Not on our radar
S. M. Naseem
For almost a whole week, the midnight take-out of Osama bin Laden (ObL) in a well-rehearsed US military operation, using helicopters of the latest "stealth" design, has been the sole preoccupation of our media and the commentariat. Many are still in a state of disbelief – which has been reinforced by the rush with which the operation was undertaken and the body consigned to the sea. The spate of conflicting details from various sources continues to stand in the way of reconstructing a clear picture and sequence of events. It is difficult to see the forest for the trees.
Much of the focus has been on the puzzling circumstance of the world's highest-prized fugitive residing in a remote city in Pakistan, custom-built to ensure his safety as the world's in the full glare of Pakistan's military might for a period of over five years. The second aspect of the episode that has shocked all was how the cross-border operation was undertaken apparently unbeknownst to the guardians of our skies and without the prompt response of the local law and order authorities, including the military, in a sensitive area housing the national military academy – which, hopefully, will include in its courses for future entrants this most blatant security lapse in the nation's history. The Pakistani establishment and its highly-acclaimed intelligence apparatus have, ironically, pleaded guilty to the charge of incompetence, rather than to that of complicity with al Qaeda (which, if true, would doubly uphold the charge of incompetence, as they failed to protect ObL).
The military, in general, and the ISI in particular, have lost face not only in the international arena, where their credibility has been openly questioned by their US counterparts, but also in the domestic arena, where their frequent meddling in politics has led the country to the brink of self-destruction and disintegration. The military has not been so brazenly humiliated since the Fall of Dhaka, four decades ago.
The Abbottabad debacle unambiguously demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of Pakistani state and the pervading culture of governance that provides security and protection only to its elite, which habitually evades any kind of social responsibility, in general, and taxation on rich in particular. The fact that a high value home in the middle of a military cantonment is custom-built without approval and due diligence from any regulatory authority goes unnoticed by any authority, including the ISI, and is omitted from the ongoing population census, testifies as much for the Pakistani state's (including the military's) incompetence and indifference, as it does for its complicity. At best, it can be termed as "willful indifference", a widely-prevalent favour-peddling mechanism by official agencies to favor the rich. The military's and its affiliates' involvement in land scams also provides a palpable smoking gun.
While the government and the military are engaged in damage control of a crisis of confidence and credibility of immense proportions, they have not been able to steady the nation's nerves with its inexplicable silence in the first 48 hours. Both the President and the Prime Minister – who were preoccupied with parlor political games and inconsequential foreign trips – have proved themselves unequal to the task of instilling confidence in the nation that is seriously alarmed and disturbed at the looming dangers. The prospect of a US economic backlash – if not a military one, or our being branded as a "terrorist state" – whose brunt will be borne by those already burdened with inflation, unemployment poverty – is no longer academic.
A more serious danger stems from the temptation that ObL's death may provide Indian jingoists to launch an Abbottabad-style operation to retrieve or kill one or more of a dozen fugitives and terrorists India claims are living in Pakistan, some even less surreptitiously than ObL. Although one can't expect the same kind of incompetence and somnolence on the part Pakistani military in a confrontation with its perennial enemy across the border, the corresponding risks are far greater. In particular, the risk of an apocalyptic war between the two nuclear-armed nations can't be discounted. One can only hope that this eventuality is so ghastly that the Cold Start operation (threatened by India) and the (possibly, pre-emptive) nuclear chain reaction (contemplated by Pakistan) would not figure as a serious option even by the most belligerent hawks on either side.
A glaring fact, much larger than the helicopters that made incursions into our borders, seems to have evaded the radars of our collective consciousness. It is that Pakistan has overstretched itself militarily, as it is now untenable for it to guard both its eastern and western borders with equal vigilance. Until 1971, we tried to defend our twin borders with India with little success – the birth of Bangladesh, as a disguised blessing, gave us remission from one of them. But the fallacious doctrine of strategic depth mired us in the Afghan civil war and later recreated the need for defending another long border in the North, which had remained scantly militarized until 1980. The military, which ruled the roost under Gen. Ziaul Haq, decided unilaterally to cut its coat much larger than the cloth the nation could afford except by depriving adequate clothing to society's other claimants, with disastrous results on all fronts.
Abbottabad, like Dhaka four decades earlier, beckons us to search for a new strategy for a radical adjustment between our civilian and military imperatives, which will inevitably raise the question about civilian supremacy over the military and of restraining the latter's proclivity of indulging in politics. It also highlights the need for a serious dialogue with India to normalize our relations on a fast-track basis, which had gained considerable momentum just before the shocking news from Abbottabad. We have shied away too long from addressing these fundamental issues and must pull out our deeply-dug head in the sand. Without tackling these structural issues, we are destined to receive many more shocks like Abbottabad.
Among the more immediate and important fall-outs of the Abbottabad imbroglio is the further escalation of the economic problems facing Pakistan. The Government is engaged in trying to prepare the next year's budget, with continued support from the US and revival of the stalled IMF program. Although Abbottabad may not induce the US to pull the financial rug from under our feet, the sword of Damocles of withdrawal or a brake on such support, will remain hanging perilously over our head, precluding any affirmative action in favour of the poor, while the rich will go scot free again. An austerity budget be damned. This, in turn, will greatly destabilize both the country's polity and economy.
We need to reinstall a functioning political radar which can monitor and help respond to these challenging developments and enable us to face them with equanimity, courage and wisdom.
smnaseem@gmail.com
