The Revolt Against Mr Jeem

So, remember that we tweeted about the return of Mr Jeem (Jeem for Jaahil) Online, Aamir Liaquat, to Geo all the way back on June 20? We had also tweeted that our sources were telling us that the return had been pushed through on the insistence of CEO Mir Shakilur Rahman's mother, the family's matriarch to whom Mr Jeem had gone abegging, and whose diktat could simply not be refused by anyone in Geo. Not only was the disgraced televangelist brought back and offered his own show (for which Geo has been running teasers and quarter-page advertisements proclaiming 'Someone is Coming'), he was ushered into the position of Vice President of the entire Geo TV Network, Group Executive Director and Editor Religious Affairs.

The teaser print ad for the return of Aamir Liaquat on Geo

Well, it seems a full blown revolt has now erupted within Geo's editorial management over this. Among the people said to be extremely unhappy with this turn of events are Managing Director Geo News Azhar Abbas, Director Content Development Muaaz Ghamdi and star anchors such as Sana Bucha (Lekin), Najam Sethi (Aapas Ki Baat) and Iftikhar Ahmed (Jawaabdeyh). Many others have also signed an internal petition being circulated against Mr Jeem's reappointment.

While it is not clear if anyone else has offered their resignations, Sana Bucha refused to conduct her programme on Friday and Saturday, leading to Meray Mutabiq's  Maria Memon being drafted in as a stop-gap arrangement, while the official explanation given was that Ms Bucha was busy in "personal engagements." Our sources tell us that Ms Bucha has indeed tendered her resignation at the return of the charlatan preacher and that the resignation has now been accepted. According to our sources, she had been explicitly promised that, if Mr Jeem were ever to return to Geo, she would be free to refuse to continue. Some sources claim she even had it written into her contract though we cannot verify this. If that is indeed true, that is forward-thinking the likes of which we have not heard of before in the Pakistani media. It remains to be seen if any of the others at Geo take a stand over this or whether Ms Bucha will become the revolt's sole sacrifice.

 Sana Bucha has resigned over Aamir Liaquat's reinduction

There are also some reports that she is already in talks with Dunya to take over the slot left vacant by the sacking of Mubasher Lucman over the Malik Riaz interview fiasco, who himself has now been picked up by ARY. If these reports are correct, it would be interesting to see Ms Bucha sharing channel space with Meher Bokhari, especially recalling that they are not on the best of terms to begin with. Suffice it to say, however, it seems no scandal is big enough - recall Aamir Liaquat's vitriolic and widely condemned religious zealotry and the expose of his personal hypocrisy, Lucman's and Bokhari's flouting of all professional ethics etc. - to make the media actually take stock of its blatant shortcomings and prevent it from hiring the same professionally disgraced people.

What is also quite clear is that Mr Jeem's return just before the advent of Ramzan has as much to do with an economic bottom line as pressure from the Rehman family matriarch. When he left Geo in 2010 for ARY, Geo attempted to fill his ubiquitous Ramzan programming with a slew of celebrity hosts (such as Junaid Jamshed and Reema) but ended up making far less money than they used to in previous 'holy months' when he fronted the programming.

And that's what the real 'Geo Asool' is all about. Money.

The Case of Shakil Afridi

The hue and cry over the 33-year sentence handed down to Dr Shakil Afridi, the doctor who may have aided the CIA in tracking down Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad is partly correct. Certainly, the fact that he was tried under the archaic Frontier Crimes Regulations, in secret, and without the chance to defend himself through a lawyer, makes the whole process highly suspect and against the basic principles of a fair trial. Valid questions have also been raised about the hollowness of some of the charges brought against him, including, apparently, 'waging war against Pakistan'.

Dr Shakil Afridi (Photo: Express)

However, some of the apoplectic reaction from members of civil society, which has condemned Dr Afridi being tried at all, is thoroughly misplaced. Some believe he did a great thing by helping rid Pakistan of the world's most dangerous terrorist and so should be thanked or awarded rather than prosecuted. Others have drawn comparisons between his swift trial and conviction and the lack of effective prosecution of real terrorists. Even journalist Najam Sethi, in his programme yesterday, questioned how what Dr Afridi did was any different from the Pakistani state's collaboration with the CIA in going after Al Qaeda's militants and stated that the Americans, after all, are Pakistan's professed strategic allies. All of these are false premises.

Let's be clear about one thing. No country in the world allows its citizens to freelance as spies for another country's agencies, whether friendly or hostile. Which is not to say that people do no do it, just that they know the risks of what can happen to them if they are caught. Forget being spies, the US has laws against its citizens even lobbying public opinion on behalf of foreign interests without revealing their connections. Remember the case of one Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai?  There have been a number of instances of American citizens being convicted of spying or passing information on to its greatest 'ally' Israel. Dr Shakil Afridi apparently confessed (this is a point that is yet to be proved in a fair trial) that he knowingly assisted the CIA in running a fake vaccinations programme set up to obtain DNA samples from the residents of the compound where bin Laden was eventually killed. No matter what one thinks of the outcome, Pakistan has every right to charge him for colluding with a foreign agency, and if the charges are proved in a fair trial, to convict him.

