The Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) has issued a report detailing its assessment of the recently-concluded general election, expressing deep concerns over a decline in fairness scores compared to previous election cycles.
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| Commission asks how civil govt structure allowed most wanted man to move to six different locations with in country |
After the raid by United States in May, 2011, on Osama Bin Laden compound, which ended in killing of Bin laden, Pakistan government formed a commission in June 2011 to probe the circumstances around the killing.
The commission draws on testimony from more than 200 witnesses, including members of Bin Laden's family, Pakistan's then spy chief, senior ministers in the government and officials at every level of the military, bureaucracy and security services.
The report was suppressed by Pakistani govt until Al Jazeera obtained its copy and made it public on Monday, it outlines how "routine" incompetence at every level of civil governance structure allowed the once world's most wanted man to move to six different locations within the country.
Al Jazeera also claimed through AP news agency that top US special operations commander, Adm William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public.
The report claims that, Pakistan's intelligence establishment had "closed the book" on Bin Laden by 2005, and was no longer actively pursuing intelligence that could lead to his capture.
Moreover, the commission found that there had been a complete collapse of governance and law enforcement - a situation it termed "Government Implosion Syndrome", both in the lack of intelligence on Bin Laden's nine-year residence in Pakistan, and in the response to the US raid that killed him.
It finds that "culpable negligence and incompetence at almost all levels of government can more or less be conclusively established".
The Commission points out on the issue of the presence of a CIA support network to help track down Bin Laden in Pakistan without the Pakistani establishment’s knowledge that "this [was] a case of nothing less than a collective and sustained dereliction of duty by the political, military and intelligence leadership of the country".
The commission also found that the US violation of Pakistani sovereignty, in carrying out the raid unilaterally, had been allowed to happen due to inaccurate and outdated threat assessment within the country’s defence and strategic policy establishments.
Commission asked of several top military officers "It is official or unofficial defence policy not to attempt to defend the country if threatened or even attacked by a military superpower like the US?".
Chief of the Air Staff of Pakistan Air Force testified that Pakistan's low-level radar was on "peacetime deployment", and hence not active on the border with Afghanistan, when the raid occurred.
The Commission found that;
(a) The defence of Pakistan remains vulnerable to prevent such an airborne raid unless there are major changes to its strategy.
(b) Country's "political, military intelligence and bureaucratic leadership cannot be absolved of their responsibility for the state of governance, policy planning and policy implementation that eventually rendered this national failure almost inevitable".
(c) The Commission calls on key national leaders to formally apologies to the country for "their dereliction of duty".
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