Abbottabad Commission report revelations Since the Abbottabad Commission report on the US SEALS raid that killed Osama bin Laden was leaked to Al Jazeera the other day, each day brings new revelations into the light. This is not merely because the report is a 336-page tome, but because it is, as it is being described, a serious, scathing review of the country’s security, military and intelligence architecture, with few institutions, civilian or military, coming out without bruises. The report describes the May 2, 2011 raid as a “wake up call”, pointing to systemic and systematic collective failure at all levels of government. It lists a series of instances of negligence and poor policy, repeatedly bemoans “military hegemony” and emphasises the strengthening of democracy and civilian oversight of the security agencies and military. The latter is castigated boldly for frequent military interventions in the country’s politics, foreign, defence and security policies to the exclusion, and detriment of, civilian capacity for governance. The report lists 22 wide-ranging recommendations on the basis of testimony from important actors in their individual and institutional capacity. The primary responsibility for the May 2 debacle is pinned on the intelligence-security failure, rooted in political irresponsibility and military exercise of authority, influence on policy and in administrative areas beyond its constitutional or legal purview. It regards such exercise of authority as lacking expertise and competence. The systemic failure is ascribed to acts of commission and omission of specific individuals and institutions that usurped responsibilities that are not theirs. Frequent military interventions are blamed for our national woes. These impacted negatively on civilian performance because of not allowing the politicians the opportunity to learn how to handle the state’s affairs, an enterprise requiring long and uninterrupted empowered experience. It speaks of the need for coordination amongst the eight main spy agencies and the creation of a structure such as the US’s Homeland Security after 9/11. It critiques the marginalisation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military because of successive COAS’s assuming power as presidents. It recommends that no agreements with foreign governments be merely verbal and the critical need to reduce these to written pacts (a reference to former ISI chief General Pasha’s testimony that drone strikes were a verbal political understanding between the US and Pakistan). The report criticises the tendency of the military to consider itself the sole repository of wisdom as far as threat perception is concerned, drawn as an inference from testimony that the western border was not secured against incursions such as May 2 because the US on the Afghan side was considered an ally and all concentration was on the eastern border. The report emphasises the criticality of a national council on counter-terrorism policy along the lines of the (so far toothless) National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA). Additionally, the report condemns the May 2 raid as an act of war and expresses grave reservations regarding the free run the US and its CIA have enjoyed over long years inside Pakistan. While the voluminous report as brought out by Al Jazeera is still being pored over and new revelations continue to roll out as if from a conveyer belt, there are some questions the report is unable to answer definitively. One is whether the US had informed Pakistan prior to the operation, a possibility that could go some way to explain the tardy and wholly inadequate response to the raid from the military and the air force. The second is whether the raiders had ground support from a network, another possibility that might explain some of the mysterious goings on before, during and after the raid was in progress for some half an hour or more. All the noise, clatter, firing and commotion failed to elicit anything resembling a timely or adequate response from the military or even the civilian administration, the latter reportedly having been sidelined by the commandant of the PMA, whether on his own initiative or because of orders from on high is not known. While Federal information Minister Pervaiz Rashid promised the leak will be investigated, the government should consider itself lucky that the leaker and Al Jazeera have spared it the delicate task of revealing the report itself, something the previous and this government should have done over the last six months off their own bat. The report is a treasure trove of information about the May 2 raid as well as the functioning of military and civilian institutions that has many lessons for the future. May we have the courage to learn those lessons in our own best interests.