Getting to the truth about Abbottabad

The chief of the PML-N, twice-former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and once thought to be the proverbial offspring reared by the military, has said the right thing by calling for an independent investigation into the raid by US Navy SEALs that led to Osama bin Laden’s death. To be precise, Mr Sharif is in essence rejecting the planned launch of an internal inquiry by the military into the whole affair. The PML-N chief is right in saying that the fact that US helicopters and special forces soldiers were able to penetrate deep inside Pakistan shows not only that our sovereignty has been severely compromised but also that those whose job it is to secure our frontiers have failed the nation. No less important is the issue that how could someone as notorious as Osama bin Laden be living in a relatively large city with such a high military presence, so close to the federal capital, for several years? This last question is particularly important because right now the rest of the world, as do many Pakistanis, are sceptical of the ‘answer’ given so far, that our intelligence agencies failed to track his presence. Of course, there is a lot of confusion as well because it has been suggested by the Foreign Office that Pakistan was cooperating with the US on intelligence on this as recently as April.

Then there is the issue of how the Americans managed to penetrate so far, leading to questions that if they could do it, what could prevent the Indians from doing the same thing on, say, Muridke (Muridke being much closer to the Indian border than Abbottabad to Torkham). In this as well, the reasons given so far by the air force, that the radars were working but “inactive” (and hence it must be assumed that they weren’t able to detect the flight of the helicopters) need urgent clarification.

The situation that the military establishment in particular must be finding itself in presently is that of a classical Catch-22, or so logic would suggest. For example, if its intelligence agencies really did not know that the world’s most wanted terrorist was hiding an hour’s drive from Islamabad, then it should have a lot to answer for, to Pakistani taxpayers if nothing else. For an institution that gets the largest chunk of the federal budget every year, and in a country that spends more than double on defence than on either health and education, it would be infuriating to taxpayers, and ordinary Pakistanis, to find that their hard-earned rupees are being spent on air defences and radar systems that apparently don’t do their job. Unfortunately, these hard facts don’t make it vast sections of the media, in particular the one in Urdu and television, where truths such as the military being the biggest recipient of US aid are brushed under the carpet and abuse is laid at the door of civilian governments. And if bin Laden, was, for the sake of argument, indeed a ‘guest’, then questions must be asked that who took such a decision, at what level, and to what end? What benefit could a civilian government or the military possibly have for keeping under its care someone as infamous and hated as bin Laden? If the thinking, again hypothetically, is that he could be used as a bargaining chip then why would he be given up without even the slightest of resistance?

Keeping all these things in mind, it makes much sense for an independent inquiry to be carried out into the whole affair. And by ‘independent’, one would mean that it cannot and should not be conducted by the institution — the military and its intelligence agencies — whose performance is being evaluated. To be credible and meaningful it must be carried out by another equally important institution of state. Hence, Mr Sharif’s demand that it be done so by a judicial commission comprising the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the chief justices of the high courts makes eminent sense. The people of this hapless land need some answers, and it would help if they were close to the truth.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th, 2011.