Tuesday 3 May 2011 21.29 BST
- Article history
The killing of Osama bin Laden has opened up divisions inside Barack Obama's administration over whether the withdrawal of US troops in Afghanistan, which is scheduled to begin this summer, should be bigger and faster than planned.
Politicians, soldiers and analysts from the US to Afghanistan have debated whether the removal of the al-Qaida leader will shorten the war and open the way for reconciliation with the Taliban.
The Pentagon, braced for a Taliban onslaught in the spring, wants only a token cut of about 2,000 of the 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan. But members of Congress called for significant cuts given that Bin Laden had been the reason for going into Afghanistan, a view shared by some in the White House who are thinking about Obama's re-election chances next year.
Obama is due to announce in July the scale of the troop drawdown.
Bin Laden's death is also having a continuing impact on US-Pakistan relations and members of Congress called publicly for the billions of dollars in US aid to Pakistan to be suspended.
The CIA director, Leon Panetta, contributed to the deteriorating relationship between the two countries when he told Time magazine that Pakistan could not be trusted with news of the mission.
"It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardise the mission. They might alert the targets," Panetta said.
The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, when asked about the US relationship with Pakistan, opted for a diplomatic approach. "It is a complicated but important relationship," he said.
Carney said there was a debate within the White House over whether to release pictures of Bin Laden's body. He said there were sensitivities attached to such an action, such as inflaming opinion in the Islamic world. He described the pictures of Bin Laden's face, with a bullet hole, as "gruesome".
Seeking to clarify some of the conflicting statements made by the Obama administration over the last 48 hours about the mission, Carney said Bin Laden had not been armed when shot and Bin Laden's wife had not been killed, only injured.
US and British sources said the killing introduced a major new element to the debate about easing western involvement in Afghanistan.
Barney Frank, a Democratic congressman who was until this year chairman of the House finance committee, told the ThinkProgress website: "We went there to get Osama bin Laden. And we have now gotten Osama bin Laden. So yes, I think this does strengthen the case." He added: "We just killed Osama bin Laden, and I think that takes a lot of the pressure away – a lot of the punch away from the argument that 'Ooh, it will look like we walked away'."
Richard Lugar, the most senior Republican on the Senate foreign affairs committee, speaking at a hearing on Afghanistan, referred to the $100bn (£61bn) the US planned to spend in Afghanistan next year. "It is exceedingly difficult to conclude that our vast expenditures in Afghanistan represent a rational allocation of our military and financial assets," he said.
Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, predicted: "One of the unintended consequences of Bin Laden's death will be American soldiers coming back faster.Listen to the man in the street. I can't count the number of times I have heard people say 'We can get out off Afghanistan faster'.
"People think the peace dividend is getting out of Afghanistan. By the summer, it will be unavoidable. We will have to get out faster."
The Pentagon, resisting major troop withdrawals, is arguing that big gains made by the US and its allies in Afghanistan over the winter would be put at risk if there was a significant cut in troops.
A Taliban commander, among those who escaped from Kandahar prison last week, agreed with the Pentagon assessment, predicting Bin Laden's death would not shorten the war. He told the Guardian: "The Afghans are fighting the foreigners, so killing Bin Laden won't affect anything. The fighting will not stop. We will be just as strong."
A western source in Kabul suggested the short-term impact of the killing could be to fuel the fighting: "They have killed the person of Bin Laden but not the reason why he exists and what he is for. They have destroyed his body, not his cause.
"In fact, they have created another martyr without addressing the fundamental reason why Osama and the movement behind him exists. America is still occupying two Muslim countries and bombarding another."
Michael Semple, who has held extensive talks with the Taliban as a European representative in Kabul and still maintains contacts, said the removal of Bin Laden might open the way for reconciliation with the Taliban.
"There is an interesting conversation going on now. One side says this shows that the Americans will be preparing to leave and we can ride it out. There is another pro-talks and pragmatic point of view that this could be helpful for a settlement, as it gets Osama off the agenda and makes the al-Qaida issue much easier to deal with," Semple said.
In western eyes, the killing of Bin Laden makes it easier to cut the tie because it ends the personal bond between him and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. But that only becomes relevant if serious peace talks start.
David Cameron joined the US in questioning Pakistan on how Bin Laden had a "support network" there.
The prime minister told MPs: "The fact that Bin Laden was living in a large house in a populated area suggests that he must have had a support network in Pakistan. We don't currently know the extent of that network, so it is right that we ask searching questions about it. And we will."
Adding to Pakistan's embarrassment, it has emerged that its intelligence service had raided the compound where Bin Laden was found in 2003 while it was under construction. The intelligence agents had been looking for an al-Qaida suspect, raising further questions why they failed to put the compound under surveillance in later years.
Cameron, who last year accused Pakistan of looking "both ways" on terrorism, declined to explain which elements in Pakistan may have assisted Bin Laden.
The prime minister warned that the killing could lead to a "lone wolf" attack. He said: "Clearly there is a risk that al-Qaida and its affiliates in places like Yemen and the Maghreb will want to demonstrate they are able to operate effectively. And, of course, there is always the risk of a radicalised individual acting alone, a so-called lone-wolf attack. So we must be more vigilant than ever– and we must maintain that vigilance for some time to come."
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