´óÏó´«Ã½

Like all good things, including even Tolstoy's War and Peace, this blog must come to an end.

I will however, continue writing about world affairs, defence, and security matters in a new place.

In future you will be able to find my analysis here.

WASHINGTON - The current crisis in US/Pakistan relations is not the first - but it is the most difficult one since 9/11, and it could easily be aggravated further by the intelligence arising from the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound.

For this reason, Washington insiders are not so sure that diplomatic moves to ease the problem will succeed.

Senator John Kerry has just been in Islamabad asking for "action not words" from the Pakistani authorities. He says he has gained some agreement for practical steps but, apart from gaining the return of remnants of the US helicopter that was destroyed at the compound, has not yet specified what these might be.

This morning he and other members of the will be holding hearings on Pakistan, including the question of how the billions given in aid could be used more effectively to buy the kind of counter terrorist cooperation that the Americans are after.

Juan Zarate, counter terrorist adviser to President George W Bush, argues that the kind of benchmarks that congressmen have advocated in the past for linking aid to performance on specific actions against militant groups could prove counter-productive in the short term because the Pakistanis consider this "humiliating".

He poses the further question, "what happens tomorrow if we have to go after Ayman al-Zawahiri?", referring to the former Al Qaeda number two and presumed leader after Bin Laden's death.

The question of what leads are thrown up by the intelligence trove from the raided Abottabad compound is now in itself a key factor in whether Mr Kerry and members of President Barack Obama's administration are able to soothe the relationship. Myriad questions arise from the material seized on flash drives and laptops.

Pakistani officials insist there was no contact between their Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Bin Laden - but what about possible ties with the courier who owned the house and was the key figure in sheltering him?

Will phone numbers leading to ISI officials be found in Bin Laden's effects? Will there be intelligence that allows the CIA to quickly pinpoint Dr al-Zawahiri or other key figures who might now take control of Al Qaeda?

John McLaughlin, deputy director of the CIA until 2004, argues that even in this current difficult moment for US/Pakistan relations, America will reserve the right to act unilaterally against terrorist targets in Pakistan.

He believes though that ties can slowly be re-built with Pakistan, despite the fact that the raid, mounted without their leaders' foreknowledge, gave them their "biggest shock for a generation".

At previous moments of tension between the two countries, accommodations have been found. Intelligence about Al Qaeda suspects has flowed or the army has been sent in to one of the restive tribal areas on the Pakistan border. The US has signed off on new aid payments.

The tangled reality of the situation is made worse by the fact that Pakistani ministers, mindful of anti-American sentiment in their country, will often not admit publicly to their agreement to drone strikes or other steps. Many people I have spoken to here compare the relationship to a dysfunctional marriage in which both sides need one another but find the reality of daily life increasingly unbearable.

There are those who see ways though in which the two countries might navigate their way through the perfect storm of recrimination and resentment that the Bin Laden operation has produced.

Juan Zarate and some others believe that if the materials seized in the raid produce some nugget of intelligence that leads to the discovery of Dr al-Zawahiri or other key figures, the US may chose to trust the Pakistanis with this knowledge, and make them partners in acting upon it.

If the exploitation of the intelligence went wrong and a leak was suspected the US could use this to place further pressure on Pakistani ministers. But if it all went well, trust might be re-built. The problem is though that there are many within the secret side of US counter terrorism who, because of the way that Osama Bin Laden hid for years where he did, are no longer prepared to take that risk.

Watch Mark Urban's report on the state of US/Pakistan relations on Newsnight on Tuesday 17 May 2011 at 2230 on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two, and then afterwards on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer.

Would Britain have been able to mount an operation like Monday's? Almost certainly not, according to those with knowledge of this country's secret counter-terrorism operations.

It's not a matter of blowing your way in and shooting members of al-Qaeda - the SAS and SBS are evidently quite good at that. It isn't even due to Britain's lesser intelligence gathering or aviation capabilities. All of these practical difficulties could probably be overcome - even if that required some American help.

The real issue for any British leader planning such an audacious and violent mission is to do with the legal constraints that exist on the way British intelligence agents and troops can operate.

Insiders say there are three areas where they are governed by quite different rules to the Americans: in passing or receiving intelligence that may involve the torture or killing of suspects; in using British troops to strike in countries in which we are not engaged in hostilities, without the permission of the government there; and in the rules of engagement that govern UK special forces operations.

Let's deal with those issues one by one.

The issue of intelligence and torture is an intensely controversial one.
Sir John Sawyers, Chief of MI6, has said publicly that Britain cannot pass secret information to countries that might use it to arrest and torture someone.

The ban is pretty clear. It is not just theoretical. I am told that two recent foreign secretaries obtained legal advice about passing specific information to governments that might mistreat detainees. In both cases the decision was to withhold that intelligence.

