Seeing Red (Updated)

The entire country seems to be seized with the issue of whether dual nationality holders should be allowed to hold public office in Pakistan. The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case against four Peoples Party parliamentarians including the President's media adviser Farahnaz Ispahani, whose National Assembly membership has been temporarily suspended by the court on prima facie evidence that she is also an American citizen. The Punjab Assembly has tried to weasel its way out of the same criteria being applied to its members by saying it has no record of which of its members are dual nationality holders. I'm not here to discuss the merits and contradictions of this issue, so if you can please leave that outrage for another time...

What I'm really here to share, however, is an explosive little story that a little tweety bird with impeccable credentials has divulged to us (what, you think only Najam Sethi has mysterious chirryas?).

If you recall, a certain Interior Minister, is among those accused of holding dual British nationality. That he had taken British citizenship while in self-exile from the mid-90s till he returned in 2007 is not even denied by him. He recently made a statement in the Supreme Court (through his lawyer) that he had renounced his UK citizenship in April 2008, upon assuming office in Pakistan and had presented some documents attesting to his claim upon his recent return from a working visit to the UK. (Incidentally, the Supreme Court rejected the documents as insufficient proof of his renunciation.)

 Not quite green (or blue)

Guess what our tweety bird has told us? The colour of the passport the Interior Minister used to travel to the UK - just a few days ago - was distinctly not green or blue (the Pakistani official passport). Those who laid eyes on it say they saw a very British red. Unfortunately, we are not at liberty to reveal our source but what we will confirm clearly is that our tweety bird - which is more than 100 percent sure of its facts - is definitely not of the 'intelligence' variety.

It's one thing to be dheet and a liar. But this just sounds to us like the ultimate in pragmatic stupidity as well.


: : : UPDATE : : :

After this post was put up, a number of people wrote in on Twitter and in the comments to say that the Pakistani diplomatic passport is also red (or maroon) and that while senators and other government officials are issued a blue offical passport, all cabinet members (as the Interior Minister is) are issued a diplomatic passport. The implication was that perhaps our tweety bird had mistaken the colour of the diplomatic passport for the British passport. Senator Rehman Malik himself aslo tweeted that it had been "mischievously reported" that he had used a British passport whereas he had used only his "red diplomatic passport."

The doubt is understandable since in my write-up I had only referred to the colour of the passport, even though our source had not based the information on simply that. Nevertheless we have re-checked with our source to make doubly sure and the tweety bird confirms that it was in fact a British passport, not a Pakistani diplomatic passport. We thus stand by our story.

Of Governance Scandals And Clean Hands

We are sometimes accused by partisan supporters of opposition political parties of being soft on or for not being more vehement about denouncing the alleged corruption or misgovernance of the currently ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). While I could point to dozens of examples to dispute these claims, I would like to explain, once again, a couple of things.

Firstly, we do not brook real corrupt practises, arrogance or misgovernance; our only problem is when either claims are made without substantial proof or when such allegations are made arbitrarily only against the PPP and without context, as if everyone else - from the military to the judiciary to other political parties - is innocent of any blame and everything was hunky dory aside from the times that the PPP has been in power. This is not to say that the PPP should not be hauled up for its sins, only to provide a more balanced perspective.

But even more importantly than this is the fact that in the context of a mainstream media that overwhelmingly targets the ruling party (usually because that is in the nature of the media and sometimes because of less salubrious vested reasons), it makes little sense for us to repeat the same charges. The mainstream media has far, far more resources and outreach than we do and, to be sure, it is perfectly justified in its criticisms when it investigates and exposes real corruption and misgovernance. Our role, as we see it on the other hand, is not to reinforce what the dominant narrative is, but to provide, hopefully, some perspective, sometimes corrections and an alternative narrative where required.

Punjab Laptop Scheme: note the personal publicity

In any case, with that bit of explanation out of the way (and there is a connection which I will come to later), let me get down to what this post really is about. Those who follow us on Twitter will know that we already expressed our opposition to the Punjab Goverment's laptop distribution scheme. Our main contention against the scheme was two-fold:

1. That this was a wasteful publicity stunt that, like the disastrous Sasti Roti scheme before it, would drain the public exchequer without addressing real issues and would divert resources that could be better utilized in more productive schemes with more long-term benefit. 

2. That if providing access to computers to students is the goal, giving away laptops to individual students is possibly one of the worst solutions possible. Laptops, by their very nature, are more fragile, less upgradable and more prone to breakage and theft.

Keep in mind that our critique did not revolve around the issues of corruption or maladministration of the scheme, only its conceptualisation.

However, yesterday, Dunya TV's Khari Baat Lucman Ke Saath programme carried a devastating expose of how this scheme has really been run. It is a shocking expose of a scandal that most mainstream media has chosen to ignore so far, probably because it is too busy with stories about Memogate and exposing the federal government's malfeasance in the NRO case. I managed to catch the programme on repeat today and really think everyone who was upset at our opposition to the scheme should take a look at. (Hasan Nisar doesn't really add much to the programme but I am including the whole programme here so that you can appreciate the solid work and research that went into it. Kudos to the young reporter Huzaifa Rehman Qureshi who did most of it and to Mubasher Lucman for carrying it.)

