Time to take charge

It will be a gross understatement to say that we have a lot of egg on our face as a result of Osama bin Laden being discovered and killed in Abbottabad. He was hiding, reportedly for years, at a stone’s throw away from the elite Kakul military academy, the West Point of Pakistan.

As a result, allegations of complicity and/or incompetence on the part of the ISI and the military are freely floating about. The US administration including the Pentagon and the Congress has gone to town on us.

Notwithstanding the consensus in Washington that ‘Pakistan cannot be trusted’, there are voices within the Congress as well as in the administration which maintain that the relationship with Islamabad should continue, nonetheless. The strongest voice amongst them is that of Hillary Clinton. Admitting that it has not been an easy relationship, the US Secretary of State has implicitly admitted that Washington has no option but to.

Pakistan will remain Washington’s ‘frenemy’, ‘most bullied ally’ in the words of General Kayani and now also the most distrusted ally. Washington knows fully well that Islamabad is its supply line and the lynchpin in its war on terror. Without the ISI, a settlement with the Taliban is not going to be easy. Despite this, the major reason the West does not want to abandon Pakistan is that it is too big a country to be left to descend into chaos.

In the words of Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, ‘Pakistan is too big and too central to be allowed to plunge into anarchy’. The conventional wisdom is that without the help of the West, its nascent civilian institutions will crumble. A nuclear-armed state, with an arsenal now matching that of Great Britain, going down the tube is a sure recipe for disaster.

It is a real shame that today Pakistan is seen as the epicentre of terrorism and the most dangerous place on earth. Despite that, it is too precious a country for Washington and its allies to let it go under.

Osama bin Laden’s beheading (at least the modern version of it) by the elite US Navy Seals has however laid bare all the warts and wounds that have infested Pakistan since its very existence. After the ideological totalitarianism of General Zia-ul-Haq, the decline has been swift. But his ‘baakiyaat’ (remnants) have taken the cake.

It is almost surreal that the fugitive founder of the biggest terrorist movement in modern times is discovered in the most serene military backyard of our country. Pakistan has been infested with Islamic jihadists of all hues and nationalities for so many years. As a result, we have become desensitised to their presence and obscurantist role in our society and polity.

It is precisely due to the barbarians knocking at the gates and their infiltration in every stratum of the society and the state that the West views us as the enfant terrible of the world. The naiveté of those who think that all this will go away and Pakistan will become a bastion of peace and prosperity the moment the US quits Afghanistan is obvious.

It is easy to explain away all our problems by blaming the Americans, Indian and the Jewish lobbies working overtime to destabilise and dislodge the Pakistani state. A large section of the media has played its role over the years in creating such misperceptions.

The Army after four days of complete silence has finally spoken on the Osama debacle. While admitting its “shortcomings” in locating the now deceased al-Qaeda Chief, it has warned the US against any unilateral action violating Pakistan’s sovereignty. In a statement issued after the corps commanders’ meeting chaired by General Kayani, the top military brass has warned India against any misadventure on the pattern of the US operation.

In light of the Indian Army chief’s threat that India could also carry such attacks inside Pakistan, this will be seen as a timely warning to New Delhi. However, the question which still begs an answer is that why were the Pakistan Army and its premier intelligence agency caught napping while the US Navy Seals violated our air space and launched a successful operation in the heart of military’s power base?

Our state of the art F16 planes, ironically provided by the US, could not be scrambled before the US helicopters had left our airspace. There have been feeble voices in the Senate for a thorough inquiry into the circumstances behind the sordid happenings on late Sunday night and Monday morning.

But no one has had the guts to demand that heads should roll for exposing Pakistan’s vulnerabilities. It is time that the civilian government took charge instead of demonstrating a weak-kneed and lily-livered approach towards issues of national security and sovereignty.

For too long, our successive governments have taken the path of least resistance by outsourcing vital issues of foreign policy and national security to the Army and intelligence agencies. The present government has taken the cake by doing away even with the formality of having a full-fledged foreign minister.

It was a joke to see Madam Hina Rabbani Khar, the reluctant minister of state for foreign affairs, shaking hands with the French president Nicholas Sarkozy holding a ten thousand pound Birkin bag and sporting a diamond studded watch. The omnipresent lady in every government would pass as a socialite but not as a serious minded government functionary of an impoverished state like Pakistan.

According to media reports, Mark Siegel, a long time lobbyist for Pakistan, is being paid $75,000 a month by the government to quell accusations that Pakistan helped the al-Qaeda founder to avoid capture. The answer lies closer at home: fixing things that have been wrong for a long time now.

For starters, the civilian government should take care of vital matters like the respective policies on India, Afghanistan and the US. A consensus should be built, not only with the military but with political forces represented in the parliament to reorient our foreign policy and strategic paradigm.

This will be all the more necessary in the post-Osama scenario. US efforts to hasten its exit from Afghanistan are bound to receive an impetus. Lofty goals like nation building in Afghanistan will take a back seat to Obama’s re-election bid next year. Hence there is a need for Pakistan to play its cards carefully, lest it is left with another ‘Charlie Wilson War’.

The writer is Editor, Pakistan Today.