AN excerpt from an upcoming book written by a New York Times correspondent has caused a predictable kerfuffle in Pakistan, given that it makes the direct claim that the ISI not only knew of Osama Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan, but had a desk dedicated to managing and facilitating the Al Qaeda supremo’s sanctuary in Pakistan. Having issued the obligatory denials and condemnations, the Pakistani state would likely prefer that the entire episode be forgotten once again — as had already happened in the recent past of a country that appears to specialise in glossing over cataclysmic events. However, the book excerpt in the NYT is a helpful reminder that a great big piece of the puzzle is yet to be made public: the Abbottabad Commission report has quietly been shelved and, if state functionaries have their way, is likely never to see the light of day.

Thanks, however, to a leaked copy of one version of the report, the country is already aware of the gross problems on both sides of the only two valid explanations for the OBL episode: incompetence and complicity. As the leaked report detailed, the general level of incompetence and complicity when it comes to the Pakistani security establishment’s ties with non-state actors made it entirely possible that at various tiers of the security apparatus, both complicity and incompetence were to blame for the long-term presence of Osama Bin Laden inside Pakistan. So, with the report staying buried and no one within the state apparatus appearing interested in countenancing its official publication, all the public can do is guess about the extent of the rot within the very state apparatus that is meant to protect the citizenry from national security threats.

The inconvenient truth is that the OBL episode was not a one-off in any meaningful sense of the term. Even if there was absolutely no complicity and it was entirely incompetence, that alone leaves grave lapses to be identified and institutional measures to be taken to lower the risk of another spectacular failure. Surely, as the government today grapples with the challenge of improving intelligence cooperation between the civilian and military arms of the state in the counterterrorism arena, the OBL episode alone could be worth many lessons in identifying what went wrong and how to make sure the state does not get caught out again going forward. But it is also too easy to suggest that incompetence must necessarily have played the greater role in what went wrong. Until the state is able to acknowledge all that is wrong within itself, it is unlikely to ever be able to craft a meaningful policy to fight militancy, terrorism and extremism. That is a reality that can only be denied until the next great cataclysm strikes.