Adil Najam
What do Pakistanis think about how Osama Bin Laden met his end, the implications of that end?
There are as many opinions on what happened in Abbottabad as there are Pakistanis. Maybe more. But there is no sense whatsoever where the government of Pakistan (or any of its major institutions) stand on what happened – or stood when it was happening. For 36 hours now the world has been waiting to see what Pakistan does and says – the silence and incoherence from Islamabad has not just been embarrassing, it has been damning. Finally, key institutions in Pakistan have begun trying to piece a narrative together – unfortunately it is way too late and the narrative itself rather lame.
When I put up a short post on Osama Bin Laden’s death soon after the news broke, I had hoped that in time more details would become available and we would get more clarity on what happened and how. We do now have more detail. But certainly not more clarity. The story about what happened in Abbottabad now lives in Spin-abad. Everyone – from governments, secret agencies, the media, the Twitterati, and your spinster aunt – are taking a spin. Many are taking multiple, sometimes contradictory, spins. Everyone except the Pakistan government.
That, of course, is a surprise – not only because the Pakistan government does have a lot of explaining to do, but even more because it is in the interest of the Pakistan government to do that explaining itself rather than have someone else do it for them. Yet, up until it was already too late, Pakistan seems to have abdicated that responsibility. In fact, President Barack Obama, Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senator John Kerry seemed to be making that (half-hearted) case for Pakistan more than anyone in authority in Pakistan. Given that President Obama had informed President Zardari before the speech from the US President, one would have assumed that the Pakistan President and his media handlers would have their own statement ready to go on the air minutes, if not seconds, after President Obama’s speech. This is not about spin and PR, this is Diplomacy 101: Own and define the narrative as soon and as clearly as you can before someone else defines it for you – especially if the narrative is likely to be unfavorable.
But the narrative, itself, is not the core of Pakistan’s challenges. The problem is the facts on the ground and the government’s inability and unwillingness to explain them. Pakistan is used to the feeling of the world ganging up on it. But there are good reasons for the questions being asked of Pakistan by the world today. There are even better reasons for the questions being asked of Pakistan by Pakistanis today. Whether the government comes clean to the world or not, it is vital that it respond to Pakistanis. The first is a matter of national image (no trivial issue, that), but the latter is a question of citizen trust in national institutions (an existential element of statehood).
The fact is that there is a Pakistan case to be made on this issue. And it needs to be made to Pakistanis much more than to the rest of the world. It is a case that forcefully stresses that a world, and a Pakistan, without Osama Bin Laden in it is a vastly better world than one with him in it – this is a villain who orchestrated events that have left more than 30,000 Pakistanis dead in extremism and terrorism. It is a case that legitimately highlights the sacrifices that Pakistan and Pakistanis have, in fact, made in the fight against terrorism. Most importantly, it is a case that honestly analyzes what happened in Abbottabad – it is not a surprise that Osama Bin Laden was found in Pakistan and in a large urban area (just like nearly every other major Al Qaida figure captured) – but an explanation is owed on why Pakistani intelligence failed to make the connections that led to him, an explanation is owed on exactly what Pakistan’s official role in the final operation was (or was not), and an explanation is owed on exactly what Pakistan’s strategy on countering terrorism is, who is running it, and why it is not working well enough or fast enough.
In a country and an ‘establishment’ as divided as Pakistan, this cannot be an easy conversation; it is not supposed to be. It is time to ask honest and tough questions of everyone. It has long need a necessary conversation; now is the time to have it.
Far from not having an iota of evidence of the complicity of the Pakistan army in terrorism, there is reams of such evidence available in open source. Even more so after all the Wikileaks exposes. Unless we shut our eyes to it, it is hard to claim that there isn’t evidence. From the way in which the ISI tipped off OBL when Clinton launched tomahawk missiles against him, to the well-documented Kunduz airlift of key Al Qaeda personnel to Skardu, to the protection given to the Afghan Taliban (many of whose members are indistinguishable from the Al Qaeda) to more recent evidence (see the latest episode of the well-respected Frontline documentary show on PBS for instance), it has been clear for years.
As to why the institutions of state would protect OBL over all these years, clearly he was the goose that laid the golden egg. The war on terrorism has been quite profitable for the Pakistan army and presumably at a personal level for many of the key people in the institution and this would not have been possible to the same extent if OBL had been captured/killed in 2001 itself. Yes, some important members of Al Qaeda were captured and handed over during the course of the last 10 years. But this has been pointed to as a calibrated strategy of handing over people, particularly renegade ones, and at strategic times (with almost all the arrests happening a day or two before a key visit by a senior American official). That this is the “hunt with the wolves” part of a “run with the hares and hunt with the wolves” strategy. That it allowed the PA to keep extracting money from the Americans and continue being referred to as an ally, even while keeping its “strategic assets” in Afghanistan largely intact.
