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ANITA JOSHUA / The Hindu.
In this May 23, 2011 photo, wreckage of a Pakistan Navy aircraft is seen at the Mehran naval base near Karachi. Six terrorists penetrated the high-security facility, destroyed two aircraft and held out against the elite forces of the armed services for well over 12 hours with two of them even managing to escape, ripping apart the painstakingly cultivated legend of the invincibility of Pakistan's men in uniform - AP.
Questions are being asked about the choices Pakistan has made over the past several decades, bringing it to the point where its very existence as a functional state stands threatened.
If the first quarter of the year laid bare the extent of intolerance in Pakistani society following two high-profile assassinations over the blasphemy law, the month of May forced the nation to look at itself. Many have turned away from the reflection — blaming the mirror for what it shows up — but some have redoubled their efforts to question the choices that Pakistan has made over the past several decades, bringing the nation to the point where its very existence as a functional state has come into question.
No doubt, Pakistan has had more than its fair share of upheavals since 1947. But no one can recall a time when the system seemed so shaky as it is today with terrorism, sectarianism, rising intolerance, an economy that grew at 2.4 per cent in the outgoing fiscal, widespread and increasing poverty amid pockets of plenty bordering on profligacy, power and gas shortages, crippling inflation, little or no investment, high unemployment levels, flight of capital — ironically, enough, in some cases to Bangladesh — a fledgling democracy plagued with a hand-to-mouth existence… And, now, a security establishment exposed to the core by the events of May 2011.
It was as if the last façade had crumbled. Not so much by the biggest news of the decade — the quiet finale of the most extensive manhunt of history on May 2 in Abbottabad — but by the attack on the naval airbase, PNS Mehran, 20 days later. Six terrorists penetrated a high-security facility of the Pakistan Navy, destroyed two aircraft and held out against the elite forces of the armed services for well over 12 hours with two of them even managing to escape, ripping apart the painstakingly cultivated legend of the invincibility of Pakistan's men in uniform.
While the U.S. use of superior stealth technology was cited as a reason for its helicopters flying in and out of the country unnoticed to take out al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the armed forces had no explanation for how such a high-security facility housing crucial assets of the Navy could have been breached so easily. They were left fumbling for answers, issuing clarifications stating that someone as senior as the Chief of Naval Staff had been misquoted by the media — a rarity in a country where the media are not known to take too many liberties with the armed forces. And, again, it was the civilian government which had to come up to do the fire-fighting vis-à-vis the public perception for something which has always been so out of its domain.
Given its current political, economic, civil conditions, the prospects of Pakistan coming out of the cauldron it has created for itself are very bleak, what with enemies everywhere and within - though very regrettable situation!
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