There was a time when wars needed to end before historians could begin writing chronicles about them. Today’s wars have become prime time television viewing. History is as immediate as instant coffee.
Almost two years ago, on the night of May 2, 2011, 79 US Navy SEAL commandos (and a dog) conducted a raid on a nondescript house in sleepy Abbottabad. The house was like many Pakistani homes. It encroached upwards into a third storey, it had no internet, no landline telephone connection, no stand-by generator. Its master bathroom contained a bottle of Just for Men hair dye.
The house stood less than a mile away from the Pakistan Military Academy where intelligence gathering and counterintelligence are taught. There could not have been a more carelessly located, more vulnerable bunker in which to squirrel away the man most wanted by the United States — Osama bin Laden.
That night, as President Obama and his team of advisors watched the action at Abbottabad live on screens in the White House, the US SEALs flew in and flew out unchallenged, their return cargo the bullet-ridden body of their quarry.
Since that night, there have been numerous eyewitness accounts, some unauthorised revelations, a few books, and even an Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark Thirty that purport to provide a plausible narrative of that attack and its gruesome finale. The only voice that has not been heard so far has been of the dog which accompanied the SEALs. The dog has not barked.
In that sense, he is not very different from our costly watchdogs — the F-16s — that Pakistan’s defence forces maintain to safeguard our borders. That night they also did not bark.
One former SEAL who has barked, using the pseudonym David Owen, has described in his book No Easy Day that their helicopter flight from Jalalabad to Abbottabad had taken 90 minutes. It takes that time for a commercial flight from Islamabad at one end of Pakistan to reach Karachi at the other end. “We evaded the Pakistani radar and anti-aircraft missiles on the way in and arrived undetected.”
Having completed their mission, they detonated charges that destroyed the second helicopter that had crash-landed earlier on their arrival at Osama’s hideout.
“The explosion at the compound had finally attracted the attention of the Pakistan military. Unknown to us, they grounded all of their aircraft and started a head count.
With everyone accounted for, they scrambled two F-16s armed with 30mm cannons and air-to-air missiles. Pakistan’s military has always maintained a state of high alert against India. Most of the country’s air defences are aimed east towards that threat. The jets roared into the sky and raced towards the Abbottabad area.”
The SEALs meanwhile had already escaped into Afghan airspace. Somewhat kindly, David Owen avoided likening our defence strategy to the Egyptian tank designed for use in the Arab-Israeli war. It was said to have three reverse gears and one forward gear — the latter for use in case the Israelis attacked from the rear.
As Pakistanis, we support one of the largest armies in the region. It feeds first from the beggar’s bowl that is shaped like our national budget. As civilian Pakistanis, we are prepared for the defence of our motherland to eat grass, even cake, provided we know that if we are attacked, our protectors will not spend precious time doing a head count before responding, while we civilians busy ourselves with a body count.
It is ironical that this summer, Pakistanis will be asked in the forthcoming general elections to vote on who should represent them, but not on who should defend them.
One is not suggesting that the public should be allowed to vote in (or out) the defence leadership. That would be strategically impractical. There is an argument, however, for some level of accountability, some mechanism that should be able to ask why our planes remained grounded and silent.
History we know is the version of the victors. Today, it is the United States version of conflicts since the end of the Second World War that is the Authorised Version. They won in Vietnam, they won in Cambodia, they won in Grenada, they won in Chile, they won in Iraq, and they are winning in Afghanistan.
The popular British historian William Dalrymple, during his recent round of lectures in Pakistan, has put forward a proposition that Afghanistan — after the withdrawal of the US and Allied forces in 2014 — could well degenerate into another Kashmir.
Interesting as such a supposition is, it seems unlikely. History argues against it. Over the past thousand years, Afghanistan has survived intact precisely because it is the sort of place people prefer to visit, rather than to stay or settle in.
When Obama’s troops quit Afghanistan in 2014, he will still be in the White House, the studio where his wife Michelle opened the envelope to announce the Oscar for the best film this year.
The award went to Argo, a film about the rescue of six US diplomats from Tehran while Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary guards were preoccupied with 52 others incarcerated in the US embassy there. The film that lost out to Argo was Zero Dark Thirty. Was it perhaps because Obama had seen it already, on television, live?
The writer is an author.
F.S.Aijazuddin, "The dogs of war," Dawn. 2013-03-01.Keywords:
