Side-effect

The sovereignty of Pakistan is jeopardised. We must strike back if this happens again. It is an intelligence failure. This amounts to sheer incompetence of the civilian and military leadership.
We have given into the wish and will of the Americans at the cost of our dignity and interest. We are backstabbed by the so-called strategic ally. As if the drone strikes on our territory were not enough to jolt our national integrity and pride. The Abbottabad incursion of the US forces without taking us into confidence or involving us in its execution crosses all limits. Our tremendous sacrifices over the last decade confirm that we were more committed to the war on terror than any other country.
Independent inquiry is needed. A high powered judicial commission must be established. Heads must roll. Heads may roll. Heads will roll. The president and the prime minister should resign. The army chief and the director general of the prime intelligence agency must quit. The interior minister should go. Our television screens, newspaper columns and coffee table chats echo all these voices coming from different politicians, members of the intelligentsia and a number of journalists.
What is needed at this stage is not for them who call the shots to resign from offices they hold but resign from the ideas they espouse. This surely is an arduous task but far easier when compared to seeing the country collapse totally, state failing irrevocably and the already fragmenting society break into smithereens.
It was neither operational incompetence nor an intelligence failure. It was the failure of how we view ourselves, how we see the world, the means we have employed to achieve what we wish, our perception of what our real threats are and consequently the solutions we seek to quash these perceived threats.
While the swearing in ceremony of PML-Q ministers into the PPP-led federal government on the very next day of Osama Bin Laden’s death on our soil at the hands of Americans is being seen by some as an evidence of sheer indifference and deplorable apathy on the part of the politicians, to me it simply confirms the extrication of the civilian government and parliament from the war on the western front that is also being waged within our borders. It reflects on the all encompassing role of the military when it comes to making decisions concerning both our foreign and defence policies and then translating those decisions into action.
Remember, after taking charge of the political government, the prime minister announced that he is happy with the military taking a lead role in defining the course of action in the war being fought against terrorism. And it goes without saying that the military leadership and the part of bureaucratic machine hand in glove with them wouldn’t have let the political government assume the full decision making role anyway, even if the prime minister had said something otherwise.
But Abbottabad brings him an opportunity. It is now incumbent upon the political government to take charge of matters pertaining to our internal and external security with parliamentary oversight rather than bailing out the institutions responsible for disastrous policy choices in the past.
It is time for the military establishment to humbly listen to the alternative voices it has detested for so long. It is time to proactively dismantle all terrorist outfits. It is time to work in the interest of Pakistan rather than working against the interest of some other country. It is time to submit to the role assigned in the constitution.

The writer is an Islamabad-based poet, author and public policy advisor. Email: harris.khalique@ gmail.com