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:



Part 4:



So basically, not only was there apparently huge financial bungling in the procurements of laptops and in the publicity of the scheme, many of those who benefited from the scheme were either PMLN supporters, mediocre students or affluent people who did not deserve to be subsidized by the state.

This laptop scheme was announced in November last year. It has taken the mainstream media six months to raise serious issues about it (even though there were various murmurings against it online for some time). Most of the time, we have been treated only with PR-type statements justifying it, such as this one  in The Daily Times claiming total transparency in the scheme with no counter narrative or actual investigation of the claims. At the same time, the Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, is given ample (and often uncritical) coverage in the media vowing to ensure "good governance" and proclaiming that he will "hang the looters of the national wealth (i.e. PPP leaders) publicly."

Coming back to what I began with, can you imagine had such a scandal involved the PPP, that the media would have waited even a moment to pounce on it? Had the PPP been bestowing largesse to its jiyalas, to failed students and making money off it too, would Geo, to cite just one example, have waited six months to run exposes on it? Isn't it about time one questioned why certain people get a much easier ride from the media's vigilant watchdogs than others?

Bizarre Newspaper Headline Awards

Every newspaper does year-enders, you know those things that sum up what happened in the past year that everyone already knows about and which only those who didn't bother following the news the whole year bother reading? We, on the other hand, couldn't give a rat's arse about year-enders. More importantly, we have a hard enough time keeping up with news as it happens and nobody ever pays us to dig stuff up from a whole year.

In that spirit, we present 2011's final awards in the Bizarre Newspaper Headline Contest... yeah, they're not a round-up of all the wonderful headlines that may have entertained us through the year, just the most recent ones we remember. In any case, here they are:


1. The What Else You Gonna Call It Headline Award

Winner: The News Lahore on November 14 for its main lead about a poor donkey that was strapped with explosives that were set off via remote-control in a crowded market in Khyber Agency. Had this been the Express Tribune, we would have been pretty sure this was a misguided pun. But no, with The News Lahore, you know that they mean this in earnest. At least they stayed clear of calling it an 'Ass Bomb.'

2. The Graphic But Gentle Sex Headline Award

Winner: The News Islamabad, November 14 (two awards in one day for The News) for Tariq Butt's story about Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) trying to lure electorally strong politicians into its folds...

Hoover, that PTI is. Bizarrely, that slow sucking had unintended consequences as can be seen from the next award...




3. The Wildly Inappropriate Wording of the Main Headline Award

Winner: The Daily Times, December 10, about the impending return to Pakistani of President Asif Zardari from medical treatment in Dubai... Or so we think.

And you thought his return was anticlimactic!

Bathroom Reading Chronicles

Also, since we're on the topic of the Daily Times, here's something that I've been itching to write a short post about since I flipped through it's Sunday magazine this past week.

Look at the following photographs from its Eye Spy section, which focuses on the social elite. The photographs depict a Halloween party thrown by Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer's son and daughter-in-law (in leading photograph):

Another world is possible?

Now, I am no prude or killjoy, I enjoy a good party as much as the next person and I really don't have a problem with people enjoying themselves (something this country could really stand to have more of). But I kept wondering about two things while looking at these photographs. The first was, who ARE these people who expend such effort and time on dressing up and take Halloween parties so seriously. I mean, one knows who some of them are, but you know what I mean.

The second thing I kept wondering about was the mindset of such exhibitionism in a country still suffering through one of the worst natural disasters in the world that has robbed hundreds of thousands of even a roof above their heads, an ongoing brutal war against extremism that continues to kill and maim thousands, and galloping inflation that has people pouring on to the streets crying in desperation. The same country is going around the world, begging bowl in hand, to save it from economic and social meltdown and is imposing super-taxes on those already in the tax net to raise revenue. What la la land are these people living in? For such exhibitionism to come from a politically-connected family makes it all the more insensitive. You want to have a party for your friends? Fine, go ahead. But must you rub your disconnect from the rest of the country into the face of everyone else? Must you provide ammunition to those who are already bristling at the yawning chasm between the elite and the 'common folk'? Whatever happened to political savvy and common sense?

I really was having a hard time figuring out what exactly goes on in the heads of people such as these. Until I came across the following gem of an interview, also in Sunday, of someone billed as a 'designer-cum-teacher-cum-chef', all rolled into one.

According to the interview, the last time Ms Ayesha Hashwani cried was "8 months ago when my tailors formed a union and I had no choice but to fire them all." Poor choice-less girl that she is, she then goes on to wish she "wasn't such a push-over."

Doesn't it all make sense now?

The Level of Political Discourse

Apologies for the long absence from blogging. Much to write about.

But first, a clip: the latest example of the degeneration of political discourse in this country. Had heard about this yesterday. The channel is Business Plus, the programme The Pulse. The participants are (from left) former information secretary PPP and Bilawal House spokesperson and current adviser to Sindh Chief Minister, Jamil Soomro, former Citizens Police Liaison Committee head Jamil Yusuf, and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's Sindh President Naeemul Haq. See it and wonder.





Here's the Daily Times report on this (The Daily Times being, of course, Business Plus' sister concern.) I wonder if their owner Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer thinks: some excitement at last on Business Plus!

