Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gillani lost a sliver of a chance in Pakistan's supreme legislative body National Assembly (on May 9) to steer his embattled country away from the perpetual dilemma of being stuck at the crossroads of destiny. Rarely had the people of Pakistan felt confused, hurt and humiliated by the acts of omission and commission on the part of its army and intelligence agency as they were by the Osama bin Laden faux pas. The last such occasion was 1971.
So when Prime Minister Gillani rose to address the National Assembly members, there were some in Pakistan who thought a difference could be made by a twist of phrase and turn of a sentence. Most have lost hoping long time ago. By defending ISI as a `national asset` and side-stepping any critical reference to Pakistan Army's role in the colossal gaffe, Gillani remained true to his ability, of not overstepping the brief provided by the Army GHQ.
His defence of the indefensible was compounded by his announcement that an inquiry into the incident will be conducted by the army's Adjutant General, Lt. General Javed Iqbal, a confidant of General Ashfaq Kayani whose responsibility in the entire episode is under scrutiny. He took over the position only this month from Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, a former ISI chief and Commandant of Pakistan Military Academy at Abbottabad. Taj, among others, stands accused of being in the know of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts. Taj was a close confidant of General Pervez Musharraf.
Gillani could have ordered a parliamentary probe or an independent commission of enquiry headed by a retired Chief of Army Staff, say, for instance, General Jahangir Karamat. This would have set the ball rolling towards a reformed, rejuvenated intelligence agency which so far has only engineered instability both within and outside Pakistan.
Two parts of Gillani's long-winded defence of ISI and Pakistan Army are worth noting. One has to do with his statement that ISI had no links with al Qaeda. The word he used was `cahoots`. ISI's links with al Qaeda and its chief Osama bin Laden dates back to the Afghan Jihad days and when Laden was operating out of Khartoum in Sudan. In fact, one of Laden's commanders, Ramzi Yousef was allowed to travel through Pakistan soliciting support for al Qaeda by ISI which was instrumental in giving him an unsigned visa issued by Pakistan Embassy in Baghdad. Yousef truck bombed World Trade Center in 1993. It was also, not to go too far back, ISI which helped one of its agents, Syed Omar Sheikh, a London School of Economics alumni, to wire transfer $100,000 to Muhammad Atta, the lead hijacker of the 9/11 attackers. Sheikh was `run` by ISI's Punjab chief, Brigadier Ijaz Shah. The money transfer was facilitated by ISI chief Mahmud Ahmad. With such evidence of close proximity in public domain, it becomes difficult to believe that ISI had no knowledge of bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.
Second was Gillani's over-simplified narration of the birth of al Qaeda and that Pakistan was merely a pawn in the game of superpowers. It was the then Pakistan Army chief and President Zia-ul Haq who went out of his way to become part of Afghan Jihad to legitimise his brutal suppression of civil rights in Pakistan as well as to promote Saudi Arabia's religious interests in the region. Besides the US, it was Pakistan which benefited the most from the long drawn out conflict in Afghanistan.
What Gillani chose to ignore was another well-known fact: most of the terrorist groups and leaders operating out of Pakistan, and some even against Pakistan, were created by Pakistan Army and ISI at various stages for a variety of reasons. Some were created to crush ethnic and linguistic protests while others to subvert peace and stability in the region as part of a strategic goal. Shias, Bengali Muslims and Ahmeddiyas were systematically targeted, and continue to be, by extremist proxies created by ISI. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan was created by ISI to influence events in Afghanistan. But it poses one of the most serious threats to Pakistan itself. Likewise, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), created by ISI in 2000 to revive terrorism in Kashmir, ended up targeting President Musharraf in 2003 and becoming part of al Qaida-Taliban network anchored in Waziristan.
In two sentences, Gillani could have transformed himself into a statesman from a mere politician, and could have his country a chance to redeem itself, but instead he chose to follow the line of status quo, and gave the ISI-Army cabal another opportunity to strengthen its stranglehold over Pakistan.
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