WASHINGTON: A United States Navy SEAL team was ready to mount a raid to free an American citizen and her family from Afghan Taliban captivity in Pakistan if its government had not acted against the Haqqani network, which had kidnapped the family five years ago, it surfaced on Wednesday.

A report, published by The New York Times, quoted US officials as telling various media outlets that if the Pakistani government had not acted decisively to free the Coleman-Boyle family, it would have confirmed their suspicions that Islamabad was working in tandem with the Taliban-linked Haqqani network and so they would have sent American troops into Pakistan.

Acting on a US tip-off, the Pakistani military freed Caitlan Coleman, 31, her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle, 34, and their three children in a rescue operation in Kurram Agency last week. All three children were born in captivity.

The NYT, citing unnamed senior US officials, reported that Navy SEAL Team 6 was mobilised to conduct a rescue operation but it was called off later.

It was the same team which raided Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 and killed Osama bin Laden.

Other media outlets reported that consultations for rescuing the Coleman-Boyle family began late last month. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone, monitoring the activities of the Haqqani network in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), took pictures of a western family in their custody. The militants were seen shifting the family from one location to another in Fata. The CIA experts determined that it was the Coleman-Boyle family and started planning a raid to free them.

“The risky operation, however, was called off at the last moment as some [officials] in the US government were not certain that the people spotted by the drones were in fact the kidnapped family. There were also concerns about the tough terrain,” a US media report said.

After the US plan was put on hold, Washington contacted the Pakistani government. Officials in Washington agreed to let Pakistan conduct the operation but informed US President Donald Trump that the SEALS would initiate the raid if Islamabad failed to cooperate.

President Trump, who had accused Pakistan of harbouring terrorists in his August 21 speech, softened his attitude after the rescue operation and praised Pakistan’s cooperation with the US government over the family’s recovery.

He said the operation represented “a positive moment” for US-Pakistan relations and offered to rebuild Washington’s ties with Islamabad if it continued to cooperate with the United States.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2017