Of all the rumours set afoot by the killing of Osama Bin Laden, including the one that he was not killed, one, fortunately, was not given much currency. Much? Any. And that was that the raid was a precondition that the PML(Q) had set to join the Cabinet. In a death that seemed to have a lot of timing thrown at it. It occurred just after the Raymond Davis affair, after Obama had announced he would be running for re-election and before the USA was to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. It also occurred in the wee hours of the day the PML(Q) was due to take oath. Now motives shouldnt be confused, not why the PML(Q) joined the government, but why anybody is in the PML(Q) in the first place. Those in the PML(Q) are there because they love the armed forces, specifically the Army, and either left the PML(N) back in 2000, or the PPP after the 2002 elections in a fit of patriotism. Everyone in the PML(Q) is remarkably clearheaded about where the party should be: in power, not the opposition it found itself in after the 2008 elections. The question of the PML(Q) and the PPP should not be Why? but what took you so long? The PML(Q) is not trying to get Moonis Elahi released. Not now that the judiciary is independent. They expect him to be released because hes innocent, and they know that the case is as false as the one filed by the PPPs founder against Ch Zahoor Elahi, the father of the PML(Q) chief and Moonis maternal grandfather, for cattle theft. It is interesting that Ch Shujaat has apparently let bygones be bygones, and has forgiven the assassination of his father by the organization founded by the brothers-in-law of one of the PPPs present co-Chairmen, also the maternal uncles of the other. I wonder what the Chaudhris intend to do with the pen Ch Zahoor bought off Maulvi Mushtaq, with which he signed, as Lahore High Court Chief Justice, the death sentence of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It doesnt seem that Abbottabad and the PML(Q) are related, except that both have to do with the Army. If the district houses the Pakistan Military Academy, the party was founded to support its products, to the extent that it got the Punjab Assembly to promise to elect one of its 1964 graduates President-in-uniform time and again. That graduate has been unfaithful, and has founded his own Muslim League while in exile, and so the PML(Q) cannot be faulted for doing what it did. Just as the Army denies any link with Osama, it also denied any link with the PML(Q), and though we will never know how much Osama was hurt, the PML(Q) was very hurt by this denial. The MQM has also decided to rejoin the Cabinet, not because of Osama, but probably because of the PML(Q), its only friend apart from whichever party holds the reins in Karachi. With the PML(Q) in the Cabinet, how could the MQM stay out? We have now got a situation where it seems that no one really minds the intrusion of US forces into Pakistan, nor the violation of its sovereignty, because you have parties scrambling to join the government which allowed those intrusions. I really admire the Americans, because they said they would get Osama wherever he was, and thus admitted that Pakistan wasnt their territory. Im sure the government finds that quite surprising. By the way, a lot of people object to the way that Osamas body was treated. I dont know, he sleeps with the fishes is what the Mafia is supposed to say after theyve rubbed out somebody, mainly because they throw the body into a lake, a river or the sea, preferably with the feet encased in concrete to make sure the corpse doesnt float up, or in a 'concrete waistcoat put on it for the same reason. And his killing was more a gangland execution than anything else. Im sure the Navy SEALs doing the job are proud at becoming the equivalent of Mafia hitmen. Its like the fulfillment of an American dream. Frankly, I dont believe the government didnt know. Not Yousuf Reza Gilani or Amir Haider Hoti, or any of the armies of ministers they maintain, but the local DSPs, fat and pigeon-toed, who in intervals of wheezing, tell the government whats what. Those DSPs are the ones making the lives of the citizens of Abbottabad hell now. And dont tell me that Osama Bin Laden was in their midst for so long, and they werent making anything from it. Or that the Americans could find the compound without their supervision. And another thing that tells us the Americans were here is the loss of a helicopter. Wherever Americans go, they leave behind a helicopter. Remember the Iranian hostage crisis? And how the attempt to rescue them failed because a helicopter crashed? Remember Somalia, where a Blackhawk went down? There was a film made out of it, and Im anxiously awaiting the Hollywood version of the raid. Wonder wholl play Osama? Probably someone out of the top Hollywood villains these days.