The Soft Head of TV Journalism

Can I just say how sick I am of silly television anchors' idea of "hard-nosed journalism"? Can no serious issue be covered without dragging it down to the level of bathos? Or without trying to make politically loaded connections that are tenuous at best and whose only purpose is to showcase the anchors' populist credentials?

Here we have a truly tragic incident in Lahore, where a 36-year-old rickshaw driver, Akbar Ali, not only committed suicide, but poisoned almost his entire family as well. Two of his young daughters died with him, while his wife and another daughter are struggling for life in a hospital. One young son escaped the poisoning. The fact that a working man should feel despondent enough about his and his family's future to commit such a terrible act should definitely serve as a wake-up call for society on a number of fronts. Not least of them, about the state of mental health and the social fabric in the country: it is instructive to note that Akbar Ali had a number of siblings, relatives and neighbours, as well as elderly parents, none of whom apparently had a clue about the storm raging inside Akbar. And of course it should lead to circumspection about how economic hardship and the lack of social safety nets are affecting the poor.

Newsbeat's Meher Bokhari: empathy theatre

Instead we have Ms Meher Bokhari of Samaa TV's flagship current affairs programme Newsbeat, turning up from Akbar Ali's home with the young son draped over her arm, doing a show taglined "Ijtimayi Khudkushi... Budget Ke Munh Pe Tamancha" ['Collective Suicide...A Slap on the Face for the Budget']. Huh?? Is this all she could relate it to, the budget?!? Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate the fact that Samaa and Ms Bokhari wanted to give this incident due attention (even if I found the drama of doing a show in the midst of wailing family members and the melodrama of having the exhausted and no doubt traumatized son sleeping in Ms. Bokhari's lap rather unsettling and in poor taste). And expressing empathy with the bereaved family members is also commendable. But what exactly was the content of the show beyond superficial berating of officialdom?

It's the easiest thing in the world to attack governments and their wasteful expenditures. And heaven knows they richly deserve it. But when anchors focus on the current president and prime minister in very personal attacks, making it seem as if all was hunky dory in days gone by, you begin to get a whiff of either a political agenda or utter and complete naivete. Meher Bokhari's intro to the programme attacks Asif Zardari for not knowing the number of rooms in the presidency, Yousuf Raza Gilani for being overly concerned about his sartorial trimmings, and ministers for having too much security protocol, all in the service of showing how disconnected this government is from the people. But can she seriously claim any different under General Musharraf, for example? Unfortunately she probably thinks she is being a hard-nosed and edgy commentator. Geo has a lot to answer for.

When Ms Bokhari took on PPP Information Secretary Fauzia Wahab with a rambling and incendiary non-question, I felt sympathy for Ms Wahab, probably for the first time. You really have to see this performance theatre to understand what got my blood really boiling. The Fauzia Wahab portion begins around 6:36 in this clip:




Ms Bokhari seems insistent in linking the suicide to the presentation of the federal and provincial budgets. It sounds almost absurd, as if Akbar Ali waited to listen to the budget speeches before deciding his course of action.What possible evidence does she have to imply cause and effect? None. But no facts dare stand in the way of our intrepid analyst.

During the entire programme, Ms Bokhari also touts a figure of 7,000 suicides in Pakistan over the last two years (once again, decontextualized from the situation before the PPP government came into office). First of all, even though she claims this is "on the record data", the sources for her figure seem highly dubious. As this report from the Daily Times quoting an academic study says:

"There are no official data on suicide from Pakistan. Data on suicide is not included in the national annual mortality statistics. As a result, national rates on suicide are neither known nor reported to the WHO."

This is not of course to say that suicide rates have not increased in the last few years (there is compelling anecdotal evidence to support this), just that there are no figures.

When Fauzia Wahab points out (though getting the mathematics horribly wrong) that Ms Bokhari's figure implies roughly 10 suicides a day (she thought it meant 1000 a day), Ms Bokhari immediately agrees to revise the figure down, falling back on the soft emotionalism of 'even 100 suicides is not okay.' This is journalism?

Even if we accept Ms Bokhari's figures of the number of suicides in Pakistan, how do we immediately connect all of them to economic despondency? Surely not every suicide in Pakistan is related to poverty. It would also be instructive to look at the global figures for suicide, which experts tell us has increased dramatically all over the world in last few decades. Incidentally, Japan and Korea, two of the most industrialized and prosperous countries in the world, have among the highest rates of suicide. What does that mean for Ms Bokhari's analysis?

Once again, I am in no way discounting the effect of increasing poverty (for which there are figures) and the increasing wealth gap (ditto) on the apparent rise in despondency in Pakistan. The point I am trying to make here is that serious issues, and particularly such tragic incidents, need to be dealt with in a more sober and thoughtful manner. By making easy and dubious political judgements, based on nothing but grandstanding, the media does no one any favours.

Oh, and someone should tell Ms Bokhari that shouting like Jasmin Manzoor - as she is increasingly wont to do on her show - does not make one a more credible journalist. Just irritatingly loud.

The Smoking Gun - Updated

This story was posted earlier but some inexplicable issues with how the blog was viewable in Internet Explorer and Google Chrome has forced us to repost. Apologies to those who had commented earlier.
________________________________________

As explosive stories go, there could be few to match this.

The Let Us Build Pakistan (LUBP) blog, which advertises itself as "a project of Critical Supporters of Pakistan People's Party" has posted an alleged phone conversation between Geo TV's Hamid Mir and an unnamed person, said to be a member of the 'Punjabi Taliban' a.k.a. the Sipahe Sahaba lot. The conversation seems to have taken place a few days before Khalid Khwaja, the former ISI operative who had been abducted in March in the tribal area of Waziristan by a group calling itself 'Asian Tigers', was found killed, accused of being an American spy.

Hamid Mir: channeling his inner self?

In the apparently secretly recorded phone conversation, the voice identified as Mir's, coaxes the person he is talking to - variously identified by others as someone close to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Hakeemullah Mehsud - to get Khwaja's abductors to interrogate him about his connections with the Americans, with the CIA and with Qadianis, who according to him, "are worse than even kaafirs (infidels)." In addition, he provides the person at the other end of the line with his assessment of Khwaja's (and Khwaja's wife's) betrayal of the Lal Masjid militants (about Mullah Ghazi he prays "Khuda unn ko jannat naseeb karay" ['May God admit him into paradise'], and even implies Khwaja's indirect connection with Israel.

You can download a copy of the conversation here. It is in a .AMR (mobile phone) format playable on Quicktime or RealPlayer.

Update: Thanks to Anon1112, here are the easily playable audio clips (one phone conversation, but line gets disconnected in the middle):







Since a transcript of the conversation is not yet available, you really will have to listen to the audio to draw your own conclusions. (I will try and post some translations later.) Update: Thanks to Codename Hijazi, here is the fairly professionally done transcript and translation of the conversation. Obviously one cannot verify the authenticity of this recording, but knowing Mir and the way he talks, I am, personally, quite convinced this is actually his voice. He also mentions certain bits of his personal history (such as his being the editor of daily Ausaf at one point and being sacked from it) that reinforce the credibility of this recording.

The question of how this conversation was recorded is perhaps more intriguing. Some commentators on the LUBP blog have claimed it was the unknown militant who himself recorded the conversation and later on took it to Mehsud, who used Mir's claims and questions to 'sentence' Khwaja. There is, of course, no way of knowing if this is true, but even if it is, it does not explain how LUBP got a hold of the recording. In fact, it could well be one of our intelligence agencies that recorded the conversation and have now leaked it. My guess would be the latter. Update: As Codename Hijazi has pointed out, the recording first made its appearance on a Facebook fan page titled 'Inter-Services Intelligence.' Given the professional transcript also provided, it becomes fairly obvious what the source of the recording is.

The LUBP blog post draws readers' attention to the following:

1. Hamid Mir’s views on terrorists of Lal Masjid (Ghazi brothers);

2. Hamid Mir’s worldview of Islam, Jihad and CIA;

3. His views on Khalid Khwaja;

4. His views on Qadianis

5. His views on Pakistan’s intelligence agencies

6. His views on Javed Ibrahim Paracha, a notorious terrorist of Sipah-e-Sahaba in Kohat (also a leader of PML-N – does that ring a bell?)

7. What was Hamid Mir’s message to Khalid Khwaja’s kidnappers? Did that message lead to Khwaja’s murder?

8. What are Hamid Mir’s links with Hakimullah Mehsud and the Punjabi Taliban (Sipah-e-Sahaba)?

9. Why does Hamid Mir insist that Khalid Khwaja is not an ISI operative but a CIA operative?

10. Who are the real sponsors, protectors and promoters of Hamid Mir?

11. Is Hamid Mir a friend of Pakistan? or a friend of terrorists?

Now, the other question one may ask is whether it's possible that Mir was simply cultivating his contacts with sources. We all know that journalists have sometimes to ingratiate themselves with dubious people who can provide them information. But you may want to ask yourself, how much information is Mir's 'source' actually sharing and how much of the conversation is the 'reporter' informing his 'source.' Certainly the reference to Qadianis is completely unprovoked, as is the insistence by Mir of what Khwaja should be interrogated about.

Keep in mind also that Hamid Mir published the following lengthy piece in The News, titled "What Was the Last Mission of Khalid Khwaja?", on May 2, two days after Khwaja's bullet-riddled body was found. In it he says:

"The spokesman for the Punjabi Taliban said that both Mr and Mrs Khalid Khwaja played an active role in Lal Masjid tragedy in July 2007. They forced late Abdul Rashid Ghazi not to surrender but disappeared when the operation started. Some friends of Khalid Khwaja, however, tell a different story. They say that Khwaja was arrested just a few days before the operation in Lal Masjid but they also admit that Khwaja was not supporting the surrender.

It is also learnt that Khalid Khwaja was investigated by a three-member committee of the militants for more than four weeks. Initially, Khwaja claimed that he had moved a petition in the Lahore High Court against the drone attacks along with former PML-N MNA Javed Ibrahim Paracha and he came to North Waziristan for recording the statements of drone victims to be produced in the court on April 6.

The militants confronted him as to why on the one hand he was opposing the drone attacks but on the other hand he was trying to establish contacts between the USA and the Taliban. The militants claimed that he arranged a meeting between US Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes and a religious cleric Javed Ibrahim Paracha in 2005 in Serena Hotel, Islamabad. They also produced some articles downloaded from the Internet and asked about his links with former CIA officials, James Woolsey and William Casey."

Listen to the audio again. Almost all the points mentioned in the article are things Mir tells his source! It's nice to be able to quote yourself, isn't it?

At the very least, this is a very serious accusation against Mir that needs to be looked into by the authorities. If the recording is genuine, was Mir complicit in Khwaja's murder? Read LUBP's points / questions again. Hamid Mir and his employers (and there are obviously more than one) need to answer some very tough questions.


*** UPDATE ***

Hamid Mir and his acolytes have come out swinging against this damaging accusation, particularly after the Daily Times ran a front page story - that seems to have been based almost entirely on our post - with the transcript of the conversation included on the inside pages as well. He first posted his opinion on a journalists' mailing list and finally has given his side of the story publicly today in a piece in The News.

In his email response he writes:

"Dear All,

Thank you very much for your support. Today publisher of Daily Times and Governor Punjab Salman Taseer created a new record in the history of yellow journalism by publishing a one sided tape drama scandle against me.I would like to remind my journalist colleagues that Salman Taseer published many dirty articles against me in the past when i was banned by Musharraf regime on tv.Today he published the transcript of a concocted tape with some comments on the front page of his newspaper.Yes he tried to kill many birds with one bullet.

This is a conspiracy against me.Khalid Khawaja was assassinated in the month of April and this tape surfaced in the middle of May just few days before some important political and leagal events.I am consulting with my lawyers and i will go into court against Salman Taseer for publishing a one sided concocted story against me.My hands are clear and i have no fear except Allah who have provided me a new opportunity to unmask some more realities in the court of law.

This fabricated tape is part of a bigger drama against journalist community.Some elements want to silence the voice of media on certain national issues by blackmailing journalists like me.These people are very unhappy on those journalists who are raising voice for missing people,who are opposing government stand NRO and who criticized the fake degree holder members of the parliament.Many journalists are disliked by the government and some parts of the establishment.These journalists may become a target one by one.Some government ministers warned me on May 13th that some elements are trying to use the family of Khalid Khawaja against me and journalists like Ansar Abbasi,Kamran Khan and Shahid Masood will also face some new cases.I am sure we will face these kind of fabricated cases with unity.Thanks again for showing solidarity with me.

Hamid Mir"

Note that he does not answer any of the substantive issues regarding the recording, other than to off-handedly claim the recording as "fabricated." His claim that the recording is suspect because it has only surfaced two weeks after Khwaja was killed, is bizarre for a journalist to make.


In his response in The News he writes:

Grand Plot Against Media

Monday, May 17, 2010

By Hamid Mir

"ISLAMABAD: Some elements in the federal government have hatched a grand conspiracy to malign and blackmail the Pakistani media and top of the list is the Jang Group of Newspapers and Geo TV. This grand conspiracy was noticed last Friday when a federal minister made allegations in the National Assembly and said that they have not paid huge amounts of sales tax. Most of the figures presented in the National Assembly were not correct.

The same afternoon, a top government minister told this scribe that “enough is enough” and now they can teach a lesson to Jang Group any time. He claimed that it was only President Asif Ali Zardari who never allowed any “action” against you people otherwise the action would have started long ago. The minister was angry with Ansar Abbasi and Dr Shahid Masood. He claimed that the government had collected a lot of material against these two. Another minister told this scribe the same evening that President Zardari had given a green signal to launch a campaign against some journalists of the Jang Group, including Shaheen Sehbai, Ansar Abbasi, Dr Shahid Masood, Kamran Khan, Hamid Mir and some others. He said that Dr Shahid might be implicated in some forgery case.

Another minister revealed that some people within the establishment suggested to the government to use the family of late Khalid Khawaja against Hamid Mir on the basis of a tape. A top official of the interior ministry rejected this idea and said that these types of concocted tapes cannot be proven in a court of law but the same night some pro-PPP websites launched a campaign against me. The next day, a section of the media belonging to a close friend of President Zardari published a one-sided story with baseless allegations. A newspaper and a TV channel tried to involve me in the murder of Khalid Khwaja.

I will take legal action against all those who started this campaign but one thing must be clear. It is a conspiracy not only against me. The ultimate goal is to silence the voice of Pakistani media on certain issues. Was it a coincidence that PPP Secretary Information Fauzia Wahab addressed a press conference on Saturday against Ansar Abbasi and the next day a full-fledged campaign was launched against me in a section of the media belonging to Governor Punjab?

Many observers have noticed the timing of the campaign against the media men. Khalid Khwaja was assassinated at least two weeks ago but no tape about his murder surfaced anywhere. Fauzia Wahab had exchanged hot words with Ansar Abbasi many times in different talk shows but she issued him a notice only when some important political and legal events are going to take place in coming few weeks. The main objective is very clear. The PPP leadership wants to give a message to the whole media that if they do not behave, then this government will treat them like Pervez Musharraf did.

For some time, the government has been taking many actions to financially damage the Geo-Jang Group because this Group has refused to toe the official line. Similar tactics were used by the previous regime of dictator Musharraf. The democratic government was supposed to tolerate press freedom but this could not happen."

Of course, once again, it is termed a conspiracy to silence the media and in particular the Jang Group without going into the real accusations against himself. But some points from Hamid Mir's article need a comment.

1. It is interesting that Hamid Mir has laid this "conspiracy" at the door of the Pakistan Peoples Party, rather than where it seems to originate: the intelligence agencies. A few people have also pointed out the intelligence source as a reason to discount it. No doubt, one must take intel leaks with a pinch of salt. But whether PPP or the intelligence agencies are the source, the allegations need to be refuted, and if they are not in substantive terms, they would have to be accepted as fact. Indeed, the reasons for the intelligence operatives having turned against Mir - who has long been considered one of their men - may be complex but that does not affect the substance of the allegations against him as evidenced by this recording.

2. His claims that "these types of concocted tapes cannot be proven in a court of law" seem a bit premature and certainly not a little reminiscent of an earlier apoplectic commentator on this blog who said:

"...this stupid piece of evidence will not stand in any court of law anywhere in the world."

Let's leave that to the courts to decide, if it comes to that, but it does indicate a bit of panic. The ISI fanboy's claims, also on this blog, that "they" are in touch with Mrs. Khalid Khwaja is, however, probably the reason for the panic. I would expect her to soon move the court with a petition to implicate Mir in her husband's murder. For Mr Mir's benefit, however, it is fairly easy for experts to judge whether a recording is tampered with or not.

3. Hamid Mir is at pains to point out the "timing" of the accusation against him coinciding with the government's bringing up the tax issue against the Jang Group (among other media groups) and Fauzia Wahab's (albeit flimsy) legal notice of defamation to Ansar Abbasi. He (and his fellow journos) should know about media timing. And he may well be right to a certain extent. However, as pointed out before, this does not mean that the tax issues and the seriousness of the accusations against him are negated. He (and the Jang Group) still have to answer. By using the bogey of a 'conspiracy against the media', how are they different from Asif Zardari who claims the allegations of corruption against him are simply a 'conspiracy against democracy'? Sometimes the shoe is on the other foot, is it not Mr Mir? And of course, both are not necessarily mutually exclusive points of view: you can have a conspiracy to undermine democracy at the same time as the allegations of corruption being true. Similarly, you can have a government campaign to make the media more compliant at the same time as serious allegations against the media being true.

4. Hamid Mir claims that part of the reason for the government's ire is his bringing up the issue of the fake degrees of Jamshed Dasti et al. We've done a number of stories harshly criticising Dasti et al and the government, but I can tell you one thing: in terms of seriousness, fake degrees are piddling compared to instigation to murder.

The Curious Case of the Allegedly Fake Flogging Video

So, in the last few days, I was confronted by people who claimed that the infamous flogging video from Swat - you know, the one in which a burqa clad woman is held down by some bearded men while being publicly flogged and which caused immense disgust across Pakistan and the world exactly one year ago - had now been proved to be fake. Since I was clueless about any such news, they proceeded to inform me that not only had The News conclusively reported that the video was faked by an NGO (ostensibly to defame Pakistan and the righteous Muslims of Swat as well as to make it easier for the army to gather public opinion on its side for an operation against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP), but that even Kamran Khan had talked about the fakery on his programme on Geo.

I had to do a bit of searching to find the 'news item' referred to. There was a reason I had not seen it: it never appeared in the print edition of the Karachi paper (the one I get). I'm not sure if it actually appeared in the Islamabad and Lahore editions, but surprisingly, it was on the web - even though the web edition of The News is actually culled from the Karachi edition. Here is what the 'news item' was, in its entirety:

Video of girl’s flogging in Swat was ‘fake’

Monday, March 29, 2010

"PESHAWAR: A resident of Swat, who claims to have prepared the fake video of flogging of a girl in Swat, has termed it drama and revealed that he received Rs0.5 million for doing so before the launch of military operation ‘Rah-e-Rast’.

Before the operation ‘Rah-e-Rast’, an NGO financed preparation of fake video of flogging in which they portrayed the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) members flogging a woman. The provincial government and Malakand Commissioner Syed Muhammad Javed ordered investigations and sought report from the authorities concerned.

After the successful operation in Malakand division, the law-enforcement agencies had arrested the children who were present in the video while a resident of Swat was apprehended by Kohat administration. The children and the arrested man revealed that the video was fake and said that it was made on the demand of Islamabad-based NGO which provided him Rs0.5 million.

Sources revealed that woman who was flogged in the video was also arrested and she revealed that she had received Rs0.1 million while Rs50,000 were given to each child. Sources said that the NGO produced the video to defame the country’s integrity and respect.

Sources stated that the law-enforcement agencies dispatched the report about the arrests of the culprits and proposed action against the NGO. They also said that the security agencies also apprehended the TTP workers who flogged the people."

Now, there are a couple or three points to note in this report, which should be glaringly obvious to any half-decent reporter or editor.

1. There is no byline.

2. The 'sources' are all anonymous.

3. Even the 'resident of Swat' who makes these serious claims is not identified.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are all straightforward clues that the 'report' is what is known in Pakistani journalistic parlance, as a 'plant' or 'planted story.' Obviously, at least one news editor came to the same conclusion and decided NOT to carry the story (i.e. the Karachi edition), which should give us some indication of how seriously it was taken. Now, who planted the story, how it was managed and with what motives, is up to you to judge. But there is no iota of doubt in my mind that the story deserved to be killed, at least until some serious questions were asked about its sources and credibility.

