Osama Bin Laden is dead. Unless you are from another planet, you already know this. The headlines flashed across every major news channel from BBC to CNN to Al Jazeera. Every detail was analyzed and numerous experts have sprung up to give their opinion on what this means for the world. Once the initial euphoria died down, tough questions have been asked of Pakistan. Was Pakistan or certain elements of the Pakistani setup complicit in sheltering Bin Laden? If not, are they really so incompetent that they wouldn’t spot the world’s most wanted man living right under their noses. These are valid questions and unfortunately those to which Pakistan has no reply. It is caught red faced and red handed in its own game of duplicity.
The big issue of this hour is how to deal with Pakistan. Should America stop pumping Billions of dollars of aid into the country? Should there be stricter controls over Pakistani activity. These and other questions have left Pakistan’s role as an ally in the war against terror on uncertain grounds.
What catches my attention is not that these questions are being posed by the world rather that it took this long and took the extermination of OBL for it to happen. Pakistan as a country is only 60 odd years old. Anyone who has followed the actions and behavior of this nation in that time would not be surprised at the present turn of events in that nation.
Let’s review some of the events which further emphasize this point:
1. 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh: West Pakistan killed an alleged 3 million people in East Pakistan in a systematic and ruthless manner. Time reported a high U.S. official as saying "It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland." [1]
2. Kashmir Insurgency: Pakistan sponsored insurgency has resulted in the death of roughly 50,000 people since 1989. In addition, millions of Kashmiri Hindus became refugees in their own country due to targeted killings.
3. Kargil War: In a move that smacked of desperation, Pakistan send its troops across the Line of Control in 1999 and occupied parts of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The aggressive initiative brought the two nations to the brink of a nuclear war before the Pakistani army was forced to retreat.
4. Nuclear Proliferation: Dr A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program set up an elaborate network of nuclear proliferation under which countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea were given access to technical details and materials required for building nukes. As of today, Dr. Khan is a much celebrated man in his country.
5. Aiding and Abetting Terrorist attacks in India: Pakistan’s ISI has been complicit in planning and executing dozens of terrorist attacks through out India. The most brazen of these occurred on 11/26/08 when armed gunmen from Pakistan bombed multiple locations in Mumbai and killed 166 people.
I find it amazing that no questions were asked when any of these activities took place. It took the discovery of OBL in Pakistan to finally wake up the rest of the world. I hope that this period of intense scrutiny on Pakistan will lead to a level of introspection in civilian and military leadership. That it will result in Pakistan turning a leaf, abandoning terrorism as a foreign policy and concentrating on its own economic and social growth.
Reference:
[1] http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,878408,00.html