@Sridhar,
Nice sentiments. But of course you, like most other, do not ‘blame the ordinary citizens’. When do you guys ever do that? When does anyone ever does that, any where in the world?
However, you have not provided an iota of proof or any convincing arguments at all that the institutions of Pakistan per se were involved in protecting a scum like OBL. Why, because you can’t. If something defies all logic then it is extremely hard to prove it–however noise may be made about it in the ‘media’.
And, yes, the media has blown an intelligence failure or, at most, a complicity of probably a few officials into a debate about the role of the Pakistani military, the ISI, and indeed the Pakistani nation itself. That is most unfair, especially considering that the Pakistani agencies themselves have been targeted ruthlessly and that most of the Al Qaida terrorists have been apprehended and handed over by the Pakistani agencies themselves.
As I said, you could conceivably have an argument that Pakistanis have protected ‘terrorists’ who target India. Some other Pakistani–more jingoistic than me–is going to come here and give ‘valid, authentic’ accounts of Indian ‘State Terrorism’ in Kashmir to justify why Pakistan uses those ‘terrorists’ against India. We will go around and around in circles.
That still does not make it logical at all that Pakistan would protect the scums of Al Qaida whose primary target is Americans and the West. That would be a national suicide for Pakistan to do so. India is India and America is America, in the eyes of Pakistani generals.
In the end, peace in our region–including in Afghanistan–leads through peace in Kashmir. Afghanis are suffering in yet another proxy war. And, I, as a person of Pakistani origin, now say that let’s turn LOC=International Border and make peace with India and move on. Kashmir is not worth killing Pakistan for.
Meengla,
I have not blamed the ordinary people of Pakistan even once. I don’t subscribe to the Fox News style of reporting either – in fact I consider it a disgrace that so many Americans watch and trust the trash that it dishes out. However, I do think that various levels of the organs of the Pakistan state establishment (and by that I largely mean the army and its agencies) have been complicit in terrorism over the years. Not everybody in these organizations is a terrorist sympathizer, but sufficient numbers and at sufficiently senior levels to make the organizations complicit. I have been consistent about this over the years. Also, I have stated this before – I think it is a case of senior people letting down an otherwise professional army, not junior people being complicit in this. The problem lies at the top – at the bottom, the Pakistan army is a fine institution.
That said, there is going to be a media trial of unprecedented proportions over the near future about this issue, whether one likes it or not. The best way to respond to this, from a viewpoint of somebody like me who is sympathetic to the ordinary people of Pakistan – is to be honest and truthful. To question the top brass of the army who have led the country down this path to disaster. And to gain the initiative back from them. Easy to say and difficult to do, but I don’t see a better alternative.
@Sridhar,
There is some weight in your argument about the ‘ISI’ as an institution protecting some of its ‘assets’, particularly the Haqqani-led Talibans and the LeT. I am not going to go into the reasoning behind that here–not yet. However, just as painfully you went on to differentiate between various kinds of militants and so the reason why ‘ISI’ is targeted by some and not by some you still managed to paint the whole picture in one-stroke by labeling the institution of ‘ISI’ and perhaps even ‘Pakistani militar’y in directly complicity in protecting OBL.
I think some kind of over-generalizations are going on.
Why on Earth would ‘ISI’ hand over high-value Al Qaida targets to Americans over the years–the latest was some one caught barely a few weeks ago in Abbottabad itself–and ****then incriminate itself based on the intelligence gathered from those captives? It defies all logic.****
At the most. At the most there are some low-level officials in Pakistan’s security apparatuses who chose to turn a blind eye toward some area under their surveillance.
You, of all Indians here, should be able to rise above the din of this media trial. Indeed, carry on investigations as to the real reasons for this intelligence failure by the Pakistani intelligence agencies. But to quickly draw a conclusion that indeed ‘Pakistan’ or ‘ISI’ or ‘Military’ was ‘harboring’ OBL is not fair and does not serve the cause of peace in our region.
It must be noted, again, that the so-called mourning of OBL is so limited in Pakistan that it must not be emphasized. What must be emphasized is that Pakistanis have taken OBL’s death in strides. ‘Good riddance’ is the national recourse. OBL brought the Arab conflicts to South Asia. That does not resonate much with Pakistanis. Most Pakistani don’t even speak Arabic. And its about time these Arab radicals with their Wahabbi version of religion goes back to Saudi Arabia.
Anyway, I think we all need to not jump the gun and see how the events evolve. There is a lot going on behind the scene–this intelligence operation was but one of them. Also, media trial of Pakistan aside there are some very senior members of American Congress who too are stressing that we must wait and see what exactly happened.
I second Arun’s views. As an active participant of the India Against Corruption campaign, I have personally seen the power that public opinion can play in bringing our leaders, who really consider themselves as masters, into line. It has also been wonderful to see people rise against tyrannies in the middle east. In the short term, this sometimes leads to more chaos. At least in the long term, it can only be a positive thing.