Of course, that has not stopped the assorted nutjobs going ballistic on various net forums about conspiracy theories involving the West, RAW, the army, NGOs and Westernized liberals. You can see a sample of their frothing at the mouth on Teeth Maestro's blog here and the Pakistan Defence Forum blog here. You may recall that the Supreme Commander of the Nutjobs, Aamir Liaquat Hussain, had even at the time of the surfacing of the video attempted to discredit the video on his show and in his Jang columns, while weasels like Ansar Abbasi  had simultaneously attempted to justify the barbarism (God, I'd almost forgotten why the man makes my blood boil!).

Just to remind ourselves of the actual circumstances of the case at the the time (rather than the planted stories appearing now), you can read what Dawn had reported on 4 April 2009 via DawnNews, or take a look at TTP spokesman Muslim Khan accepting responsibility for the flogging here:





Small wonder, then, that human rights campaigner and filmmaker Samar Minallah, who helped to publicise the video in the media, has reacted with a blistering and eloquent rejoinder in the oped pages of The News and The Daily Times. After all, the planted story was squarely targeted at her. You really should read her piece fully. But what is really needed is for The News to issue a clarification about the unsourced report. If it stands by its story, it should tell us what its sources are. If not, it should issue an apology, not only to Samar Minallah but to all its readers. It's about time there was some accountability for the media too.

Hamidsummer Night's Mir

Lifetime achievement awards are usually meant to acknowledge a lifetime of achievements. It usually means either the achievements are coming to an end or the person being honoured is about to kick the bucket. Sometimes it can be a not so subtle hint that says, here, take your award and die.

The good people of SAARC who last week gave Hamid Mir a lifetime achievement award probably didn't mean any of the above. In fact nobody knows what the hell they meant. Ms Ajit Kaur who announced the award on behalf of the delightfully titled Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature (FOSAWL) said:

“Mir...spoke against the genocide of Bangladeshis by the Pakistan Army in 1971. She said only two people were happy with the creation of Bangladesh - General JS Arora in India and Hamid Mir in Pakistan.”

The Daily Times’ Iftikhar Gillani, who reported the story, goes on to point out:

“Kaur failed to realise that Mir was only a six-year-old when East Pakistan separated, so how could a minor boy be happy over his country’s disintegration.”

Well Mr. Gillani obviously doesn't know Hamid Mir well. I am sure even at the age of six he could have declared the creation of Bangladesh a vindication of the Two Nation Theory and yet another humiliation for the Hindu army.

A more likely explanation, however, is that Ms. Kaur probably mistook him for his dad, the late Waris Mir, who we hear was a decent journalist in the '70s (though he spent most of his life as a Jamaati before becoming a ‘progressive’).

The citation also goes on to say that Hamid Mir is the only journalist who has covered wars in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Bosnia and Chechnya. It doesn't mention Hamid Mir's role as a one-man peacekeeping force in Lal Masjid and later in Swat. And of course we don't expect FOSAWL to know what Mr Mir was doing in Jamia Naeemia only a few days ago.

But the even more curious thing is that in his column in today's Jang (must confess, it's our Monday morning fix), Hamid Mir mentions his trip to India for the FOSAWL event (the column basically says India sucks more than Pakistan sucks) but there is no mention of the award or any attempt to clarify the contents of the citation. Geo has also reported the story but obviously it hasn't brought up the angle that Hamid Mir as a six-year-old was Pakistan's answer to India’s General Arora.

Here's a part of Mr Mir's speech:

Either it's Amn Ki Asha gone senile or perhaps the US$5000 cheque that Mir received with his award has turned him into a softie.

How To Make The News And Other Mistakes

First things first. If ever there had been any doubt about the cretinism of President Asif Ali Zardari's legal and political advisers, surely such doubts must have been laid to rest with what happened yesterday. I mean, you would think that if you knew the military, the judiciary, the opposition and an influential part of public opinion hated your guts, and the Americans were distracted enough by their upcoming surge in Afghanistan not to care too much about covering your ass, you would be a bit more circumspect in your actions, wouldn't you? No such luck with geniuses of the likes of Farooq Naek, Latif Khosa and Babar Awan.

Triumvirate of Legal and Political Genius: (clockwise from top left) Naek, Khosa, Awan

But I guess, advisers can only reflect the level of competence of the person selecting them.

The tangential repercussion of this fiasco on the media has been that two media houses have had wildly different feelings about it. The Jang Group, which had been trying its darnedest to instigate some sort of crisis involving Zardari for quite some time now - and one had only to have followed Geo anchors such as Kamran Khan, Dr S&M and The News' Group Editor Shaheen Sehbai to understand their desperation - must be licking its lips. Only the day before, the Jang Group had filed a suit in the Sindh High Court claiming that the government was trying to victimize it for exposing the president's alleged corruption by cutting off its government advertisements and pressurizing National Bank to call in an allegedly rescheduled loan. Geo had once again begun to run Mr Jeem's whine (last seen during Musharraf's "emergency") about struggling to survive (this despite the fact that Geo continues to be far at the top of all news channel ratings and revenue streams). Zardari and his bunch of geniuses could not have handed the Jang Group a better opportunity to go after him, an opportunity that has obviously been grabbed by both hands.

