No, Osama wasn’t running a chicken farm in Pakistan

The funniest film I saw last year was Tere Bin Laden.

The title is a play on the “bin” in OBL’s name, which means “without” (much like the Kiswahili “bila”).

Tere Bin Laden can thus be translated “Without you, Laden…”

The film centres on a young Pakistani journalist who yearns to go to America, where he is sure he will become a star.

His yearning is thwarted many times. When he first gets his American visa, 9/11 happens.

His departure is postponed in the chaos that ensues. He finally gets on the first plane to America when flights resume — where he makes the mistake of picking up and trying to hand over to the stewardess some cutlery she’s dropped.

More chaos ensues — he’s assumed to be attacking her and, on landing in America, he’s interrogated and deported, persona non grata for all eternity.

Desperate, he turns to a visa fixer. Who informs him he has two options.

Adopting the identity of a dead Pakistani not on a watch list to get a new passport or applying afresh for a visa. Expensive.

Or joining the jihadis, crossing over into Iraq and, on first sighting of the Americans, surrendering.

At which point, the visa fixer guarantees, he’ll promptly be moved to America at the Americans’ cost. Not smart.

He, sensibly, chooses the first option. Which means he needs cash. Which his salary from a local television station will not provide.

All of a sudden, providence shines on him. While reviewing footage of a local chicken fight he’s covered, he sees somebody who’s a dead ringer for Osama bin Laden! Dollar signs (the huge $50 million reward) flash in his head.

Unfortunately, on investigation, the dead ringer turns out to be a mere Pakistani chicken breeder. He thinks hard. He could do a story on the Osama bin Laden lookalike.

But that won’t help him. Or he could fake a new “message” from Osama, who’s been quiet for a while — and sell it.

He, foolishly, opts for the latter, cons the poor Pakistani chicken rearer into recording the “message” and sells it. For cash. Enough to pay the visa fixer.

Needless to say, upon release of the new “message” from Al Qaeda central, all hell breaks loose.

The Pakistani and American security services descend. You’ll have to watch the film to see how it ends.

Written and directed by India’s Abhishek Sharma and starring Pakistani musician Ali Zafar, the film, intended as a cross-border cultural collaboration, was promptly banned in Pakistan for fear it could provoke the jihadis.

In truth, nobody is spared by the film — not the jihadis, not the Pakistani nor the American security services. All come across as crazy.

What does come through is ordinary people’s ordinary aspirations — and the lengths to which they must go to achieve those aspirations in the post 9/11 world. It is tragic for that reason.

Ironically (for those involved in the film’s production), the real Osama bin Laden was indeed found in Pakistan last year — albeit not living as a poultry farmer.

Americans cheered at the news of his being shot to death in last week’s operation. Survivors and victims of al Qaeda in America were declared vindicated.

President Barack Obama was presented as having made a decisive foreign policy and security move — even if America’s story of the operation is contradictory in some aspects.

America succeeded in presenting a breach in international law (if the operation was, in fact, unilateral) as being both necessary and in the interests of not just itself, but the entire world.

Heads of government and state responded accordingly. Perhaps because everybody was secretly relieved by Osama’s death and hoping it marked the beginning of the end of the post 9/11 world.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani authorities look like idiots. Either they knew about the operation and are feigning innocence to protect themselves from reprisals.

Or they didn’t and have lost face as people who could not be trusted. Pakistan has criticised the breach of its sovereignty and defended itself from claims it knew about Osama Bin Laden’s presence and protected him at some level (the question being which level).

The unravelling of the truth as what the Pakistani government — or sections therein, from the executive to local government to the military to intelligence — knew or didn’t know will, no doubt, take some time.

In the interim, Al Qaeda affiliates globally — including al Shabaab next door—have declared their intention to retaliate. There is no beginning of the end.

Lost in all the American vainglory and the Pakistani bluster is the memory that Osama bin Laden was, in fact, an American and Pakistani creation, recruited by the CIA for a covert operation launched in 1979 in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of Babrak Karmal’s communist government.

Afghan resistance to the invasion was funded through heroin trafficking.

American assistance ranged from arms (65,000 tonnes annually by 1987) to joint intelligence, military planning and training by both America and Pakistan.

In this resistance, Islam was viewed as an ideology capable of countering that of communism.

Thus the Taliban’s rise to power was enabled by Pakistan’s intelligence service, itself backed by America’s intelligence service.

Blowback — the unintended consequences of covert, illegal and unconstrained foreign policy and security actions — is the story we should be focused on.

Not to justify or legitimise Osama or his jihadis worldwide. Or to vilify America and Pakistan.

But to remind us of the need to address not just the jihadis’ organisation and intended operations, but also the material conditions they use to justify and legitimise them.

And to remind ourselves that there will always be consequences for paths taken in terms of foreign policy and security.

Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, Al Qaeda and its operations were all blowback — which is continuing to affect innocent people worldwide, not just in America and Pakistan.

The counter-terrorism offensive is generating its own blowback.

The scale of which we’ve yet to see. Meanwhile, the far more numerous survivors and victims of the material conditions jihadis claim to be responding to remain without justice of any kind.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission