Dossier on Osama Bin Laden needs an open debate
By Omar R Quraishi
The leaked 337-page report of a four-member commission that was formed by the government of Pakistan in 2011 to investigate the US raid to get Osama bin Laden has created quite a stir in Pakistan, and one would assume, elsewhere as well.
First of all, there seems to have been a blunder: the report was released not by the government but by a foreign TV channel, Al Jazeera English. The commission had said in the report that its findings, after being submitted to the prime minister's office, should be made public in English as well as Urdu, and that this was "in the national interest".
If ever this much-abused phrase was used with the right intent by the officialdom in Pakistan, it was probably this time. Regrettably, the then PPP government and the new PML-N one failed to do so. The only official reaction from the government has been a guarded comment by the information minister that an investigation into the leak is underway.
Questions for ISI Al Jazeera English seems to have done Pakistanis a favour. The people can now come to their own conclusions on whether the military was complicit in hiding Osama, and how he could have lived in Abbottabad, a garrison town where the Pakistan Military Academy is headquartered, undetected for so many years.
To its credit, the report takes to task various intelligence agencies, including the ISI, even on matters related to the testimony of the family members of Osama and his two couriers.
For instance, it quotes at length the evidence given by one of the courier's wives regarding her interaction with Osama's female family members, which suggested that his presence in the Abbottabad compound was known only to a handful of the occupants, and wonders how the ISI could have accepted this statement at face value.
Similarly, while discussing how Osama's presence in Abbottabad, or indeed elsewhere in Pakistan, was never detected — suspicious activities were not picked up even by local municipal authorities — the commission keeps referring its questions to the ISI and its related agencies.
The best thing for the Nawaz Sharif government will be to publish the report in its entirety on its website . The government should understand that the US raid was indicative of a total intelligence failure — four US helicopters penetrated 160 km into Pakistan's airspace — and a thorough reform is needed. This is best done by an open debate and discussion on the matter rather than by keeping the report under wraps.
The intelligence failure is at two levels — Osama's undetected stay and the Americans' apparently undetected arrival on May 2, 2011. The US helicopters landed in Kala Dhaka in a remote mountainous part of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa not once but twice before the US Navy Seals travelled deep into Abbottabad. In fact, the commission says it interviewed two locals, one of whom claimed that he was tied up by the Americans and held under guard while the operation was underway some miles away to the southeast. The report has a healthy scepticism of whatever the ISI and other intel personnel have said about Osama and related issues.
The report should be used as a starting point by Pakistan's new parliament to debate the issue of securing the country from foreign intrusion and improving the intelligence capability. That should then be used to carry out far-reaching reforms, through an act of parliament, in the security and intelligence apparatus.
(The writer is Editorial Pages editor, The Express Tribune, Karachi)
The leaked 337-page report of a four-member commission that was formed by the government of Pakistan in 2011 to investigate the US raid to get Osama bin Laden has created quite a stir in Pakistan, and one would assume, elsewhere as well.
First of all, there seems to have been a blunder: the report was released not by the government but by a foreign TV channel, Al Jazeera English. The commission had said in the report that its findings, after being submitted to the prime minister's office, should be made public in English as well as Urdu, and that this was "in the national interest".
If ever this much-abused phrase was used with the right intent by the officialdom in Pakistan, it was probably this time. Regrettably, the then PPP government and the new PML-N one failed to do so. The only official reaction from the government has been a guarded comment by the information minister that an investigation into the leak is underway.
Questions for ISI Al Jazeera English seems to have done Pakistanis a favour. The people can now come to their own conclusions on whether the military was complicit in hiding Osama, and how he could have lived in Abbottabad, a garrison town where the Pakistan Military Academy is headquartered, undetected for so many years.
To its credit, the report takes to task various intelligence agencies, including the ISI, even on matters related to the testimony of the family members of Osama and his two couriers.
For instance, it quotes at length the evidence given by one of the courier's wives regarding her interaction with Osama's female family members, which suggested that his presence in the Abbottabad compound was known only to a handful of the occupants, and wonders how the ISI could have accepted this statement at face value.
Similarly, while discussing how Osama's presence in Abbottabad, or indeed elsewhere in Pakistan, was never detected — suspicious activities were not picked up even by local municipal authorities — the commission keeps referring its questions to the ISI and its related agencies.
The best thing for the Nawaz Sharif government will be to publish the report in its entirety on its website . The government should understand that the US raid was indicative of a total intelligence failure — four US helicopters penetrated 160 km into Pakistan's airspace — and a thorough reform is needed. This is best done by an open debate and discussion on the matter rather than by keeping the report under wraps.
The intelligence failure is at two levels — Osama's undetected stay and the Americans' apparently undetected arrival on May 2, 2011. The US helicopters landed in Kala Dhaka in a remote mountainous part of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa not once but twice before the US Navy Seals travelled deep into Abbottabad. In fact, the commission says it interviewed two locals, one of whom claimed that he was tied up by the Americans and held under guard while the operation was underway some miles away to the southeast. The report has a healthy scepticism of whatever the ISI and other intel personnel have said about Osama and related issues.
The report should be used as a starting point by Pakistan's new parliament to debate the issue of securing the country from foreign intrusion and improving the intelligence capability. That should then be used to carry out far-reaching reforms, through an act of parliament, in the security and intelligence apparatus.
(The writer is Editorial Pages editor, The Express Tribune, Karachi)
Source http://m.economictimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/dossier-on-osama-bin-laden-needs-an-open-debate/articleshow/21010968.cms
Comments