At the other end of the spectrum is the Daily Times, which after the departure of its founding editor Najam Sethi, has resembled nothing much more than the in-house newsletter of the house of Salman Taseer, the publisher (and of course, the governor of Punjab). Today's paper could have hardly done better to indicate its owner's mood, with a banner heading that said it all. Even the paper's weekend glossy, Sunday, seemed to indicate a sort of depression. It had only 6 pages of photographs dedicated to the wedding of Taseer's son. Compare that to the 11 pages the week before, and the 8 pages the week before that. (But there's still the valima pics to look forward to!)

But in the middle of all this ecstasy and misery, what I really wanted to touch upon was the Filmfare Awards-worthy performance of Jang Group's mediocrity-in-residence (gosh, there are a number of them vying for that title aren't there?) Saleh Zaafir. A reporter never ever accused of being terribly reliable (though he has been accused of being many other things), Mr Zaafir outdid all others by breaking news on Geo that a state of emergency ala November 3, 2007 was about to be declared in the country. He actually began it all by this bit of breathless ranting (he comes in around 12:50 in the first clip and continues up until 00:55 in the second):







Never ones to shy away from milking any sensation to its limits, Geo then proceeded to run "Breaking News" flashes across its screens for the next 30-45 minutes (the news flashes can be seen beginning around 09:30 in the second clip), announcing that "information indicated a state of emergency was about to be declared." No other channel had this information, obviously, because they don't employ Mr Zaafir. But even Information Minister Qamaruzzaman Kaira's rubbishing of the flash (which Samaa TV carried) was not deemed worthy of running on Geo. Geo kept insisting that the presidency was "refusing to confirm or deny" the story, which of course is journalistic shorthand for claiming 'we're actually right and they're hiding something.' It was only when Zardari's spokesman Farhatullah Babar came out to specifically deny the claims, that Geo stopped flashing its 'exclusive' breaking news.

Of course, Mr Zaafir has never taken being proved wrong lying down and he wasn't going to this time either. He then proceeded to write a price on the front page of Jang today, trying to explain how he was not really flying kites. An excerpt from his piece:

"Aiwan-e-sadr ki jaanib se saabiq sadr Pervez Musharraf ki 3 November, 2007 ki tarha emergency nafiz karnay ka faisla kiya ja chuka tha lekin awaam aur media ki jaanib se aanay walay rad-e-amal ne ussay  chaunka diya aur woh musheeraan jo idaaron se takraanay ka mashwara de rahe thhe aur un ke senior jo khatray ka sabab ban saktay thhe woh apnay "aqalmandana mashwaron" se peechhay hat-tay gaye...Zaraaye ka kehna thha ke awaami rad-e-amal ke sabab mulk aik aur 3 November se bach gaya."

('The decision to impose emergency on the lines of former president Pervez Musharraf's November 3, 2007 actions had already been taken in the presidency. But the reaction of the people and the media [emphasis added] to it stunned the presidency, and those advisers who had been advocating a collision with institutions, and their seniors who could have become a source of danger, began to backtrack from their "sagacious advice."... Sources say that the popular reaction [emphasis added] saved the country from another 3 November.')

Keep in mind that nobody else carried the story and aside from causing a lot of confusion and panic, nobody actually reacted to it in any public way. But then, nobody has ever accused Mr Saleh Zaafir of any sort of humility either.

Headline of the Day

One lives for headlines such as this in a daily paper (from The Daily Times):

"Sunset of tranquility on the boulevard of modernity"

Once it has rendered you in a sufficient state of serene stupor, you can go on to read this report about a book launch, which begins thus:

"Strolling through the era of present traumatised state and nostalgically recollecting the times when life was simple and secure, and packed with hope, love and passion, Salma Iftikhar launched her second book titled ‘Sunset Boulevard’ at a local hotel on Sunday."

You may wonder, if the report of the book launch is this florid, what must the book be like! But fear not, because the reporter adds helpfully:

"A multimedia presentation was also done to make author’s work more realistic."

Ok, so she may not have meant it exactly the way it came out. But when you're tranquil on the boulevard of modernity, you don't really care, do you?

Najam Sethi Speaks - Update 1

Uh-oh. I think this is going to get ugly. Now Media Times (the parent company of Daily Times) Chief Financial Officer has responded to Najam Sethi's post on the journalists' mailing list. Of course, he was probably compelled to respond by what Najam said about him in his post...

So here's what Suhail Ahmed-the-CFO says, verbatim:

Hello friends,

I am amazed at this blatant fabrication by Najam Sethi and his claims of heroism for the rights of employees. Here are the facts;

(1) All he ever fought for was his own benefits and rights till 20th October 2009. He was trying to negotiate with the owners for a special deal for "his team" as he called it.

(2) The owners were fed up with his blatant abuse of their generosity, moon lightning at DUNYA TV for Rs. 1.2 million a month, padding expenses, misusing the Daily Times facilities to promote various personal ventures (all of which failed) including his TV channel.

(3) For a long period of time he barely visited the offices of Daily Times under the comic pretext that "his life was in danger".

(4) Sorry Najam you have been exposed many times before: please save us from this bullshit.

Suhail Ahmed.

CFO - Media Times Limited.

Someday I want to do a post about how much journalists are really earning these days. Watch this space for updates.