After US lauds Pak's fight against terror, New Delhi reminds Washington of Osama's hiding place

New Delhi: After a top commander of the United States Army lauded “phenomenal partner” Pakistan for combatting terrorism, India on Thursday reminded that its western neighbour had given shelter to Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden for almost a decade.

New Delhi also underlined that the April 22 carnage in Jammu and Kashmir had only been the latest addition to the long list of terrorist attacks in India launched by outfits based in and supported by Pakistan.

“We all know the Pahalgam attack is only the most recent example of cross-border terrorism,” Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said in New Delhi, noting that Pakistan’s track record as an exporter of terrorism to India and around the world was well-known.

General Michael Kurilla, the commander of the United States Central Command (Centcom), on Tuesday lauded the Pakistan Army for arresting earlier this year Mohammed Sharifullah, a senior operational commander of the ISIS-K, who had allegedly played a key role in planning the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate near the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 26, 2021, killing 13 US soldiers and 169 Afghan civilians. He said that the arrest of the ISIS-K operative highlighted Pakistan’s value as a counterterrorism partner of the US.

“They are in an active counterterrorism fight right now, and they have been a phenomenal partner in the counterterrorism world,” the senior US military commander said about Pakistan, while presenting a statement before the US Senate Committee on Armed Services in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. He lauded the Pakistan Army for hunting down the ISIS-K terrorists along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The comment came just about a month after India destroyed as many as nine terrorist camps in precision strikes in Pakistan, as well as in the areas under the illegal occupation of Pakistan, early on May 7 in response to the killing of 26 people, mostly tourists, at Baisaran near Pahalgam in J&K a fortnight back.

“I would remind you that only recently, the conspirator of 26/11, Tahawwur Rana, was extradited from the US. Obviously, none of us has forgotten that Pakistan gave shelter to Osama Bin laden. It is significant that the person, Dr Shakil Afridi, who helped locate Osama bin Laden, is still imprisoned by the Pakistani military,” Jaiswal told journalists in New Delhi.

Laden was hunted down and killed by the US commandos at a house in Abbottabad near the Pakistan Military Academy on May 2, 2011. He had fled from the Tora Bora cave complex in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001 to escape the US military offensive in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Arlington County, Virginia.

A source in New Delhi told DH that the US should not overlook the fact that Pakistan had never done its bit to bring to justice the plotters and perpetrators of the terror strikes in India, be it the November 26-28, 2008, carnage in Mumbai, or the attacks on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot January 2016. Though the recent extradition of 26/11 plotter Tahawwur Rana from the US to India raised hope for stronger bilateral cooperation against terrorism, New Delhi was taken aback by the statements from Washington, DC, lauding Pakistan for fighting terrorism.