We know from Wikileaks that not too long ago Britain stopped American spy flights using British bases to fly over Lebanon because of the possibility that such flights might produce information that might be passed to Lebanese security agencies who might mistreat someone.

So while the world criticises Pakistan one might ask: if Britain had intelligence about that house in Abbottabad, would it have been passed on? Not to Pakistan, it seems. But what about to the US?

Now to that second issue - mounting military missions in foreign countries without the host government's permission. Those who've been involved with sensitive operations tell me that American drone strikes in Pakistan would not be considered legal under British law.

On one level it's pretty obvious that the UK takes a different view, since it has its own drones based in Kandahar and clearly does not chose to use them to hit targets in Pakistan. The issue, I'm told, is that the UK does not consider it legal to use them, except in support of UK forces involved in combat in an area of armed conflict. Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia do not currently count as such.

Finally there is the question of the rules of engagement. When Task Force Black, the British special forces squadron group in Baghdad was operating, the rules governing their operations were eased somewhat. This allowed them to kill suspects on the basis of intelligence, rather than waiting for that person to 'demonstrate hostile intent', for example by grabbing a gun or shooting at them.

But even then, people who were there have told me, Britain's rules were tighter than the American ones. Two items of hard intelligence were needed about the presence of a particular violent terrorist, whereas the Americans would storm or bomb a house on the basis of one.

We know from Leon Panetta that, remarkably, there was no specific intelligence that Osama Bin Laden was even in that compound. It was rated as a 60-80% probability, based on circumstantial information.

And yet, on that basis some around the White House table were willing to advocate obliterating the building and those inside with bombs. A British government would have required more substantial intelligence.

Of course the British equipped with similar information about that compound, might have tried to exploit it in different ways. But a similar raid could have been blocked for a whole host of legal, political, and diplomatic reasons.

Amen to that - the Archbishop of Canterbury and millions of other Britons might say. One figure within the ring of secrecy told me, "our views on counter-terrorism are fundamentally different to the Americans' and we might as well just accept that".

That may produce a warm glow of virtue, but it also causes frustration in some of the more secret parts of the government and military machine.

Forty minutes of violence in Abbottabad brought the secret war between US counter-terrorist forces and militant Islam briefly and explosively into view.

But now the conflict returns to the shadows. The direction of travel, as the players exited the public stage tells us quite a bit about the next moves in this campaign.

In the first place there is the question of "sensitive site exploitation", as the experts call it. What exactly, or who was removed from the compound? Along with the door kickers or assault team of US Navy Seals, there would have been military and CIA people tasked with picking up anything of interest they could find as the gun fire ebbed.

Papers, mobile phones, computers, memory devices, and even the "pocket litter" of those found inside the house will all have been swept up.

When the Americans swooped on the rubble of the bombed house where they had run Abu Musab al Zarqawi to ground in June 2006, the sensitive site exploitation triggered dozens of additional raids.

In recent years, the CIA has become practised at entering the ruins of houses hit by its drones in order to sweep them for information. It has used its own Pakistani surveillance team as well as Americans to perform these searches, often working with very little time.

Might Monday's haul lead the Americans to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy? It is highly likely that the two men were in some sort of contact, although they would have been extremely careful about it.

People in Inter-Services Intelligence - the ISI or Pakistani military intelligence - have told a ´óÏó´«Ã½ colleague that the Americans took one living person away from the compound on their helicopters.

They speculated that this might be a surviving Bin Laden son. If true, this capture could itself prove of major importance.

Of course, as the US seeks to capitalise on the intelligence finds from its raid, the question of Pakistani co-operation and access will loom all the more important.

Those who know the secret world suggest that while politicians may not chose to make too much of an issue of possible ISI knowledge of who was resident in Abbottabad, the spooks are likely to use the suspicion of possible complicity or incompetence by the Pakistani agency as a way of keeping the pressure up on them to help.

In truth, the Pakistanis have had to live with the fact that the CIA has gained considerable power to operate independently in their country.

After the arrest earlier this year of CIA contractor Raymond Davis in Lahore, after he allegedly shot dead two men, the Pakistani authorities had tried to limit the agency's freedom of action.

However, as the Bin Laden raid showed, the CIA retained considerable autonomy. Its personnel, contractors, and Afghan auxiliaries operating in Pakistan and the Afghan border region may amount to thousands.

It operates the Reaper drones used to hit militants in the Tribal Areas from Pakistani air bases, and its air wing moves its people around the region independently of the US military or any government.

The most likely explanation for how the American helicopter assault force reportedly refuelled at a Pakistani air base on way to its target is simple that movements of US aircraft in the night across Pakistan have become so commonplace that procedures are in places to prevent this causing incidents.

So as the CIA and ISI survey the scene, their mutual suspicion has, if anything been reinforced. The Americans have the advantage for the time being, but few in Pakistan will have relished what happened in Abbottabad, and the friction caused may prove to be the biggest obstacle to exploiting the leads gained in the raid.