Pakistan: Stewing in its own juice

Wasn't this embarrassment avoidable? Couldn't the damage caused be warded off? The Abbottabad Commission had submitted its report to the government way back in January. And even though the government had announced while establishing the commission that its report would be made public, it just kept it under wraps. And now that a foreign television outlet has put out on its network what it claims to be the commission's report, the establishment is squirming and in a tizzy. Justice (Retd) Javed Iqbal, who headed the commission, has told a national news channel that stories in the western media on the commission's report are baseless and misleading. And the information minister says the report's leakage would be investigated and those responsible held to account but first it would be determined if what the foreign channel had aired was genuine or fiction. Couldn't the Islamabad establishment be saved of all this botheration had it released the report as promised to the public? Who, after all, would buy the establishment's version of the report when what it would require is the stretching of credulity to the limits of incredulity? Isn't then the establishment is stewing in its own juice? It really is beyond comprehension as to why had the establishment kept the report closeted for so many months when it should been brought to the public limelight imperatively. By every reckoning, the Abbottabad raid was a stunningly huge security collapse. It took hours to American naval special forces commandoes in sneaking into our territory aboard giant helicopters, carry out their mission and return to their base in Afghanistan. Yet our entire security apparatus was caught napping. And had not the Americans themselves intimated their Pakistani counterparts, our security leviathan would not have even known of the American raid to get Osama bin Laden. This damning operational unpreparedness of our security apparatus, particularly the military, which this raid manifested so chillingly was not just startling. It catapulted the people's concerns about the country's security sky-high. A yawning chink had been dreadfully exposed in the security apparatus's armour and a troubling sense of the country's easy vulnerability to foreign aggressive incursion settled on the public mind. The report was thus awaited eagerly by the people at large. And had it been made public, it certainly would have sparked an informed debate among the thinking class that would have surely help further refine the commission's recommendations. If there was something in the report that the establishment thought could compromise the national security that could have been held back. But the rest of the report should have been released. Now the advantage is with the foreign channel. Even if its version is a fiction or doctored, that will be taken to be true, while the commission's own report will be taken with a pinch of salt. That unfortunately is how the public mind works. The damage has been done and it will take enormous effort to undo it, if at all. The anti-Pakistan lobbies would certainly exploit it to the hilt to denigrate this country and demonise its institutions. And given their influence and clout, the establishment will really be hard put to offset their vilification campaigns. In any case, what matters the most is to consider the commission's proposals and recommendations to plug off the chinks that the Abbottabad raid exposed worryingly in the state's security armour. Indeed, right at the outset the commission's report should have been brought up to the parliament for consideration. But it was not, deplorably. Now that the cat is out of the bag, the report must be put up to the parliament where a bipartisan special parliamentary committee must scrutinise it thoroughly and submit it with its proposals to the parliament for discussions. The cabinet must review the commission's recommendations in the light of the parliament's report and formulate measures to make the country invulnerable to aggressive foreign incursions. That is the government's one real task now.