Daily Times Editorial May 15, 2011

ISI’s admission

In a historic, unprecedented step, the DG ISI Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha presented himself before an in-camera joint session of parliament. Admitting the failure to detect the presence of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad and the incursion by US SEALs to kill Osama and his companions, the DG apologised to the nation, offering to resign. He also surrendered himself for accountability before any forum set up for the purpose of reviewing the whole episode. He did, however, pin some of the blame for the lapse on the provincial government, police and related agencies. He went on to say that parliament should now review the relationship with the US and frame a national policy on the issue.
No doubt it is a welcome development that the military and its intelligence arm have allowed themselves to be held accountable for a spectacular failure. The top officers conducting the briefing to parliament were at pains to explain that despite Pakistan’s cooperation in the war on terror and in intelligence sharing, which led to breaking the back of al Qaeda and the eventual discovery of Osama bin laden by the US, the incursion used superior stealth technology on the helicopters to avoid radar detection. The fact, however, remains that this failure has helped puncture the culture of impunity under which the military and intelligence services have never felt the need to account for any of their actions in our past history. This only underlines the seriousness of the lapse/failure, which has given rise to widespread anxiety about our defence forces’ ability to defend the country and its strategic assets. The assurances of the briefing officers in this regard were accompanied by the usual rhetoric about the need to refrain from criticising the military or the intelligence agencies since this would harm the country. The media was singled out for a bit of stick for being “irresponsible”. What was left unsaid was that despite the media’s mistakes, it was the vacuum of information or any authoritative statement on the incident by either the civilian or military authorities that left room for speculative media coverage.
At the end of the marathon briefing, parliament passed a 12-point unanimous resolution calling upon the government to appoint an independent commission on the Abbottabad fiasco, fix responsibility and recommend necessary measures, including blocking of NATO supplies to ensure such incidents never happen again and the unilateral drone attacks are stopped. One of the startling disclosures in the briefing was that Shamsi air base in Balochistan was acquired by the UAE and then handed over to the US to conduct drone surveillance, while armed drones fly from Afghanistan. The question arises: who authorised this surrender of sovereignty, revealed at the exact moment when the cries about our violated sovereignty have been ringing out loud and clear? Surveillance is the first step towards conducting drone strikes. This means that we have been complicit in at least the drone programme’s intelligence gathering activities, after which drone attacks are conducted. How then are we protesting the drone attacks when our role is not exactly innocent? Further, the consensus resolution of parliament notwithstanding, has any one of our honourable elected members bothered to inform what would happen if we cut off the logistics of the Americans and NATO for Afghanistan? What impact would it have for US aid, already under threat from the run of opinion in the US Congress? How would a cash-strapped Pakistan compensate for that lost aid? If it could not, what would be the effect on the country, the people and even the armed forces? It is all very well to be carried away by emotion and assert national pride, but our elected representatives are expected to examine all the implications of any suggestion they put forward on strategic policies.
We must now await the government’s announcement of a commission and can only comment once its composition, terms of reference and mandate are known. The issue of being caught unawares by the US incursion, even if superior technology is conceded as a critical factor, goes to the heart of the country’s defence preparedness. Perhaps this will prove a historic turning point in the shift of defence and security policies away from exclusive armed forces’ control to both input and oversight by parliament, where this function rightly belongs.