Laugh or cry?

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry in response to Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir’s press conference of May 5. Much of what he said the government and the military establishment should have enunciated right after the Abbottabad raid took place. And the remarks about criticism in the media being unwarranted, was wholly unnecessary and was indicative of an enduring inability in many of our state institutions to look inwards and see the reality. Perhaps, the foreign secretary is merely a messenger himself, in that what he is saying to the media is something that the Foreign Office has to say, by way of being the point where information to the public at large is being disseminated on the matter.

Yes, criticism of the whole operation has been sharp, at least in the English press, and increasingly in some sections of the electronic media, as well, but what does officialdom expect? The facts of the episode have already been recounted here and elsewhere in full detail and the many questions that have arisen as a result are also being much debated in the country.  Without belabouring the point, surely those whose job it is to guard the country from external threats and aggression have been found severely wanting in carrying out their responsibilities. How could the presence of someone like Osama bin Laden not have been detected in a city such as Abbottabad? And if indeed he was under our radar, as is now being suggested, then why not own up to our involvement in his eventual death? After all, he was no angel and al Qaeda on more than one occasion had publicly called for attacks to be carried out against the Pakistan state and its army — and in many instances these were carried out resulting in deaths of thousands of soldiers and civilians.

The media is merely doing its job of being a watchdog and pointing out to the state’s institutions that they have erred in a way that has set back the interests of all Pakistanis. If it weren’t saying that, the media wouldn’t be carrying out its professional responsibility. Those who serve the state are better off trying to do put their own house(s) in order.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 6^th, 2011.