The pundits, the hacks, the tea-stall legions – everybody has a different theory on what happened in the sleepy town of Abbottabad the other day. But regardless of which way one slices it, the military establishment’s embarrassment is the only tangible certainty of the whole episode. Full cooperation in an operation conducted by US troops would be embarrassing; being taken into the loop at the very last moment by the Americans, one of those need-to-know deals, would be even more embarrassing and – the least likely – not knowing about the hideout at all (defence budget: $6.41 billion) would be most embarrassing.
The incident is not going to be without its consequences. At the time, the Pakistan trolls of the “defence analyst” variety might be feeling giddy about the prospect of US withdrawal from Afghanistan but within the American security establishment, the incident strengthens the case for an increased CIA footprint in Pakistan. In May last year, when the US secretary of state had said, in a departure from her usual measured tone, that officials at some levels within the Pakistani security establishment knew the whereabouts of militant leaders like Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar, Pakistani officials huffed and puffed and grew an angry shade of purple. There’s very little space for indignation of the sort in the aftermath of the incident. The western and India media have also had a field day: a grenade’s throw away from the military academy, right under their own noses and what have you. All the word play that the press indulges in, in other words, when they come across a smoking gun.
The aftermath of the episode would spell out some rather tough times for us. We now have on our hands an emboldened global military juggernaut – expect an unsolicited stakeout for Mullah Omar sometime in the future – and a presumably infuriated network of militants in the country. It is sad, though, that none of that is going to change the precedence of actual order in the country. In another republic, heads would have rolled; in ours, a dearth of answers.