No doubt squirming people who dwell in falsehoods fear exposure whenever untruths are exposed – which is why the thought of an independent inquiry into the Abbottabad fiasco, as much as the public may support the idea, will gain no traction with them. That said, there are better reasons why we should think again before joining the chorus for a judicial inquiry.
To begin with, as long as those who have the most to lose in an impartial inquiry remain in office, they will be able to manipulate or truncate the evidence. Hence, at best, what may emerge is not what is necessarily true but what could almost be true. And that would be more dangerous because being so close to the truth, it is more likely to mislead.
Furthermore, a robust inquiry risks exposure and nothing can be worse for troops in battle than to see their fellow soldiers and commanders pilloried or reviled and possibly drummed out. If we fasten ourselves to a single aspect of truth – namely, why we were unaware of Bin Laden’s presence on our soil – the exaggerated fixation on a single topic will lead to a loss of balance and the truth might become as distorted and dangerous as the falsehood that it is trying to expose.
Besides, in the midst of a war such as the one being waged today, a diligent search for the truth would require public disclosure of operational military and intelligence procedures which under the rubric of ‘compromising national security’ would be impermissible. This, therefore, is not the time for a public inquiry or the time to unravel a country that is at its weakest and could spin out of control.
Nor has Mr Sharif made the recommendation with only that in mind. His concerns are very different. He seems obsessed with getting his premiership back after it was taken away by the military, unfairly as he still believes, even though he did strange things when in office and behaved more like a despot than a democrat. Nor does he enjoy any real standing overseas. Even the Saudis with whom he had close ties and who bailed him out of trouble may be wary of his politics of using the Bin Laden fiasco to get even with the military.
Judging by what we know about him and having watched him in office, Mr Sharif is no statesman but an unreformed self-serving politician who senses that the Abbottabad fiasco is as good an opportunity as any to tame the military and to grind his own axe. He may also feel that he has little to lose.
If he spooks the military into some form of unconstitutional action, he will have the other parties and the judiciary on his side. Anyway, the outcome of a judicial inquiry will almost inevitably result in the military ending up with a lot of egg on its face, which suits him no less.
But how Mr Sharif expects a high-level commission to complete its work in just 21 days beggars the imagination. He makes a fool of himself in giving such a short deadline in such a complicated case. This tendency, like his other ill-conceived deadlines issued previously to Mr Zardari, shows him to be a knee jerk reaction type of person with a personal agenda rather than a thoughtful person with no axe to grind. This is contrary to what should be happening – both sides should be keen to repair the civil-military relationship. Neither side can get anywhere without the other, the internally fragmented civilians even more so.
Everyone concedes there is no greater need than that at present but what we get from Nawaz Sharif is the reaction of a shark that senses blood.
While this is not the time for politicking, Mr Zardari by leaving matters entirely in the hands of the military (to earn their support) is doing them and himself no good. His indifference to the manner and means by which the war is fought, highlighted by the fact that he has not visited a single battlefield since the war spiked, has few parallels among war-time leaders. His appointments schedule does not in any way indicate that his country is fighting a war for its survival. His statements ignore the fact that US and Pakistani interests appear increasingly irreconcilable; nor do they reflect any concern.
Mr Zardari’s sole and constant effort appears to be the preservation of his office. To this end sacrificing principles or casting adrift the ideological moorings of his party present no obstacle. Today’s friends can just as easily become tomorrow’s enemies only to reconcile and then part once again. What counts for him are votes regardless of the means with which they are obtained.
Among Zardari’s coterie, even men of average intelligence stand out. A financier interested in economics is as rare as a labour leader interested in the labour movement. They call themselves leaders and, yes, they are out in front but they do not lead, they just follow. Mr Zardari, it is said, once claimed that he had a PhD in ‘life’ – actually, ‘survival’ – if so, it is clearly his own survival he was talking about, not that of the nation.
Given the kind of leaders we have, pouncing on the military in such a fluid and tense situation will get us nowhere. It is worth recalling that it’s only the military that stands between us and our antedeluvian adversaries.
Moreover, whether we like it or not, neither the US nor others will behave cautiously anymore. After the Abbottabad fiasco, serious doubts have arisen about our capability and also about whether we are able to tackle the problem that is hurting us more than any other country and which has brought us to a potentially grave situation. Economically, we are in tatters and that matters a lot to most people. Of course, an economic collapse would be much worse. We don’t have oil and gas that has enabled Iran to cock a snook at others and do what it likes.
The question is how do we tackle the tricky situation that has emerged, leave Bin Laden behind, and find a new working relationship with the US and the EU? There are at present, no alternative friends, not even China, that are as well-endowed with lucre and weapons which we desperately need. Moreover, the world is getting impatient with our split personality. Somehow, we have not managed to convey the internal problems we face discreetly or convincingly instead, we have been indulging in bluster. The optimistic, albeit, hollow soliloquies of our former foreign minister won’t work anymore because now we have been found out.
It won’t be business as usual anymore (with all the pranks that we and the US played with each other). So, we had better wake up, dump petty politics, and get serious and solemn, as the situation demands, rather than emotional and suicidal. A national government reinforced by a repaired civil-military relationship may indeed be what is needed.
A friend wrote to say that many years ago, while at university abroad, he read a story linked to the subcontinent. It was about a gardener introducing an eager boy (the son of his employer) to the wonders of a nearby forest. But one incident that he witnessed changed everything for him. It was the sight of a hysterical monkey on a tree trying to get to the physical root of his pain with his fingers but ripping apart his wounded belly in the process. It’s a thought that bears some relevance to our situation today.
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