Dealing with Pakistan

Photo:  AP

Pakistani tribal authorities have sentenced a physician who helped the United States locate Osama bin Laden to 33 years in prison. Failure to release him would be a grim signal that Pakistan has no intention of helping NATO defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The physician, Shakil Afridi, collected DNA samples in connection with a hepatitis vaccination program in the town where bin Laden was living. Afridi apparently never got DNA from bin Laden or his family, but no doubt provided useful information.

His trial by the Khyber Agency, which administers the northwestern part of Pakistan, was a joke. He could not submit evidence or have a lawyer. (He may appeal.)  Afridi did nothing against Pakistan, but the CIA should have foreseen his vulnerability and taken him out of the country. Congress should find out why that was not done.

Afridi’s sentence follows Pakistan’s failure to reopen supply routes into Afghanistan that it closed last year after the killing of 24 of its soldiers by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in a cross-border friendly fire incident.  The Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday accepted a subcommittee’s recommendation to cut the Obama administration’s Pakistani aid request by 58 percent to $1 billion over the supply interruption and, on a unanimous vote, cut a further $33 million — a symbolic $1 million for each year of Afridi’s sentence.  


The Obama administration’s best tactic is probably the old “good cop-bad cop” routine: something like “We agree an aid cut is a bad idea, Mr. Ambassador, but you know we can’t control those senators. If you provoke them into a complete rupture, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Meanwhile, the CIA should investigate other options.





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