Pakistani doctor who helped CIA track down and kill Osama bin Laden has languished in prison since 2011
Afridi spends his days alone, isolated from a general prison population filled with militants who have vowed to kill him for his role in locating bin Laden, his supporters say
Shakil Afridi has languished in jail for years – since 2011, when the Pakistani doctor used a vaccination scam in an attempt to identify Osama bin Laden’s home, aiding US Navy Seals who tracked and killed the al-Qaeda leader.
Americans might wonder how Pakistan could imprison a man who helped track down the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Pakistanis are apt to ask a different question: how could the United States betray its trust and cheapen its sovereignty with a secret nighttime raid that shamed the military and its intelligence agencies?
“The Shakil Afridi saga is the perfect metaphor for US-Pakistan relations” – a growing tangle of mistrust and miscommunication that threatens to jeopardise key efforts against terrorism, said Michael Kugelman, Asia programme deputy director at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington.
The US believes its financial support entitles it to Pakistan’s backing in its efforts to defeat the Taliban – as a candidate, Donald Trump pledged to free Afridi, telling Fox News in April 2016 he would get him out of prison in “two minutes. … Because we give a lot of aid to Pakistan.” But Pakistan is resentful of what it sees as US interference in its affairs.
Mohammed Amir Rana, director of the independent Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies in Islamabad, said the trust deficit between the two countries is an old story that won’t be rewritten until Pakistan and the US revise their expectations of each other, recognise their divergent security concerns and plot an Afghan war strategy, other than the current one which is to both kill and talk to the Taliban.
The Shakil Afridi saga is the perfect metaphor for US-Pakistan relations
“Shakil Afridi [is] part of the larger puzzle,” he said.