SINCE May 2, not a day has gone by without a news item, article or report in the newspapers, radio or TV here in Britain about Osama bin Laden’s death. The Pakistani military and the ISI have been under the magnifying glass as never before.

The other day, I saw a one-hour long reconstruction of the SEALs raid on the Discovery Channel. With all the details the programme gave about the surveillance, technology, training and planning that went into the operation, it should be required viewing for all those who think our defence services should stand up to the US.

Without wishing to rub the establishment’s nose in their incompetence once again, two things about the raid still puzzle me. Firstly, while two of the helicopters used by the Americans were fitted out with radar-evading technology, the two Chinooks that accompanied them as back-up apparently had no such capability. So why didn’t our radar pick them up?

Secondly, the Blackhawk that crash-landed at the outset must have made a lot of noise, as did the explosive charges used to breach the compound’s outer wall. So why didn’t any security service respond during the 40 minutes the Americans were in the house?

I ask these questions in the context of the joint session of parliament when, according to reports of the in-camera briefing,the ISI chief shuffled off partial responsibility for the fiasco to the police. Despite the magnitude of the intelligence and defence failures that occurred on May 2, our generals and air marshals had our representatives eating out of their hands.

The word ‘sovereignty’ has been bandied about so long and so loosely in our media that it has practically lost its originalmeaning. I am grateful to Sana Saleem for reminding us of its gist in her blog on this newspaper’s website. As I prefer the heft of a well-thumbed volume, I pulled out my Shorter Oxford Dictionary instead of doing a Google search. Among other meanings, I found these definitions: “The supreme controlling power in communities not under monarchical government; absolute and independent authority. A territory under the rule of a sovereign, or existing as an independent state.”

For years now, we have been accusing America of trampling on Pakistan’s sovereignty through its drone attacks.

Hypocritically, we have overlooked the allegation that many drone flights operated from Shamsi airbase in Balochistan.

But above all, we have not questioned the fact that large numbers of foreign militants have been living illegally in Pakistan’s cities and tribal areas for years. All too often, they have been engaging in terrorist activities that have resulted in far more Pakistani deaths than caused by American drone attacks. I do not recall any TV pundit expressing his or her anger over this transgression. And yet these same talking heads constantly spew their hatred of America over drone attacks against terrorists our own government does not, or cannot, touch.

Don’t get me wrong: I am as unhappy as anybody else about any foreigners crossing our frontiers to attack targets within Pakistan. But I don’t apply double standards: for me, Uzbek, Afghan and Chechen terrorists on our soil are the cause of the drone attacks. If we can’t control their movements and activities, we can hardly blame others who are being attacked by them and seek to protect themselves.

The point most people forget is that we have to control the territory over which we claim sovereignty. Historically and constitutionally, our tribal areas have been largely independent. Islamabad (and earlier, Delhi) has exercised only notional control. In fact, until 9/11, the region was mostly self-regulated.

Taking advantage of this power vacuum, jihadis from around the world have flocked there to train at camps set up by loosely allied terror groups. Using Fata as a safe haven, militants have crossed the Durand Line to attack Isaf and Nato troops in Afghanistan before returning to Pakistan to rest and re-arm. Reportedly, the Taliban high command led by Mullah Omar have found sanctuary in and around Quetta. In addition, young Muslims born and brought up in the West have headed for these jihadi camps to train for attacks in their home countries.

Clearly, we cannot expect the allied forces in Afghanistan to take casualties indefinitely without responding. Nor will western countries facing terrorist threats from Pakistan be endlessly patient.

Time and again, our generals and politicians have made the point that Pakistan is the biggest victim of Islamic terror. This is certainly true. Over the last decade, 30,000 civilians and around 5,000 security personnel have been victims of extremist violence. What puzzles me is that so many of our politicians and journalists display so little anger and anguish over these lives lost, directing these emotions exclusively at the United States.

This hypocrisy was in evidence in a recent rally in Lahore organised by the Jamaat-i-Islami and its ideological fellow-travellers, Imran Khan’s PTI and Nawaz Sharif’s faction of the Muslim League. The leader of the supposedly banned outfit, the Jamaatud Dawa, the public face of the Lashkar-i-Taiba, was also present. Here, the gathered worthies declared Osama bin Laden a ‘martyr of Islam’, and lambasted the government for the American operation that killed their hero. But they were careful to avoid criticising the army and the ISI.

Did they consider for a moment that Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda have killed thousands of innocent Muslims all over the world? And in his lifetime, he inspired other terrorists to slaughter many others. So if he’s a martyr of Islam, what does that make his victims?

It is these contradictions and this hypocrisy that have made Pakistan a pariah in the international community. When the intelligence apparatus claims to have apprehended so many terror suspects, should it not also say what they were doing on Pakistani soil in the first place? This is a question our legislators should have asked the ISI chief in the recent joint session.

Sadly, they apparently failed to assert their oversight and control of our security services, blowing yet another chance to demonstrate the sovereignty of an elected parliament.

irfan.husain@gmail.com