Of smokescreens

The ISI has been caught with its pants down. It has no explanation for its failure to trace out Osama bin Laden who lived in the vicinity of the country’s premier military academy in the cantonment city of Abbottabad. This has shattered the image the ISI had assiduously tried to build up of being one of the prime security agencies of the world. On the basis of the information provided by it, the Pakistan government and military leaders denied whenever anyone hinted at the possibility of OBL hiding somewhere inside Pakistan. It was maintained that the Americans insulted the country by repeating the canard. Musharraf had even suggested OBL might by now have expired in some cave in Afghanistan since he was a kidney patient.

It was maintained that if the man was really alive, he was likely to be somewhere along the Pak-Afghan border. It was this region that the US Special Forces continued to scour after Osama left Tora Bora. On May 2, OBL was found in spacious house where he lived with three wives and a truckload of children, grandchildren and families of two Pakistani couriers in the neighbourhood of Kakul Military Academy. This naturally led many to ask if this was a case of connivance or sheer incompetence. The ISI is damned if found to be conniving and damned if forced to confess that it simply failed to see the elephant in the room. It has explained it away as an “intelligence failure” and would like the chapter to be closed. But it finds it is not possible to do that.

That the US Navy SEALS could sneak into Abbottabad with impunity, kill Osama, collect important computer data and fly back with the terrorist chief’s body to Afghanistan without facing any resistance from those entrusted the task of guarding the country’s geographical borders makes the common man wonder about the military’s ability to defend him. The uneasy feeling has been there all the time since the drone attacks started more than five years back. The US operation in Abbottabad only made the feeling much more acute and widespread. Questions are being asked about the justification for the mega budgetary allocations for defence, about the military’s security paradigm and about turning the country into a national security state. The military leadership’s silence for four days has further perturbed the people.

Now attempts are being made to divert the attention from the disturbing questions related to the gross intelligence and defence failures.

Instead of finding the reason behind the negligence to improve the working of the security apparatus what is being done is to make appeals to the people’s patriotism. The whole emphasis is on the betrayal of Pakistan by the US. It is being maintained that the US undertook the operation to gain sole credit of killing bin Laden. Operation Geronimo was conducted without sharing the information with Pakistan while it was Pakistan which had provided the initial leads which had finally led Washington to OBL. The operation is presented as a brazen affront to Pakistan’s sovereignty.

The situation created by the American intervention should have helped realign the civil-military relations to bring them into conformity with other democratic countries. The government could have immediately set up a bipartisan investigation committee or a high powered judicial investigation commission and taken action in accordance with its recommendations. This would have been the first step towards establishing civilian control over the armed forces that characterises democratic polities. It agreed instead on an army led probe that would satisfy none on account of the track record of army probes conducted earlier.

A weak-kneed Gilani has gone ahead with warnings of the country being in danger to try to make people forget the real issue. Making use of the nationalistic discourse of the extreme right wing, he warned the Senate a few days back that the country is facing serious threats, which he did not specify, and that national unity is needed to overcome the difficult situation. No country he said would be provided an opportunity to “cast an evil eye on our homeland”.

The parliament is now being asked to forget the highly damaging lapses and stand firm behind the army and the intelligence apparatus.

Once out of the doldrums, those controlling the country from the shadows would look for a scapegoat. Attempts would be made then to put all the blame on the civilian government. What is needed is to rectify the mistakes and thus strengthen the institutions and the system. Unless this is done, there is no guarantee that the country’s sovereignty will not be violated again.

The writer is a former academic and a political analyst.