SIX years from the shocking episode, and in the midst of today’s turmoil over national security, Minister of State for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb has bluntly rejected the possibility of making public the Abbottabad Commission report. Ms Aurangzeb did suggest that, at some indeterminate point in the future, a government may decide to release the commission report, but made it clear that the so-called sensitive nature of the report would have to be kept in mind before publication. The minister’s remarks appear to be in line with official thinking on the matter and are highly regrettable. There were two questions at the heart of the Abbottabad episode. One, how was the world’s most-wanted terrorist, leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, able to live undetected in Abbottabad for many years? Two, how was the US military able to insert troops deep inside Pakistan; conduct an operation on the ground in a major town far from an international border; and withdraw its troops several hours later without being detected or challenged by the Pakistani security forces at any stage, in any place, on ground or in the air? To those two fundamental questions, a third must be added: was anyone held responsible for the sanctuaries Bin Laden was able to find in Pakistan for many years and for the inability to detect or stop a major US incursion on Pakistani soil?

With the first two questions unanswered, or perhaps with the answers buried in the secret Abbottabad Commission report, the question of public accountability is impossible to answer. Therein lies the real threat to national security: how can Pakistan be made more secure and its people safer if the state is unwilling to acknowledge its failures, explain what went wrong, determine who was at fault, identify who is to be held responsible and clarify what steps have been taken to prevent a repetition of a convulsive episode? In the US, the events of Sept 11 led to a 9/11 commission report that exhaustively detailed both the attacks and the institutional failures that allowed the attacks to happen. As a result, wide-ranging intelligence and security changes were made in the US, including the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Fifteen and a half years later, there has not been another attack inside the US that has remotely approached the scale of the 9/11 destruction.

Can any reasonable citizen of Pakistan or observer of the state claim with any degree of confidence that the country has been secured from a repeat of an episode like May 2, 2011? The problem is really of institutional culture and a resistance to change and censure. From the Hamoodur Rehman commission to the inquiry into the Salala attacks, a culture of secrecy has dominated. If Pakistan is to have stronger institutions, transparency and accountability must be embraced.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2017