A blown opportunity

The hopes of those anticipating that David would finally take on Goliath were dashed with the civilian government caving in to the supremacy of the men in khakis. The high expectations fizzled out with a whimper and it turned out to be nothing more than a pathetic, gutless show.
In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death, the civilian government, which has never been in the driving seat, finally had the opportunity to set things straight and exert its control over the army and its intelligence apparatus.
But for gains that are petty if the larger picture is taken into consideration, the government went on to support to the military and its spy agencies up over the bin Laden debacle.

In a marathon joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate meant to put for forward tough questions to the army and intelligence heads about that singular event responsible for bringing so much embarrassment to the country, the parliament unanimously approved a resolution condemning the US’ bin Laden mission as a “violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty”. The resolution expressed “deep distress” over “the campaign to malign Pakistan”, without appreciating its “immense sacrifices in combating terror”. However, the parliamentarians also demanded an independent probe into the late al Qaeda chief’s episode.
During the session, Inter-Services Intelligence Director General Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha admitted that there was an intelligence failure and said that he was prepared for full accountability.
However, our frail civilian set-up is nowhere prepared to take the bull by the horns. To sum it up, another opportunity has gone to waste no thanks to the self-centred bunch of weaklings that call themselves our leaders.
In addition to all this, its is interesting to note what Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz chief, Nawaz Sharif has been up to recently.
He had earlier demanded an independent investigation into bin Laden's killing, and is now calling for the army and intelligence agencies’ budget to be presented in the assembly.
He said that intelligence agencies’ should not be involved in making foreign policy and neither should they make alliances and divisions among political parties. He is right, but nevertheless, his criticism is laced with his own motives as he is aware of what the ‘spooks’ have been up to weaken his position in Punjab.