Abbottabad Commision

Back where we started from

After spending a year and a half and missing several deadlines, the five-member Abbottabad Commission avowedly submitted its report to the government last week. The Pakistani media has, however, been kept in the dark about the contents of the report. Whatever little one knows about its contents is through foreign press, in this case the British newspaper The Telegraph. The commission has reportedly exonerated the government, intelligence agencies and army of any shortcoming vis a vis the presence of Bin Laden in the high security cantonment city and of the successful operation by the US Navy SEALs. A senior government source told The Telegraph correspondent that they would find few answers in the commission’s report. “At the end of the day it really doesn’t tell us much more than we already knew.”

For many the Abbottabad Commission has been a thorough disappointment. It wasted much time on unrelated matters like queries regarding why so many visas were issued to the US nationals. This rightly prompted the question whether OBL had entered Pakistan on a valid visa. The commission issued calls to unconcerned people including Pakistans High Commissioner in London for no rhyme or reason. The commission spent more time considering infringements of Pakistan’s sovereignty by the US SEALs than probing how they managed to sneak into the town, completed their mission successfully in 40 minutes, and returned safely to their base. After all the presence of the chief of the Al-Qaeda on Pakistani soil was itself an infringement of the country’s sovereignty. The issue of how it was made possible was equally important. If the security agencies were really performing their duties satisfactorily, how could the most wanted man in the world, whose pictures were flashed for years on international media, manage to stay in the country, safely travelling with his large family from place to place, finally landing in the vicinity of Kakul Academy and remain undetected all this time?

There is a need on the part of the government to urgently make the report public. Unless this is done people would have to rely on stories in the foreign media and on hearsay to draw conclusions and express views. There are already comments in the Western media suggesting that the report is just a cover up. It was a bad decision by ZAB and the governments that took over after him to keep the Hammod-ur-Rehman Commission Report classified. It was finally carried by an Indian journal in August 2000, subsequently leading a Pakistani daily to publish it the day after. Hopefully this would not happen this time.