPPA. The US wants results out of Pakistan and they're not seeing them. For now, nothing serious is in the offing, but the US is sending clear signals that it wants some accountability out of Pakistan, and that it wants Pakistan to use non-military funding from the EPPA as its main American contribution (not that we can pay the whole thing).

4) The US has grown closer to India. Most of this is just business. US trade with India is worth almost ten times what its trade with Pakistan is worth. Recently though the US has begun providing India with military technology, which normally indicates a slightly higher rate of trust. The $2 billion for Boeing for the C-17 and the US's spirited (though doomed) attempt at MMRCA indicate that the US is no longer overly suspicious of India, and is willing to let India have military technology equal to or superior to what they provide Pakistan. Part of it is money, the defense industry knows that India will be spending vastly more than Pakistan, and India already has signed more this year than Pakistan will all year. But there is no way Pakistan, which diverts money from fighting rampant Taliban groups in Pakistan to defend against India, likes the idea of India gaining even more advanced technology.

I don't see how the two countries can have the same goals. The US wants al-Qaeda and the Taliban gone, the ISI shut down, the nukes locked away somewhere safe, and to be able to sell defense goods to India. Pakistan doesn't seem to care about the Taliban (they don't fight if the US doesn't pay), they haven't shut down the ISI, they won't even tell the US how many nukes they have or what their security procedures are, and they don't seem to like the US selling top of the line weapons in bulk to India. Those aren't just minor differences, they're fundamental differences in how the US and Pakistan see the future.

But maybe you can find evidence that Pakistan's ostensible antipathy towards India is just a charade and that they really don't mind us selling to them, that they're secretly fighting the Taliban - all the Taliban - when nobody's watching, that they've already disemboweled the ISI, and that they're cooperating behind the scenes with the US on securing their nuclear arsenal. It's just that until I see that evidence, I can't believe that we share the same goals.