Yes, it's a real and terrible pity that the Pakistani state and Pakistani courts are criminally lax about the prosecution and conviction of far worse people than Dr Afridi, but this line of reasoning, while it scores political points, is really a false equivalence. By this reasoning, nobody should ever be tried for manslaughter in a road accident or theft or kidnapping or for any other everyday crime since they are far smaller crimes than those committed by those terrorists who have killed thousands and got away scot free. Similarly, with respect to Mr Sethi's point about whether what Dr Afridi did was any different from what the government of Pakistan has been doing for years, yes, there is a difference (whether one likes it or not) between a state sanctioned operation and a freelance operation. It is similar to the difference between the police having the right to use firearms versus ordinary citizens using firearms. But more importantly, if the state is violating the law - e.g. by extraditing people to a foreign entity without going through the due legal process - it is something that in and of itself needs to challenged; it still does not confer legitimacy to others who decide to violate the law.

The US Congress' hypocritical outrage over the treatment of Dr Afridi - er, Guantanamo, anyone? - really is not worth commenting over. They are simply looking to protect their asset, their employee.

In my personal opinion, whether Dr Afridi is charged with treason or not, what he certainly should have been charged with is intentional malpractice and stripped of his medical title for violating his Hippocratic Oath. First of all, he placed innocent children and families knowingly in harm's way by running a fake vaccination programme. As detailed by The Guardian's report linked to earlier:

"The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children. 

Afridi had posters for the vaccination programme put up around Abbottabad, featuring a vaccine made by Amson, a medicine manufacturer based on the outskirts of Islamabad. 

In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived."

Secondly, he has endangered the lives of hundreds of thousands of other children in an area where there were already (unfounded) virulent suspicions about vaccination programmes. As the Associated Press reported soon after the programme was revealed:

"Pakistani health officials held meetings about the alleged CIA scheme on Tuesday and expressed concern that it could have a negative impact on immunization programs in other areas of the northwest, especially in Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border, said a Pakistani official involved in polio eradication efforts… 

One of the Pakistani Taliban’s top commanders, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, recently called on people in the northwest to avoid vaccines offered by the international community, claiming they were made with “extracts from bones and fat of an animal prohibited by God — the pig.”  

“Don’t fall prey to these infidel NGOs and this U.S.-allied government and its army,” said Mohammed over the illegal radio station he transmits from his sanctuary in eastern Afghanistan. Pakistani officials and their international partners have pushed back against these claims, but the CIA’s reported activities in the country may have made their job that much harder."

You can read more about what impact such kind of rumours have had on immunisation programmes in other places here, which also points out the following:

"[T]he allegation that a vaccine program was not what it seemed — that it was not only suspect, but justifiably suspect — has been very widely reported. This is awful. It plays, so precisely that it might have been scripted, into the most paranoid conspiracy theories about vaccines: that they are pointless, poisonous, covert shields for nefarious government agendas meant to do children harm. 

That is not speculation. The polio campaign has already seen this happen, based on just those kind of suspicions — not in a single poor slum in New Delhi, but across much of sub-Saharan Africa... 

The accusations that polio vaccination was a Potemkin cover for anti-Islamic activities almost ruined the international eradication of polio when they were false. Now, on the basis of the CIA’s alleged appalling ruse in Pakistan, they may be made again. And they will be much more believable, because this time they might be be true."

Finally, he has endangered the lives of his fellow - real - health workers. As noted here,

"InterAction, an alliance of 198 American NGOs, such as the International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, CARE, ChildFund International, World Wildlife Fund, Plan International USA, Helen Keller International, Action Against Hunger and Relief International, said the CIA’s tactics also endangered the lives of foreign aid workers. “The CIA-led immunization campaign compromises the perception of U.S. NGOs as independent actors focused on a common good and casts suspicion on their humanitarian workers. The CIA’s actions may also jeopardize the lives of humanitarian aid workers in Pakistan.”"

The Guardian reported that Save the Children was forced to evacuate eight of its international workers last July over fears for their safety:

"A senior western official said Afridi told his wife he was working for Save the Children when he was in fact running the fake CIA programme. The allegation emerged during interrogation. 

A senior aid worker corroborated that account, saying Afridi may have mentioned Save the Children "during the early stages of his interrogation". Save the Children said it was horrified that Afridi had abused its name. "We are shocked by the allegations that our name has been falsely used in this way. Save the Children's work in Pakistan is helping the most vulnerable children and their families," said [SCF spokesperson Ishbel] Matheson."

So, yes, demand a fair trial for Shakil Afridi by all means. This is his and all of our right. But let's not build a mercenary rogue into a hero. And I for one would not in the least shed tears if, at the end of an open and fair trial, he were to be convicted not of treason but of unabashed medical malpractice. After all, even the mobster Al Capone was convicted only for tax evasion, wasn't he?

Pathetic Express

I don't watch Kamran Shahid's show. I really don't. That's why I had to be told by another Pyala that I should probably see what happened on his show on Express TV yesterday. Having now seen the show in its entirety, I can safely say that my initial position was well-founded.

Here was a show on Balochistan, whose dire situation is, thankfully, finally receiving some space in the media that has long shut its eyes hoping uncomfortable truths would all just go away. Recently there have been a few eloquent and blood-curdling pieces in the print media as well as no-nonsense coverage on some television channels. Some of the best coverage in the mainstream print media has been in Dawn: Here is veteran journalist I. A. Rehman today on "Balochistan's Agony", here is writer Mohammed Hanif's heart-rending front-page piece on February 11 on "The Baloch Who Is Not Missing", and here is Dawn's strong editorial on the same subject a day after. Some of the best programmes on Balochistan have been on the channel everyone loves to hate, Geo. Geo's Lekin, hosted by Sana Bucha, has raised difficult questions about Balochistan a number of times and a recent edition of Aapas Ki Baat provided a very balanced primer on the issues via the programme's in-house analyst Najam Sethi. Even Hamid Mir on Capital Talk has done a series of hard-hitting and much needed programmes on the subject.

Let's just say Kamran Shahid's Frontline will never make that list of thought-provoking programmes.

I watched the first half of the show uncomfortably, not because of the issues that were being discussed, but because of the host's obvious duggapan - I'm sorry but there is no other word that comes to mind for him. He has a knack of making even valid questions seem like cluelessly crude rhetoric. But while discussing a situation as much of a political tinderbox as Balochistan has become, possibly the last thing an anchor sitting in the Punjab should be doing is making incendiary statements with little sense of how they could and would be perceived. In any case, while it was a tense viewing experience things did not completely deteriorate, thanks mainly to the patience of both former Chief Minister Akhtar Mengal and the PPP's Lashkari Raisani, who answered fairly provocative questions without erupting.

And then all hell broke loose. Kamran Shahid took Jamhoori Watan Party head and son of slain Baloch leader Akbar Bugti, Talal Bugti, on line and this is what followed with All Pakistan Muslim League representative Barrister Saif:




Now, there are times when really one is at a complete loss for words. What can I really say here that is not totally, utterly and absolutely self-evident?

Yes, Talal Bugti's regurgitation of his old rhetoric calling for the vigilante killing of General Musharraf (which we have criticised before here) was uncalled for, but Barrister Saif's violent and blatantly vulgar response was in this case even more reprehensible and condemnable. If there is a bigger villain, however, it is Kamran Shahid, the producers of his crappy show and the management of Express TV who allowed this exchange to go on air. Note how all of them were content to let this utter hogwash continue for a full two and a half minutes after it became clear that things were getting out of hand. Why? Simply because it is now considered a good ratings booster to have such conflagarations on television. And if people cross the line, all the better. In fact, Express has had a similar experience before with Talal Bugti which is obviously why they decided to pit him once again against a Musharraf supporter.

It's about time that PEMRA woke up and put an end to this sorry trend that almost makes you yearn for the sobriety of the old Pakistan Television. Pathetic. An uttterly pathetic excuse for a 'talk show'. And even more pathetic that such ratings chicanery should be played out on a topic as important as Balochistan.

Why Your Parents Warned You Against Taking Too Many Drugs

I had the chance, or misfortune, to stumble upon yesterday's Khari Baat Lucman Ke Saath on its repeat today and I am still reeling at the heights of lunacy achieved in that programme. And no, I am not referring to the fact that, as an intro to the show, Mubasher Lucman kept pretending to present declassified and Wikileaked US government documents, which are freely available on the web and which have been written and talked about for the past one year, as documents that he had somehow mysteriously and surreptitiously got his hands on ("I have got Anne Patterson's entire email," he once proclaimed). I'm not even referring to how he claimed that one of his guests, Asfandyar Kasuri (who he claimed needed no introduction but who at least I have no idea about aside from the fact that he apparently likes to be known as 'Fundy' on Facebook) had a show shut down on Aaj TV because he had, horror of horrors, interviewed Noam Chomsky. (Yes, I'm sure the fact that the show, called Washington Report, looked like VoA's bland Khabron Se Aagay and was in English with Urdu subtitles played no part in its being axed.)

No, the task of raising the psychosis quotient immeasurably was laid at the feet of that well known expert on globalization and Pakistan-US relations, Ali Azmat. In his opening lines, Azmat pointed out that he was smiling to himself at some of the initial discussion of US foreign policy hypocrisy between Lucman and Kasuri, because, hey, "We'd been saying it all along for five years and we were dubbed conspiracy theorists by people." After the obligatory-for-a-Lucman-show segue into an attack on Najam Sethi as a slave of American capitalists,  Azmat got really warmed up. (Mr Azmat did sort of confuse the name of the think tank Sethi is a fellow at, calling it the Project for the New American Century rather than the New America Foundation, but that was only the smallest confusion in the mind of the former 'bad boy of rock'.)

Here's the first part of Ali Azmat expounding his dialectical vision (the relevant bit begins around 05:45):




In the space of next few minutes, Azmat told us the following (and I swear I am not making this up):

1. The music of Michael Jackson and The Beatles was developed by the Tavistock Institute in England to wean people away from their indigenous culture and impose cultural imperialism on the world. 

2. The Rockefeller Foundation forced musicians ("by hook or by crook") to tune their instruments' A-note at 440 Hz after 1945 since that is the frequency that causes human beings' "cellular structure" to be unsettled the most, in order to propagate "mass hypnotism and mass crowd control." 

3. This mass brain-washing was dubbed "counter-culture" and was led by a consortium of record companies, television channels and General Electric. 

4. Hollywood's end-of-the-world type disaster films, zombie movies and vampire flicks are all part of the same "orchestrated and planned" conspiracy to confuse people whether "Balochis are killing us or Punjabis are killing Balochis." 

5. The Occupy Wall Street Movement in a thousand cities across the globe is being funded by the same capitalists it is ostensibly fighting against. 

6. The "North Command" of the US Army which is ostensibly responsible for domestic security is preparing for the Third World War within the US employing mercenary Poles and Ghanaians. 

7. Corporations put fluoride in the water (anyone else remember Dr Strangelove?), poison in toothpastes and "monoxide sodium glutamate" {sic} in chips and juices to spread cancer.

Here's the clear-headed Mr Azmat in all his glory:



As a sum-up Asfandyar Kasuri (who is either really the most tolerant person on the planet or the yin to Mr Azmat's yang) first helpfully points out the meaning of the phrase "military industrial complex" and that the American media is controlled by big commercial interests, with nary a sense of irony about the fact that he is sitting on a channel and a show that runs on corporate advertising. When he mentions the power of wealthy advertisers such as Exxon, Lucman boastfully tells him to go ahead since "Exxon does not give us any advertising." Unfortunately for him and Dunya, Ali Azmat then goes on to mention a local bank's name which is dutifully bleeped out by the channel and leads to Lucman grumbling that Azmat would get him into trouble. These televangelical radicals are almost funny.




Oh, and the solution to these problems (because, you know, Lucman loves solutions)? According to Azmat, we should stop dealing with banks completely since they take commissions on every transaction thereby destroying Pakistan's and the world's economy. And lest you ask, as Lucman does, whether we should then keep our money in socks: we should not keep money in any case and instead buy gold and silver. I really am not making this up.

We should also stop buying corporate products. Ostensibly this includes some of the telecom and fast-food products Mr Azmat himself sold until recently and the products that funded this show.

This Lucman Is No Hakeem

I had not actually planned to write this post but am doing so on the insistence of some of our friends on Twitter who think, quite rightly, that that medium is a rather ephemeral one and the information supplied on it should be preserved in a relatively more easily accessible format such as this one.

This post is a follow-up to Pakistan Media Watch's scrutiny of an apparent campaign against well-known journalist and television anchor Najam Sethi, which raises some very valid questions about who is behind the vilification and to what end. They are obviously mainly rhetorical questions since we can all tell what the possible motivations are when one looks at some of the illustrious names involved and the means employed. However, the PMW post also includes links to two television appearances by current Dunya TV talk show host Mubasher Lucman, wherein he attacks Sethi by name almost without provocation, and this is what prompted sharing this story.

Here is the first of them, from Lucman's own programme Khari Baat - Lucman Ke Saath from September 26. The relevant bit begins around 8:45 into the clip when Lucman suddenly diverts a discussion about US-Pak relations into an attack on Sethi:




For those who cannot understand Urdu, here is a brief transcript of the relevant comments between Lucman and his guest, the reporter Sami Ibrahim who until recently covered the US for Geo in Washington and now works for Dunya:

Sami: ...Evidence exists with the Pakistan army that the CIA is involved in Balochistan and in the Tribal Areas and that India is fighting its proxy war. But the Pakistanis have not yet presented this proof [publicly].
Lucman: The problem is because of people like you, journalists like you who want to take favours from the US, and for which they are selling Pakistan and denigrating it... For example, people like, a name I took this morning in a programme too, Najam Sethi sahib...Look at how much he has maligned Pakistan just to get [American] nationality for himself and his children.. can you justify that?
Sami: Look Mubashar sahib, any journalist who keeps getting invitations from the US, whose earning comes from the US, he will obviously call Pakistan bad names and try and put American interests front and centre and try to justify it. And now if Sethi sahib is trying to do that...
Lucman: He's been doing it for such a long time and all of you are silent, all of you have made a lobby [for him], all of you America promoting journalists...
Sami: No, but I think the Pakistani people have understood these things. Whether it's such a journalist or politician or intellectual or whoever, I think they stand exposed. And now the way the Pakistani nation has expressed itself in a united way against the US, I don't think I am wrong in my understanding that the Pakistani people have understood these underhand tactics.

I will come back to Lucman (whose claims that Sethi says what he says to get US nationality for himself and his children could easily fall foul of defamation laws) but just want to point out a couple of things about what Sami Ibrahim says. For those who cannot tell the nuances from the translated transcript, Sami is obviously very much in on the diatribe against Sethi, the fake berating by Lucman belied by the unabashed smile on Sami's face. Secondly his attack on those journalists whose earnings are tied to the US is a bit rich coming from someone who represents a channel that has taken US funding to set up a bureau and pay the salary of its correspondent there.


In any case, coming back to Lucman, here is the other clip that PMW linked to, this one from the morning show on Pakistan Television earlier that same day, hosted by former film star Noor, in which Lucman is a guest. The relevant bit begins around 2:00 into the clip:




Here, once again, is a translated transcript of the relevant portion:

Noor: Which anchors are there which you think [present a constructive point of view on television]...?
Lucman: Better you not get me started... I can tell you the ones that I dislike intensely. I'll take the names too, I have no problems.
Noor: Ok, tell us.
Lucman: The one I dislike the most is Najam Sethi. Anyone who promotes America, I don't like. Those who earn from Pakistan, who have been made by Pakistan and then go and defame Pakistan, I curse such people. There are many such people.

Now, Lucman's dislike for Sethi and Sethi's views can be justified as his opinion and aside from the potential slander pointed out earlier, the principles on which Lucman professes his antipathy to Sethi cannot be called into question. Many 'nationalist' Pakistanis would feel the same way in theoretical terms about anyone who was promoting the agenda of some other country because of some vested interest. But note that I am NOT going into the actual content of what Lucman finds disturbing about Sethi's views - personally I have never considered Sethi's criticism of the Pakistani state as denigrating Pakistan, rather perfectly valid critiques that any right-thinking person needs to make - and as PMW has shown, there seems to be far more to this campaign than the simple views of a man who equates critique of the establishmentarian mindset with bad mouthing the country (and it should be remembered that Mubashar Lucman's father was, after all, in the military).

But what I find rather rich is the self-righteous claptrap about "defaming Pakistan" Mr Lucman is able to consistently spew on television (he has vigorously defended match-fixers such as Salman Butt and attacked rape survivors such as Mukhtaran Mai on his programme), given his own rather chequered past. I want to relate a small anecdote that should show how much he actually has done to keep Pakistan's flag flying high.

In 2005, before his advent on TV, Mubasher Lucman directed his first and (thankfully) only feature film, Pehla Pehla Pyar. The hype was immense but when it was finally released in 2006, it turned out to be the biggest flop of the year. However, the controversy that simultaneously engulfed Lucman was far more problematic. It turned out that Lucman, who had had post-production work done at a lab in Thailand had fled from there without paying off his bill, valued by the studio at around US$80,000. In fact, he had defrauded the lab by taking a work-print (which is sort of an unfinished draft print) on the pretense that he needed to have the film censored in Pakistan, and then used that print to make cinema release copies from other labs in India. (Labs generally do not release prints or negatives until their bills are settled.) The result of this fraud was not only that the release prints were of very poor quality (made as they were from an unfinished work print rather than the original negatives which were still with the Thai lab), but that Thai studios collectively banned all Pakistani filmmakers from using their facilities. In addition, the Thai lab then wrote a letter to Pakistani film associations detailing the fraud. Under the threat of legal action and immense pressure from film associations in Pakistan, Lucman finally, ostensibly, settled the dues, allowing Pakistani filmmakers from accessing Thai facilities once again.

And that is how Mr Lucman contributed to raising the stature of Pakistan himself. Ostensibly this was not considered when he was conferred Pakistan's third highest civilian award, the Sitara-e-Imtiaz this year. But what's that they say about those living in glass houses?

With Friends Like These...

On Geo's Aapas Ki Baat show today, Najam Sethi referred to an interview that Imran Khan gave a few days ago and expressed incredulity that more notice had not been taken of the explosive claims the PTI chief had made. In it, Sethi said, Khan had claimed that a message had gone out from the army chief General Kayani to the Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry not to drag the army into its battles with the government, and specifically that if the Supreme Court invoked Article 190 of the constitution (requiring all executive and judicial authorities to come to the aid of the Supreme Court), it should not expect the army to come to its aid.

I was truly surprised because I too had not heard about this claim anywhere and, if true, Sethi's incredulity would be absolutely spot on. Leave aside the whole question of what Article 190 actually states - for the record, there is no mention of the military in it and, in any case, even if the SC invokes 190, it does not automatically translate into calling upon the army to intervene - if true, Imran Khan's claims should have amounted to a scandalization of the Supreme Court. Not only was he claiming that there were backdoor contacts between the army and the SC, he was actually saying that the court was willing to take into account political considerations in its judgements (yes, yes, let's leave the snide comments for the time being).

Once I started searching for where these claims appeared, it quickly became clear to me why more notice had not been taken by the media and the public over these comments. The said interview was on Dr Shahid Masood's new show on Express News, called Shahidnama, which aired first on July 27. I mean, who watches Dr S&M anyway (new hair notwithstanding)?? Perfectly understandable that it went under the radar for most people...

In any case, here is the clip... the relevant portion begins around 02:20 into the clip.




For those who do not understand Urdu, this is a translated transcript of the operative part of the interview:

IK: If the Supreme Court goes towards 190 and demands that state institutions come to its aid, which is in 190, I say the army should stand with the Supreme Court. My information is that, last October, when the Supreme Court was moving ahead on the NRO [National Reconciliation Ordinance], a message was conveyed from the army to it, that if you invoke 190, we will not come [to your aid].
SM: You're saying a very big thing here...
IK: This is my information.
SM: How reliable is it? Do you believe on [sic] it?
IK: I think it's very reliable. They gave this message then that if the Chief Justice...because then the Chief Justice backed down. I believe that...
SM: One minute Imran, let me repeat this. The army sent a message to the court not to move ahead on this, otherwise 'we will not stand with you'...
IK: Yes, 'we will not allow destabilization'. Meaning they would not let democracy be destabilized...
SM: So, the judges...
IK: ..and now they've completely ruined democracy..
SM: No, but listen to me. Why did the judges back down?
IK: Look...
SM: This is very strange...
IK: The amount of pressure this government has put on Chief Justice Iftikhar.. neither did the friendly opposition come to his aid, because in the 18th Amendment they also sat on /sided with [unclear] the Parliamentary Committee...
SM: Imran wait...
IK: Listen to me...
SM: People like us get killed in the crossfire of these silent messages. I often get killed personally. I have shared this in private with you and you know, I have often got killed in the crossfire. I mean, the message goes across to 'them' and we get hit in the crossfire...

It goes on but you get the idea. So not only did Imran Khan claim that the SC was open to receiving messages from the army/ outsiders influencing it, but that the learned judges who are supposed to dispense justice on the merits of the law without fear or favour or other extraneous considerations, allowed that message to influence their judgements. As Sethi pointed out, forget the media not taking this up, neither did the Supreme Court take notice of this clear scandalization, nor was any clarification ever issued by the ISPR, denying any of this.

Unwittingly, Immy bhai has dealt a real body blow to the institution he claims to want to strengthen. Can the Supreme Court allow this open contempt of court to pass? Can it afford not to haul Immy bhai up on charges of scandalizing the court, especially while threatening the government and others with possible contempt and condemning bureaucrats left right and centre on the same charges? Can the military afford to continue to keep mum? Let us see if DrS&M really does get hit in the crossfire once again or not.

The War Within Geo

If you thought Pakistani society was polarized, take a look at the open warfare going on under the same media house roof.

The issue being discussed was, of course, the sudden release of the man known as Raymond Davis from jail after the payment of diyat or 'blood money' to the relatives of the deceased. What better time than that, thought Geo's analysts with wildly divergent points of view, to attack each other in the most personalized manner possible?

First up, Geo's Capital Talk programme, where host Hamid Mir assembled a long list of panelists and commentators he knew (or hoped) would raise a hue and cry about the release, among them the odious Irfan Siddiqui, the slippery Mohammad Mallick, the dissenting lawyer for the victims' families and former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. But star attraction was of course the once journalist-now-self-righteous turd known as Ansar Abbasi. Abbasi had made his contempt for the result of the case known earlier during Geo's news bulletins but had basically tied himself up in knots over the fact that 'Davis'' release had come about through the application of the Islamic Qissas and Diyat Laws - which have been often criticised for allowing the rich to get away with murder - laws that Abbasi can't bring himself to critique. That and the fact that ostensibly all of his former idols and regular sources, the ISI, the Sharif brothers and the judiciary were complicit in allowing 'Davis' to get away, seemed to have truly left him bewildered, though unfortunately not at a loss for words.

In today's programme, which went on air at 8pm PST, Abbasi made a number of remarkable claims, such as his opinion (presented as the gospel truth) that the case was one of 'fisaad fil arz' [spreading division in the land] rather than a double murder and therefore making diyat inapplicable. He further added that all terrorism should now solely be blamed on the military establishment, the federal government of the PPP and the Punjab government of the PMLN for letting 'Davis' go. Not for nothing is Abbasi known as an apologist for the religious extremists who might actually be carrying out the acts of terror.

But Abbasi decided this was also the time to vent his considerable frustration at fellow Geo analysts who had presented an analysis entirely opposite to his. So, without naming names but making it abundantly clear who he meant, he called Najam Sethi (who had also presented his analysis on earlier Geo bulletins) "an American agent." As proof he cited Sethi claiming to know what discussions were being held between the Pakistan government and the Americans. You can see what he said in the following clip, between 10:00 and 10:35...




It has to be mentioned that Hamid Mir had, in fact, begun his programme with a soliloquy also directed very much at Najam Sethi, criticising those who were gloating over their predictions having come true and blaming the media for misleading the public while supposedly not mentioning how the Americans had been proved wrong.

All it took was another two hours for the reply, in Aapas Ki Baat, Geo's 11pm PST programme featuring Najam Sethi. The opening intro by host Munib Farooq immediately set the tone for the programme as seemingly a reply to Mir and Abbasi. But by the end of the programme, Sethi had managed, also without naming names but making it abundantly clear who he meant, to call Ansar Abbasi and Mir brainless twits and journalists "jo apnay aap ko phannay khan samajhtay hain lekin ander se bilkul phuss hain" [who think the world of themselves but who are as empty as deflated balloons]. You can see and hear what he said between 0:00 and about 4:45 in the following clip:




Don't you just love Geo's tolerance of diversity? Or should one say glasnost?

Knowing the vindictive natures of both Abbasi and Mir, however, expect more sparks to fly in the pages of the Jang Group's publications. This is going to get very ugly unless the Jang Group clamps down now.

Cutting Through the Emotionalism

Can we just express how refreshing it was to watch Najam Sethi's first appearance on Geo tonight? In the middle of the hyperventilating cacophony surrounding the shooting to death of two men in Lahore by a contractor of the US embassy (and the death of a third in a hit and run accident apparently at the hands of an American consulate vehicle), Sethi began his new programme Aapas Ki Baat with the warning that he wanted to put emotionalism aside and analyse the incident only in terms of the facts. That in itself is an all too rare approach on our television screens these days. But what followed was close to a masterclass for other television anchors on how to impart clear, precise information with a logical, rather than emotional, analysis.

Not only did Sethi cite the actual clauses of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity (which Pakistan has ratified) that have been furiously talked about but never actually specifically referenced, but also put into context the whole issue in light of contemporary history and geopolitical realities. Now, others may question his interpretations of the Vienna Convention or the heretofore unknown 'facts' he presented as definite realities (we have no way of determining their veracity but he did stake his reputation on their authenticity), but I hope such challenges, if they do come, will be based on proof rather than vague emotionalism. His main contentions were:

1) Irrespective of a non-diplomatic visa (which seems to have become the main issue for some channels), a diplomatic passport - as the US claims the killer has - may still grant the man known as Raymond Allen Davis* diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention. [*This is assumed to be a fake name.]

2) The Vienna Convention actually grants immunity to diplomats (and their technical staff) from ALL criminal prosecution. No diplomat or foreign mission operative may be arrested by a host country, no matter what their crime (except in cases of property). (You may verify this from Clause 29-31 of the Convention.)

3) Since the American government has claimed diplomatic immunity for Davis, the Pakistan government must either accept their claim or the Pakistan Foreign Office - as the constitutional authority to decide such matters - must dispute this status. The courts are not the arbiters of the Vienna Convention under Pakistan's own constitution.

4) By claiming to leave the matter in the hands of the courts or the Punjab government, the Pakistan Foreign Office - and by extension the Federal government - is in violation of Pakistan's own constitution which details how issues of diplomatic immunity are to be handled. The Punjab police and Punjab government were wrong only to the extent that they should have referred the matter immediately to the US Consulate or the Pakistan Foreign Office before arresting Davis.

5) There are some 50-60 such contractors working for the US Embassy in Pakistan, who are all Blackwater-type operatives and whose job involves spying and ferreting out leads to trace Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. Under a secret treaty signed by the military government of General Pervez Musharraf, a Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) allows such operatives to work in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. The important thing to remember here is that the military and the intelligence agencies are fully on board about this and know full well the mandate of these operatives. (This claim by Sethi, if true, of course flies in the face of those who have recently been painting Pakistan ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani as the principal villain in granting visas to these operatives, as if such visas are not overseen and approved by the ISI. It also means that those who point out that the Vienna Convention applies only to the discharge of official duties by diplomats and that Davis could obviously not be on any official mission at Mozang Chowk in Lahore, could be countered by the simple assertion by the US Embassy that he was.)

6) In case the Pakistan Foreign Office does decide to dispute diplomatic immunity to Davis, it will probably have to bear the brunt of reciprocal action from the US for reneging on a bilateral / international treaty.

7) Even if diplomatic immunity is denied to Davis, he will most probably be acquitted by the courts since his plea of self-defence will be very strong. As evidence for this contention, Sethi cited his own information that the two men killed by Davis were indeed brandishing weapons, that they were actually shot in the chest or on the side (contrary to news reports of their being shot in the back) and the context of previous attacks on foreigners in Pakistan and the atmosphere of fear that they have created.

Incidentally, Sethi does not address the death of the third man who was run over but it bears recalling that Davis is not charged in that case and the US Consulate has refused to acknowledge that its vehicle was involved. Sethi was also at pains to clarify that he neither condoned Davis' actions nor that he supported such infiltration of secret American agents into Pakistan. In fact, he also condemned such commandos roaming freely around Pakistan under the guise of diplomatic cover. But the solidity of his programme rested on the fact that he was able to separate out a dispassionate analysis of a given situation from the patriotic impulse that seems to overtake our other television analysts.

This does not mean, in any sense, that this issue will not become a hot political issue, particularly serving as a lightning-rod for popular disaffection with American policy but also helping political actors from making opportunistic capital off it. Or that the Peoples Party government is not now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Sethi himself acknowledges this. But it is good to have more than just one side of the debate, particularly when that one side is often also misinformed.

For those who missed the programme, I am attaching the clips below. But first it might also be useful to see how another programme on the same channel, Aaj Kamran Khan Ke Saath, dealt with the issue, just in the previous hour, and which trotted out that doyenne of hyperventilation and hyper-patriotic confused thinking, Ms. Shireen Mazari, to make its point (the segment begins around 1:10 and ends around 11:30).

Don't miss how Ms. Mazari fudges the issue of diplomatic immunity by referring to a waiver in other cases (which obviously implies immunity). Remarkably this was not even the worst fudge of an analysis on our screens.

In stark contrast, here's the full Najam Sethi programme:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

I suppose kudos to Geo are also in order for finally bringing some rationality to their programming. See? It's not all that bad.

Changing Course?

I had been contemplating writing an update on Geo for over a week but the latest news has forced my hand. According to our very credible informer @Mehmal, former Daily Times editor Najam Sethi has resigned from Dunya TV and signed up with Geo, though the official announcement has yet to be made. According to our various sources, his last show with Dunya will be on January 6 and he will be hosting a show three times a week on Geo thereafter.

Najam Sethi: moving from Dunya to Geo

Now this news is rather big news, not only in and of itself - after all, Sethi is a big hitter for Dunya to lose and Geo to nab - but also because of what it indicates about the direction of Geo. You may recall our post in November about Geo CEO Mir Ibrahim Rahman's (MIR's) mysterious trip to the US, wherein we had expressed our assessment that you may soon see a decidedly less antagonistic-to-the-Americans line from the Jang Group (read the earlier post to understand why). In that post we had also pointed out that, intriguingly, MIR had arrived at an American reception in Washington D.C. along with Sethi, who had also been in the US for some separate work but who himself has been wooing the Americans to support a more liberal media. It seems our observations were more prescient than even we realized and our predictions about the Jang Group are being proved true.

