Regardless of your income class or political bent, OBL’s passing is not something you are likely to dispassionately observe from the sidelines. While the whole nation seems to be clamouring to have their opinions heard, some ideas sound much better when they are just the shrill hum of electricity pulsating through your brain. But some people clearly enjoy wasting energy and this is especially true of our discontented television talk show hosts who would do anything to mislead the public with sensationalism and misdirection.
One certainly has a general abhorrence for the evening panel of puerile politicians pooh-poohing each other, but the discourse nowadays seems to prefer ratings more so than the brutal honesty expected when such incidents occur. And that makes the chatter all the more dangerous. Not that it is stirring any great revolt amongst the masses sitting in front of their fourteen inch television screens, but betrays a severe lack of perspective and responsibility from those who ought to know better.
Failure! Failure! Failure! These two syllables seem to be uttered like they were going out of fashion. But after a long tradition of corruption and institutional lapses in public sector organisations, exactly which rock have our successes been hiding under? When we cast a gaze upon our institutional landscape, we find that a certain malaise within our public sector has spread itself deeply. From railways and energy to tax administration and governance, hardly any public function leaves us beaming with pride for the babus and politicians running the show. So who are we kidding here? Failure! Failure is our middle name! Actually it’s the middle part of our first name but that’s a discussion for some other day.
For now, let’s face up to the fact that it’s a word Pakistanis have gotten so accustomed to that we no longer fear it in our public or private endeavours, so why expect anything else from those responsible for national security. Perhaps this country has gotten so used to letdowns that our only fear is success itself. But there’s no denying that a nation that seems to be so afraid of the light can no longer choose to remain in the dark. While the war against terror may have reached a high water mark, society needs to force the government to stop putting up a Janus face and be more forthcoming in its intentions to protect the public interest.
Perhaps fewer clowns in Zegna suits and more honesty will enable a purge of the miscreants hiding amongst us, and we wouldn’t even need to have someone else do all our dirty work. But lo and behold, with OBL’s death we may just have seen a convergence of goals aimed at eradicating elements like the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. And if the ends don’t justify the means, what else does?
The triumph may have put the spring back in our step, so let us not stumble in our eagerness to capitalise on such achievements. Elements such as the Haqqani network or the Al-Qaeda aren’t taking time out for a siesta – they are planning their next wave of attacks at this very moment. In the final analysis, it’s important to keep in mind that the crisis we seem to be embroiled in is actually an opportunity for this country to begin to cooperate with international partners in weeding out the ideology of OBL and his kind.
The need of the hour is to be able to have more internal dialogue to refocus our efforts on improving the law and order situation in the country, and enforcing the writ of the government. The minions of OBL would give us little chance of rest and recreation after his passing and we must prepare for what may be the final assault on the terror that got imported into this country. Perhaps, what we need right now is less discontent and war-mongering, and more hope.
After 9/11, OBL was only good for giving Islam a bad name all across the world. His Saudi homeland may have cut him loose but at no point did anyone invite him into our country to start killing citizens in the name of God. Yet in he came, (no doubt aided by lack of oversight of the government) and the body count has been growing ever since. For all the hell people of Pakistan had to endure after 9/11, the surgical precision of OBL’s execution is not an outrage, it’s a freebie! And if – and only if – our government has ensured deniability for itself, it’s not doing too bad a job of pretending to be angry about a win-win situation for Pakistan’s strategic interests. But that’s the theory for a country fretting over a failure of intelligence. And it may just have informed practice in Abbottabad.
The writer is a consultant on public policy.