Pakistan: A catalogue of failures

The government of Pakistan would very much like to know who it was that leaked a copy of the report of the Abbottabad Commission that had looked into the circumstances surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden – but it is not denying the veracity of the report that has been published online by Al Jazeera. The judge who headed the commission and wrote the report has stoutly defended it on TV saying he had done his job honestly and not blamed or protected any organisation. The story has been picked up around the world, and there will be tens of thousands of copies of the report downloaded by individuals. Several cats are now out of the bag. The report is long, detailed and scathing in its criticism of the intelligence services in particular, but speaks of a collective failure of Pakistani authorities as a whole without singling out any institution or individual for responsibility. The report raises many questions – one being a reference to strategic ground support that was provided during the American operation. Were they Pakistanis who were CIA assets, or Americans from the US consulate in Islamabad? We are not told, neither are we enlightened about how it was that four American helicopters were inside Pakistan for three hours without being challenged or, possibly, even detected by our own forces. The report is a catalogue of complacency, negligence and more than a hint that there was collusion from within that allowed the world’s most wanted man to live in Pakistan for almost a decade, move around with a support crew that arranged housing for him and his family within the limits of the Abbottabad Cantonment, and generally assume the sort of invisibility only otherwise seen in fantasy films. An entire neighbourhood, local officials and intelligence services, the police and the army itself all failed to notice the unusual three-storey house that was built a stone’s throw from the heart of the military establishment. For six years seemingly nobody noticed anything unusual about a house that was so clearly unusual. The report is equally scathing about the Americans for mounting the operation in the first place. However, what is now in the public domain is a grotesque display of failure and incompetence at every level of Pakistan’s civilian and military and intelligence institutions. The government has been sitting on the report since January, and its reticence about publishing it unedited is unsurprising now that the contents are revealed. A single page appears to have been redacted – the one on which names are named. This may in due course emerge as well, though whether anybody is going to pay with their jobs or reputation for this collective ignominy is unlikely in the extreme. The American raid to kill Osama bin Laden was, as was observed by an American and quoted in the report… ‘as easy as mowing the lawn’. Given the layers of failure that the Americans faced in pulling off the raid, it would be hard to disagree with his perception. Today there are more questions than answers but of one thing we may be sure – secrets are hard to keep in the age of the internet. And there is always going to be somebody willing to leak them – whatever the price. It is time the government owned, officially released and then did something about the report.