One of the many articles we’ve posted from Pakistan over the last few days is this editorial from the Frontier Post. After the U.S. raid into Pakistani territory to grab and/or kill Osama bin Laden, it seems that people there are simultaneously angry at the U.S. for coming unannounced and uninvited, and at Pakistan’s military and intelligence services for not stopping the U.S. raid – and not knowing that bin Laden was apparently right under their noses for years.
The Frontier Post editorial says in part:
There can be no quibbling with the detailed account provided by the Foreign Office on Pakistan’s spectacular role in the so-called war on terror. Neither can one question how, thanks to the foibles, pranks and shenanigans of its main protagonists, Islamabad became its worst victim. Pakistan’s contributions are indisputably tremendous – and its immense sacrifices matchless. It has suffered huge human and material losses on account of this war. At least 34,000 of its people, including children and women, have been killed. About 3,000 Pakistani soldiers have laid down their lives fighting this war; many more have lost limbs and lead disabled lives. And it has borne no less than staggering $68 billion in economic losses. Yet none of this is taken into account by the war’s protagonists; they are out all the time out demonizing or denigrating Pakistan on one obscene pretext or the other, while their own acts are unarguably blemished, unclean and culpable.
But there is no point beating around the bush. No matter how unpalatable, the hard realities must now be accepted, if for no other reason than to fortify our own defenses.
It must be admitted that the Osama episode was a colossal failure on the part of the ISI, since it evidently didn’t know he was holed up there. And even as the American raiders may have jammed all of our radar and their helicopters may have been fitted with stealth technology, their intrusion so deep into our territory after passing though a network of about 850 border posts without being noticed is hard to accept. This, too, must be admitted as a colossal failure of our defense security system.
Indeed, the entire episode exposed a worrisome vulnerability our defenses – and one that paradoxically, is playing out differently at home and abroad. Domestically, people are baffled by the ISI’s ignorance about the presence of such a high-value resident in a compound so mystifyingly close to our military installations. And they’re horrified that although U.S. commandos took over 40 minutes to conduct a raid on the compound, neither the Army nor Air Force acted to intercept them. This has sharply exacerbated their security concerns, particularly about the nation’s nuclear security-guarantee – even if unnecessarily.
READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE AND MORE GLOBAL REACTION TO BIN LADEN’S DEATH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
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