Osama bin Laden is dead and gone. But, unfortunately, his legacy in the form of Al-Qaeda lives on. Further, while the unilateral US Abbottabad operation succeeded in killing Osama, it also gave rise to important political, security, legal and moral questions to which the international community will have to respond appropriately in the interest of international peace and stability. The complexity of these issues would ensure that they will remain the subject of debate in international circles for a long time. For Pakistan, the fact that Osama was living in Abbottabad without the knowledge of our intelligence agencies reflected an intelligence failure of Himalayan proportions. The Abbottabad operation humiliated both the country and its armed forces. The killing of Osama by the US in a Pakistani city without the prior knowledge of our security agencies has raised issues of sovereignty and national security, the effectiveness of our armed forces and intelligence agencies, the civil-military relationship, our anti-terrorism strategy, and the future of our relations with the US. The government and the nation will have to find the right answers to the questions that they have posed, if we wish to prosper as a respectable country in the comity of nations. The resolution passed by the joint session of Parliament on May 14 after receiving briefings from DG ISI, DGMO and the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff marked an important step forward in coming to grips with the difficult situation facing the country in the aftermath of the Abbottabad operation. The resolution rightly condemned the unilateral US action in Abbottabad as an unacceptable violation of Pakistans sovereignty. Equally importantly, it called for an end to the drone attacks, failing which the government would be constrained to withdraw the transit facility allowed to the NATO/ISAF forces. It sounded a serious warning that the repeat of such actions could lead to dire consequences for peace and security in the region and the world. The resolution also called for a review of the Pakistan-US relations to ensure that Pakistans interests are accommodated in pursuit of policies for countering terrorism and for achieving reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan. Finally, it called upon the government to establish an independent commission on the Abbottabad operation to fix responsibility and recommend measures to prevent the recurrence of such an incident. This resolution is just the beginning of the process that the nation must undergo in overcoming the crisis caused by the Abbottabad operation. The really difficult decisions that the government must take still lie ahead of us. But to the extent that the resolution demonstrated the nations resolve and unity in defending the countrys sovereignty and security, it was an effective rebuke to those prophets of doom and gloom who were engaged in drawing pessimistic conclusions regarding Pakistans future. The resolution also provided the urgently needed sense of direction to the government in overcoming the current crisis. Now it is the job of the government to come out with a well-considered strategy to steer the nation out of the turbulent waters. An essential element in this strategy should be the strengthening of the various institutions of the state within a democratic framework while upholding the sanctity of the constitution, the rule of law and the principle of merit. Considering the damage that military governments have inflicted upon the country in the past, the supremacy of the representative institutions over the armed forces must be firmly established. Further, the armed forces and the security agencies must be strictly forbidden to interfere in politics in accordance with their constitutional obligations. The armed forces must be held accountable before the government and Parliament, which must scrutinise closely the military budget to ensure that waste and corruption are avoided and the taxpayers money is used in the most efficient manner in the defence of the country. The Abbottabad operation virtually caught our armed forces and the intelligence agencies with their pants down. The lame excuses dished out by their top brass are unacceptable. The Independent Commission proposed by the parliamentary resolution must be established without any delay to investigate this matter threadbare, identify the security lapses and fix the responsibility for them. The past practice of our armed forces to push unpleasant developments under the carpet must not be repeated. The nation must also reset its internal and external priorities, if we wish to secure a respectable position for Pakistan in the comity of nations with a promising economic future in an environment of regional peace and stability. Above all, we must learn to live within our resources as a nation or, in other words, we must adopt the policy of self-reliance in the management of the nations affairs. Our current practice of rushing to foreign capitals with a begging bowl in our hands does not correspond to a dignified foreign policy. Economic dependence and an independent foreign policy demanded by the parliamentary resolution do not go together. Therefore, to start with, we must cut waste and corruption in the working of the government machinery both in the civilian and the military sectors. Secondly, the political leadership of the country, the top military brass, the senior bureaucrats and the elite of the civil society must adopt a simple living style instead of the life of luxury to which they have become addicted and for which they do no desist even from corruption. A simple living style will enable the nation to increase its national saving and investment rates thus accelerating our economic growth rate. Thirdly, we must assign the highest priority to the task of economic growth and the well-being of the common man unlike the past practice and the current situation in which the lions share of the nations resources is allocated to the military sector leaving little for economic development. It is shameful that while the GDP of India, our next door neighbour, is growing at the rate of over 8 percent per annum, our current economic growth rate is about 2 percent. This is the result of gross mismanagement of the economy by the past and the present governments of the country and the militarys insatiable demand for resources which would be better spent on the economic development of the country. If we wish to contain our military expenditure within reasonable limits, we must give up adventurous foreign and security policies which merely aggravate regional tensions and force us to increase our military expenditure at the cost of economic development. Kargil is the obvious example of the type of military adventures that we must avoid. The same is true of the Kashmir and Afghanistan policies that we pursued in 1990s. We should instead adopt a foreign policy which aims at defusing tensions and promoting regional peace and stability. Our political leadership, the top military brass and the senior managers of the economy would be well advised to learn from the way China conducted its internal and external policies from 1980 onwards. In short, we need to change our traditional mindset in formulating our internal and external policies. This particularly applies to our current counterterrorism policy, which is ill-conceived and out of tune with the international realities. The country may be faced with disastrous consequences, if we fail to bring about drastic changes in it. Finally, we can manage our relations with the US on the basis of mutual respect and mutual accommodation on a durable basis only if we learn to end our heavy dependence on Washington in economic and military fields. Failing that, the demands for revisiting the terms of our engagement with the US voiced by Parliament will merely prove to be full of sound and fury signifying nothing. n The writer is a retired ambassador. Email: javid.husain@gmail.com