The clearest indication, among very many, that Pakistan is no ally of the United States, and is aligned with the global jihad force.
“Hero doctor who risked his life tracking down Osama bin Laden for the U.S. remains locked in a Pakistani jail after seven years without a trial, despite American promises to get him freed,” Associated Press, January 22, 2018:
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 U.S. Navy Seals who tracked and killed the al-Qaida 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 U.S-Pakistan relations’ – a growing tangle of mistrust and miscommunication that threatens to jeopardize key efforts against terrorism, said Michael Kugelman, Asia program deputy director at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
The U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. revise their expectations of each other, recognize 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.
‘Shakil Afridi (is) part of the larger puzzle,’ he said.
Afridi hasn’t seen his lawyer since 2012 and his wife and children are his only visitors. For two years his file ‘disappeared,’ delaying a court appeal that still hasn’t proceeded. The courts now say a prosecutor is unavailable, his lawyer, Qamar Nadeem Afridi, told The Associated Press.
‘Everyone is afraid to even talk about him, to mention his name,’ and not without reason, said Nadeem, who is also Afridi’s cousin….