It’s unprecedented. The Parliament reigned supreme when the military high command submitted itself to the civilian authority for the first time ever. The in-camera briefing to the joint session over the Abbottabad incident was held at a time when the army and its intelligence agencies were subjected to monumental humiliation both at home and from abroad.
The choice between pleading incompetence and complicity in Osama bin Laden’s prolonged presence in a garrison town had stunned the Security Establishment into silence. An explicit explanation had to be provided to clear the dust and restore the nation’s confidence in the country’s most powerful institution that was previously immune to public reproach.
Prime Minister Gilani’s interview with TIME magazine highlighted the widening ‘trust deficit’ between Pakistan and the United States. He also spoke about the breakdown of ties between the ISI and the CIA but he had little to say about letting the army hold an internal inquiry into the Abbottabad incident rather than conceding to the calls for civilian oversight.
The problem with assigning the investigation of such a sensitive matter to a three-star general is that he won’t be able to get to the bottom of the issue and no convincing evidence will ever surface to fix responsibility and punish the guilty. Some of the nagging questions constantly being raised by the foreign media are: Who owned the land on which the house was constructed to secure bin Laden? Who had provided the security system there? And how did this development taking place at a stone’s throw from the Pakistan Military Academy escape the attention of intelligence agencies during the past five years? These questions are not only relevant to the victims of suicide bombings and terror strikes but also to the entire nation which spends third of its budget on the defence forces.
It was against this backdrop that the PML(N) leadership demanded the constitution of a six-member judicial commission headed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan to probe the issue. There’s no disputing the PM’s assertion that the state institutions need to be strengthened but then he should not be getting impatient with the demand for taking action against those who were found napping during the May 2 operation in Abbottabad by the US forces.
Mian Nawaz Sharif gave expression to public sentiment by saying that the people of Pakistan were well within their right to know whether their military was too incompetent to find out that Osama bin Laden had been living close to the military academy or conspired to protect him. He cannot be blamed for toeing President Obama’s line when he pressed the government to investigate why couldn’t our intelligence apparatus see “what had been happening right under their noses”. Mian Nawaz didn’t mince his words while castigating the agencies for chasing politicians rather than performing the duty they are actually paid for.
But if the PML(N) chief wanted the matter to be investigated with full seriousness, he should have refrained from announcing a three-day deadline for the constitution of a high-powered judicial commission and another three weeks for the commission’s findings to be made public. What he should have done was to either set a realistic timeframe or there should be none because if it is not met then the party would be in a fix to decide what to do next. And in case its leadership chooses to keep mum, it would be blamed for playing politics.
On the contrary, just because the earlier probes into military misadventures conducted by the judiciary or the army’s internal commissions never saw the light of the day or were kept under wraps should not be an excuse for rejecting the demand for constituting the proposed commission. The need for probing the Abbottabad incident should not have arisen if those responsible for the dismemberment of the country and the Kargil debacle had been punished. And it would not have arisen had Zia exposed the elements behind the Ojhri Camp blast instead of showing the door to Junejo.
Even if the calls for heads to roll have not been responded to in the past, there is no justification in continuing with this policy. That the ISI Chief admitted the intelligence failure in detecting the US Navy SEALs violating our sovereignty and volunteered to resign is all the more reason for constituting a judicial commission to probe the matter thoroughly. It is time to dispense with the mindset that allows the ‘sacred cows’ to consider themselves excluded from the process of accountability.
Now that the military high command has submitted itself to the Parliament, the political leadership should take charge of the situation and devise a policy vis-à-vis the ongoing war on terror and Pakistan’s relations with the United States and India. Once the policy guideline is ready, the government must ensure that the army does what it has been told to do.
The writer is Executive Editor, Pakistan Today
