Waking Up to the Awakening

2011 has begun with a bang. January saw Sudan split in two; February, great upheaval in the Middle East; March, a tri-fold disaster in Japan. April, always a hectic month, saw historic numbers of tornadoes in the U.S. but also the resolution to the civil war in Cote D'Ivoire. On May 2nd President Obama declared that Osama bin Laden had been caught and killed in Pakistan right under the noses of our so-called partner's military town of Abbottabad. In so many ways, 2011 has been about waking up: awakening to the lifespan of dictators, the real dangers of nuclear energy, the proximity of the effects of global warming. Importantly, the youth of the Middle East, and their parents behind them, finally reached critical mass in their belief that change was possible and they could speak for and make it themselves. These revolutions are as much about the awakening of the people to their own power as they are wake-up calls for regimes under which they suffered. Despotism, given the right mix of youth, anger and joblessness, will always fail in the end. Time is essentially on the people's side. It is now time for the remaining stalwarts of the world to awaken -- none more so than the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)/military complex.

They have been called many names in the wake of events which revealed that Osama bin Laden, America's public enemy number one, lived for years in a compound within earshot of Pakistan's military academy in Abbottabad. Were the Pakistani military and its intelligence arm incompetent or complicit? The Pakistanis cannot both get American military aid meant to help them find bin Laden and not come under severe heat for not finding him when he was in their very own backyard. And yet they are. Speaking before the Pakistani Parliament, Intelligence Chief Shuja Pasha condemned the raid against bin Laden and emphasized that America's violation of Pakistani sovereignty was unacceptable. At the close of the eleven-hour meeting, even those members of Parliament most skeptical of the ISI fell in ranks behind Pasha. His offers to resign have been denied. While Pakistani officials pretend to brew with anger at America's intrusion, they are not providing answers for the really important questions: why did America keep the ISI in the dark about the raid in the first place? Why was Osama bin Laden found in Abbottabad and why are so many other groups such as the Haqqani network still living in peace in Pakistan?

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