I’ve always thought making a movie based on ‘real events’ too soon after they have happened is never the best idea. You’ve hardly had time to process things, let alone give them a narrative and a thrilling soundtrack. Post-9/11 we saw a lot of these movies come out, like United 93 or A Mighty Heart. Some were good, some were sad, while others were pandering emotional rollercoasters set to the songs of Coldplay. But still they came. Movies like these, despite the theatricality of a cast and songs, are seen by the general public as near-documentary, and often cement their versions of the story into the public consciousness. It becomes awkward, therefore, when the facts the movie is based on are shown to be less than concrete.
One such movie was Zero Dark Thirty, Katheryn Bigelow’s account of the killing of Osama bin Laden based on a book by the Navy SEAL who is meant to have shot him. For obvious reasons that movie had a lot to do with Pakistan. OBL was ‘caught’ here about four years ago after what was supposed to be one of the largest manhunts in history, much to the embarrassment of many but the shock of none. Details of what exactly happened in that mansion in Abbotabad were never particularly clear to anyone really, so it was with great interest that I watched Zero Dark Thirty. I reviewed it here and I remember even then thinking that I wanted to see it less as a documentary but more as a glimpse into what the ‘official’ version of the truth was supposed to be.
Everyone wanted to know the truth and lots of people were asking uncomfortable questions. How did the most wanted man in the world live apparently ‘undetected’ in a city crawling with military families? How, when the All Seeing Eyes can tell what you’ve been surfing and who you’ve been chatting to, could no one have known that a 6 foot 6 Saudi man on dialysis was just hanging out in a large house? Were we supposed to buy that the American team made it well into our borders on helicopters without the army knowing about it? Yes, apparently we were.
No one in Pakistan believed it, though. And this week the investigative powerhouse Seymore Hersh came out with a story that contradicts much of what was officially announced about the incident, proving the conspiracy-theory-infested Pakistani “common sense” to be a legitimate subject of inquiry. Indeed, Hersh’s story, which appeared in the London Review of Books, practically destroyed Obama’s account of the bin Laden raid. It is one of the most shocking pieces of journalism to come out in the last decade. Basing his information on sources with no names (always a problem, I concede, but which self-respecting spook will go on the record about this still-tender matter?), Hersh has laid out a version of events that is surprisingly unsurprising. In it, he states that not only did the Pakistanis know that OBL was hiding in Abbotabad, it was them who had been hiding him as their prisoner in the ‘mansion’. Not because they wanted to be the head of an axis of Evil, but because such a high-value asset is a bargaining chip for a country (and elite) that is increasingly dependent on receiving large amounts of aid to ‘fight terrorism’. You don’t just hand someone like that over, the reasoning goes. You keep him hidden, waiting for the right time to say you’ve found him and then claim the credit (cards). Hersh also says the Saudis were paying the Pakistanis to do this, an allegation that doesn’t exactly shake my teeth with shock.
When the US authorities found out where OBL was hiding, they gave Pakistan an ultimatum: Help us kill him or we’ll never give you any money.
Apparently, the Americans found OBL’s location because a Pakistani intelligence guy just walked into the American embassy in Islamabad one day and said “Sup Y’all, I know where he is. Now what about that 25 million dollars?” He was given a bulk of the reward and he and his family were relocated to somewhere outside of Washington D.C. (I’m not so sure I buy this rather convenient explanation for who took the money — my hunch tells me that money is still in Islamabad, or thereabouts...)
The article claims lots more, like that the Pakistanis knew the raid was coming, which is why the helicopters came in unopposed and that the Americans then covered up that fact to allow the Pakistani to appear shocked and so save face with the more radical elements. The story also says that no data was retrieved from the raid and all that info was just a blatant lie and part of the cover up. If the story is true, Zero Dark Thirty will be proven to have been an expensive PR ad that the CIA paid Hollywood to make and let me just say that I called that years ago.
The White House is obviously freaking out and denying everything, which isn’t particularly interesting. What is bizarre is how much of this account aligns with what most Pakistanis have been saying for years and also, how distant whichever actors are making these decisions seem to be from the rhetoric of what is supposed to ‘save’ Pakistan. It has become painfully clear over the years that not everyone thinks we need saving at all. Part of the way this works is that no one discusses the military’s role in anything under any circumstances ever. To do so is treachery. The same sense of honor is rarely given to other arms of the state, like the parliament or WAPDA. We can abuse them and their mothers all the livelong day (crappy mothers day?), just as long as no one says anything about the army.
I’m curious to see how Hersh’s 10,000 word article, which alleges an American cover-up so vast that there is bound to be a movie about it, will play out here. My prediction is it won’t. Though of course those of us who have access to the Internet (three, two, one...) and can make sense of the London Review of Books will have many fascinating questions to ask of the recently retired military leadership, chiefly Generals Kayani and Pasha. But there are very few of us here, and rest assured our questions, far from being answered, will not even be articulated beyond the bright, slippery walls of our respective bubbles.
