Pakistan is in deep trouble after Osama was found in Abbottabad. Especially the ISI and Pakistan Army are facing the wrath, both from inside and outside.
As Obama said Islamabad and Rawalpindi have to check the “support network of Osama” in Pakistan, there are calls from Washington to identify the ISI officials who knew about OBL, though the US National Security Adviser Thomas E Donilon acknowledged that he had “not seen evidence” to suggest “that the political, the military or the intelligence leadership would have fore-knowledge of bin Laden”.
Yet the challenge is clear. On one side the government and military should forge unity in their ranks, hold an impartial inquiry into the grave security “shortcoming”, identify the actual responsible and punish them under the law of the land. This may only satisfy the nation at domestic level, if another unilateral American operation is not conducted of the similar nature and similar magnitude.
The question is whether Pakistan has the capacity and capability to counter and block such a strike if occurred?
It means another embarrassment would be fatal. So there is one way out. Pakistan must cleanse the land of the Al-Qaeda leaders wherever they may be hiding.
A full-fledged, indigenous, well planned and all law enforcement agencies-coordinated operation must be launched. Osama was not very much active and differences within Al-Qaeda might have given Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri an opportunity to hijack leadership because the man is believed to be the real architect of terrorism, especially focused against the Pakistan armed forces, and the actual mastermind of Takfiri ideology. If at all it is a myth, even the myth has to be broken.
The problem is that the respective countries are not ready to accept these terror-icons, who have found ‘shelter’ in Pakistan only to invite and direct the world community’s wrath against this nation. What service do they have served to Islam, Ummah and the country then? Any kind of sympathy for them would be suicidal for our own future and children. Let’s get them. Let’s fight them out, together with full force and will, and this is the prudent way out.
ESCHMALL SARDAR
Peshawar