By now, sheer outrage fatigue prevents any shock in the western political and media establishments over any news item on Pakistan’s covert relationship with the Taliban. The BBC documentary that interviewed some mid-level Taliban commanders revealed that the Pakistani intelligence setup was aiding and abetting the militia in a number of ways. Had the documentary come out even only a couple of years ago, we would have expected to see much tumult over in the west. But the May events in Abbottabad and the ruckus over the Haqqani network had used up all the shock over these instances.
The ISPR, for its part, has denied the claims made in the documentary but the agency’s denials don’t seem to be carrying much value anymore. After all, didn’t senior Afghan intelligence officials go to the then president Musharraf in 2006 and present him with a lead of a possible Osama hideout in Mansehra only for the allegations to be furiously denied by him? Do you think I am running a banana republic, he is said to have asked. When the allegations were proved to be off by only 20 kilometres this year, the erstwhile generalissimo’s line has morphed into one that asks for the intelligence setup’s failures to be excused; that it happens everywhere, even in the west.
Conflict reporting is almost as complex as warcraft itself; the Beeb might not be above flawed reportage. But with the military establishment having holed itself in, just about anyone, even the “red top” tabloids can take a swipe at them and be taken seriously. The military, its spin machine and their private sympathisers may huff and puff every time a piece like this comes up but no amount of furious indignation is going to make these allegations go away.
This flurry of news items is setting up a stage. Considering the US government is never going to engage Pakistan’s military in an outright confrontation anyway, the leverage it has with its own people to take any other action, no matter how brazen is increasing immensely with every successive expose of shadowy links.