The only question is what do we call it? Osama-gate? Obama-Gate? Osama-Obama-Gate? Get thinking, people. The movie scripts don’t write themselves.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter
One such movie was Zero Dark Thirty, Katheryn Bigelow’s account of the killing of Osama bin Laden based on a book by the Navy SEAL who is meant to have shot him. For obvious reasons that movie had a lot to do with Pakistan. OBL was ‘caught’ here about four years ago after what was supposed to be one of the largest manhunts in history, much to the embarrassment of many but the shock of none. Details of what exactly happened in that mansion in Abbotabad were never particularly clear to anyone really, so it was with great interest that I watched Zero Dark Thirty. I reviewed it here and I remember even then thinking that I wanted to see it less as a documentary but more as a glimpse into what the ‘official’ version of the truth was supposed to be.
Everyone wanted to know the truth and lots of people were asking uncomfortable questions. How did the most wanted man in the world live apparently ‘undetected’ in a city crawling with military families? How, when the All Seeing Eyes can tell what you’ve been surfing and who you’ve been chatting to, could no one have known that a 6 foot 6 Saudi man on dialysis was just hanging out in a large house? Were we supposed to buy that the American team made it well into our borders on helicopters without the army knowing about it? Yes, apparently we were.
Which self-respecting spook will go on the record about this still-tender matter?
No one in Pakistan believed it, though. And this week the investigative powerhouse Seymore Hersh came out with a story that contradicts much of what was officially announced about the incident, proving the conspiracy-theory-infested Pakistani “common sense” to be a legitimate subject of inquiry. Indeed, Hersh’s story, which appeared in the London Review of Books, practically destroyed Obama’s account of the bin Laden raid. It is one of the most shocking pieces of journalism to come out in the last decade. Basing his information on sources with no names (always a problem, I concede, but which self-respecting spook will go on the record about this still-tender matter?), Hersh has laid out a version of events that is surprisingly unsurprising. In it, he states that not only did the Pakistanis know that OBL was hiding in Abbotabad, it was them who had been hiding him as their prisoner in the ‘mansion’. Not because they wanted to be the head of an axis of Evil, but because such a high-value asset is a bargaining chip for a country (and elite) that is increasingly dependent on receiving large amounts of aid to ‘fight terrorism’. You don’t just hand someone like that over, the reasoning goes. You keep him hidden, waiting for the right time to say you’ve found him and then claim the credit (cards). Hersh also says the Saudis were paying the Pakistanis to do this, an allegation that doesn’t exactly shake my teeth with shock.
When the US authorities found out where OBL was hiding, they gave Pakistan an ultimatum: Help us kill him or we’ll never give you any money.
Apparently, the Americans found OBL’s location because a Pakistani intelligence guy just walked into the American embassy in Islamabad one day and said “Sup Y’all, I know where he is. Now what about that 25 million dollars?” He was given a bulk of the reward and he and his family were relocated to somewhere outside of Washington D.C. (I’m not so sure I buy this rather convenient explanation for who took the money — my hunch tells me that money is still in Islamabad, or thereabouts...)
The article claims lots more, like that the Pakistanis knew the raid was coming, which is why the helicopters came in unopposed and that the Americans then covered up that fact to allow the Pakistani to appear shocked and so save face with the more radical elements. The story also says that no data was retrieved from the raid and all that info was just a blatant lie and part of the cover up. If the story is true, Zero Dark Thirty will be proven to have been an expensive PR ad that the CIA paid Hollywood to make and let me just say that I called that years ago.
Which self-respecting spook will go on the record about this still-tender matter?
The White House is obviously freaking out and denying everything, which isn’t particularly interesting. What is bizarre is how much of this account aligns with what most Pakistanis have been saying for years and also, how distant whichever actors are making these decisions seem to be from the rhetoric of what is supposed to ‘save’ Pakistan. It has become painfully clear over the years that not everyone thinks we need saving at all. Part of the way this works is that no one discusses the military’s role in anything under any circumstances ever. To do so is treachery. The same sense of honor is rarely given to other arms of the state, like the parliament or WAPDA. We can abuse them and their mothers all the livelong day (crappy mothers day?), just as long as no one says anything about the army.
I’m curious to see how Hersh’s 10,000 word article, which alleges an American cover-up so vast that there is bound to be a movie about it, will play out here. My prediction is it won’t. Though of course those of us who have access to the Internet (three, two, one...) and can make sense of the London Review of Books will have many fascinating questions to ask of the recently retired military leadership, chiefly Generals Kayani and Pasha. But there are very few of us here, and rest assured our questions, far from being answered, will not even be articulated beyond the bright, slippery walls of our respective bubbles.
The only question is what do we call it? Osama-gate? Obama-Gate? Osama-Obama-Gate? Get thinking, people. The movie scripts don’t write themselves.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter