After bin Laden: The sound of uncertainty

A rather unusual silence stalks Pakistan following the death of Osama bin Laden. There is a reluctance on the part of politicians to comment, and those who do so are careful in their choice of words. The fear of retaliatory action by extremist militants lurks in many minds. The comments that have come forward have been contradictory and out of sync. Some hours after the event, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani described it as a “great victory”. It is unclear who the victors are — given that the operation was primarily a US one. What is more, even their triumphant celebrations ignore reality: Osama had become less and less relevant to al Qaeda and was, according to some accounts at least, a desperately sick man.

In direct contrast to the prime minister, we have our envoy to the US, Husain Haqqani, stating that the intelligence failure in the Osama case will be probed. This failure has been the subject of much comment; the fact that Osama had lived less than a kilometre away from the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, raises all kinds of questions. An inquiry is needed. The president has taken a relatively more sensible line than the prime minister when he talks of past intelligence-sharing with the US, while steering clear of the immediate details of the Abbottabad operation.

But there are matters Pakistan will need to address. One is what it will do to go after the extremists who still patrol the tribal areas. The splintering of groups, some of whom have only loose affiliations with al Qaeda, adds to the complications. The Abbottabad operation has left Pakistan looking somewhat foolish. It now needs to find ways to make amends, both by assessing why Osama’s presence in a huge mansion was not detected and by going after the militants, taking swift advantage of the demoralisation or confusion that may exist within at least some outfits as they consider their future strategy.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 4^th, 2011.