Tajikistan Gets Osama Credit from Media Echo Chamber

Some media outlets -- including a few respected ones -- are jumping on an obscure diplomatic cable as proof that Tajikistan knew the location of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideaway in 2009. These blogs and articles seem to be crediting Tajikistan with providing intelligence that helped Washington find bin Laden—a dubious assertion.

While it’s easy to pluck out a detail from one leaked cable, in the grander scheme of things it could be dangerous to praise Tajikistan for contributing something it didn’t. Central Asian officials often exaggerate the threat of terrorism -- to get international funding? -- and then domestically do battle with local Muslims in such a heavy-handed and indiscriminate way that it’s highly likely they are doing more to bolster terrorism than to battle it.

In the cable, released by WikiLeaks this February, a Tajik counterterrorism official from the State Committee on National Security (GKNB), General Abdullo Sadulloevich Nazarov, told an American Embassy official that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. Speaking of terrorist groups in general -- of which Tajikistan claims to have many, while offering limited proof -- the American official paraphrased Nazarov as saying:

“For instance, in Pakistan Osama Bin Laden wasn't an invisible man, and many knew his whereabouts in North Waziristan, but whenever security forces attempted a raid on his hideouts, the enemy received warning of their approach from sources in the security forces.”

Tajik officials weren’t the only ones saying for years that Osama -- if he was alive -- was hanging out in Pakistan. Waziristan, in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions, is good for speculation, because of its impenetrability. But bin Laden was living in Abbottabad, far from Waziristan. Nevertheless, Nazarov’s claim seems to be enough for some international media to say, “Tajikistan told you so.”

Here’s the lead from a Forbes blog entitled, “Confirmed: Pakistan Knew”:

What did they know and how long did they know it?

Answer: Everything. All along.

New WikiLeaks disclosures confirm that Pakistani authorities knew where bin Laden was, and tipped him off whenever US intelligence came close to finding out as well.

Central Asia Newswire, the Kazakh-government-funded spin machine, reports that Nazarov “tipped off US diplomatic staff less than two years ago” to Osama’s location. That piece is entitled with an improbable claim: “Tajikistan revealed bin Laden-Pakistan connection to US in 2009.”

And The Telegraph: 

In December 2009, the government of Tajikistan warned the United States that efforts to catch bin Laden were being thwarted by corrupt Pakistani spies.

According to a US diplomatic dispatch, General Abdullo Sadulloevich Nazarov, a senior Tajik counterterrorism official, told the Americans that “many” inside Pakistan knew where bin Laden was.

Very helpful.

But these rah-rah, “Thank you, Tajikistan” reports ignore the more troubling aspects of the cable: Nazarov’s blanket philosophy that banning all “radical” Islamic groups, even ones never linked to violence like the Jamaat-e Tabligh (also known as Tablighi Jamaat), is somehow going to root out terrorism. Many fear the ham-fisted method will do just the opposite—turn moderates into militants.