Though the government has formed the long-awaited commission on the Abbottabad incident in compliance with the unanimous resolution of the joint session of Parliament, the formation has raised several questions. Interestingly, one of the members Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim has declined to accept the assignment and another member Lt-General (retd) Nadeem Ahmad has been admitted in the hospital for a cardiac ailment. Equally important for the government is that it has not met the Opposition demands. The first issue that arises is that the head of the Commission, Mr Justice Javed Iqbal of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice of Pakistan should have been consulted over his appointment, and rather he should have been asked to nominate a judge for the enquiry. This opinion, expressed by the Supreme Court Bar Association President Asma Jahangir, seems to have been somewhere behind PML(N) chief Mian Nawaz Sharifs calling the Commission a violation of the Charter of Democracy, and a fraud. Mian Nawazs statement indicated that he wanted the Commission to have also taken up the militant attack on PNS Mehran, even though it occurred after the joint session which passed the original resolution following which the Commission was set up. It is as if the government has fulfilled only the letter of the parliamentary resolution because it has kept a weather-eye open for the USA, which it does not want to offend too deeply over the Abbottabad incident, where the USA flagrantly violated Pakistani sovereignty. The Commission will also examine the question of why bin Ladens presence in Abbottabad was not detected for the years he was there. The ISIs chief has already accepted responsibility before Parliament, but queries about this are still being raised abroad. Various quarters, including official and foreign, would like the findings to reflect the conclusions they have already reached. Resistance to these pressures is, perhaps, the most significant thing the Commission will have to achieve if it is to perform its task to the satisfaction of Parliament, whose resolution called it into being. While the appointment of the Chairman has been ab initio controversial, even Ms Jehangir has not called the Commissions legality into question. If it conducts its probe in the true spirit of its terms of reference, and properly answers the nations questions about the Abbottabad raid, most notably how to prevent a repetition, it will be considered to have done its job. It would also be the responsibility of the government to ensure that its report is not consigned, as too many such reports have been, to cold storage, and is duly made public.