Even before the latest signing, news filtering in from within the Jang Group indicated that head honcho Mir Shakilur Rahman had begun to exert more control over the editorial content of Jang and The News. Apparently of particular concern for him were the over-the-top anti-Western diatribes of some of his correspondents such as Ansar Abbasi and all such potentially 'controversial' news pieces are regularly first vetted by him.

Add to that the appointment (announced December 16) of former The News editor and Pakistan's ambassador to the US, Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, as the Jang Group's 'Special Adviser International Affairs.' According to the official announcement, she will "lead efforts to establish new platforms for global discourse and enhance the Group's global engagement and international profile." Basically, what that means is that she will lead the public relations effort for the Jang Group, especially with the US.

But what I had really wanted to comment on was this unprecedented front-page write-up on December 17 in The News and Jang (unfortunately a poor translation) by Geo News Managing Director Azhar Abbas. Abbas has never written for the Jang Group publications since he first began heading Geo and also has probably not written anything since he left his reporting days behind at least a decade ago. But what makes the piece even more intriguing is its between-the-lines condemnation of the machinations of elements within the military intelligence services which, according to the piece, are back to their old tricks of attempting to manipulate public opinion in favour of hawkish positions through the media, as well as its plea for providing space to liberal voices.

For the Managing Director of the largest television news channel to make these accusations and plea publicly is surely worth noting. It also is worth remembering that Abbas' elder brother, Athar Abbas, is a serving major general in the army and head of the military's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), which surely shows the sensitivity that Geo's Abbas was willing to breach with his piece. Our information indicates, however, that the piece was directly instigated and approved by the top echelons of the Jang Group (could Lodhi's joining have something to do with it?), which should also give people an idea of how the group is attempting to make a break with its ambivalent past.

Just to provide an idea of the line Azhar Abbas took in his piece, here is a selection of some of its main points:

"Political and security observers believe a concerted effort is once again being made to encourage and promote a typical extremist mindset. Some analysts-cum-anchors have re-emerged from quasi-oblivion. Many journalists and analysts are briefed and encouraged to take an aggressively anti-West, especially anti-US, stance. Experts, who ‘preach’ extremism in disguise, are encouraged to participate in talk shows.

…

"Many analysts point to the shortsighted policies of our successive governments, especially true for our military rulers, who have led us to the disastrous situation of today. Unfortunately, even after suffering so much, especially in the last few years, there is still no realisation that using people in the name of religion will backfire once again. “It is not a water tap or an electric switch that you can turn on and off whenever you want. Once put in motion, it acquires its own momentum and is very difficult to control,” a former security official said.

…

"It is no secret that there were those in the media and clergy who openly opposed the Army’s campaign against the militants in Swat and tried their best to put the armed forces’ objectives and intention in doubt. Cajoling the same elements from the right, for short-term tactical objective against our eastern neighbour or to ward off a mounting US pressure to act decisively against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the country’s western backyard is certainly fraught with dangers.

…

"We should be clear that giving space to elements sympathetic to militants would squeeze space for those who genuinely support efforts to eliminate the extremist forces in the country. If pro-Taliban elements are to be pampered and used as a tool to influence the United States to come to term with Pakistan’s legitimate interest in post-US Afghanistan, it may have a reverse effect. Apparently, not realising this, a misplaced nationalistic and patriotic theme is being propagated. It may be an easy sell in the short term, but the impact at the strategic level will be disastrous."

Does the reintroduction of nutjobs like Zaid Hamid as political commentators on mainstream channels such as ARY make more sense now? Does the re-emergence of Jamaat-ud-Dawa nee Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed at the forefront of the right-wing protests against any amendments to the anti-blasphemy laws make better sense? Abbas also had this dire warning as the conclusion of his piece:

"Many observers believe that in the days to come, one should again expect a rise in the extremist mindset. This will not just be restricted to the print media or TV screens, but will be visible on the streets of Pakistan as well. It may be a welcome sign for those who wanted it as a tactical move. But the coming months and years will tell us how flawed a move it is."

Certainly, this does not whet the appetite about the coming days but there may be a silver lining in all this if Geo and its parent Jang Group actually change course. Who better to reel back the madness than the group which has played a large part in promoting it?

As for Sethi, whose show had only recently moved into the 8pm prime time slot on Dunya, I have to admit that whatever other reservations one may have about him or his past, his show on Dunya is among the most watchable and sensible on Pakistani media at the moment. It may lack the fireworks and  hysteria of his competitors, but that is a VERY GOOD thing in my book. It is generally well-researched, questions accepted political 'truisms' in an often gentle but logical manner and more often than not provides insight into what a certain part of the establishment is thinking (and by that I mean the non-Zaid Hamid lunacy loving establishment). It seems other viewers too had begun to appreciate having a non-screeching, non-hysterical, non-agenda-blinkered option and his show's ratings had been consistently going up. Dunya TV will indeed be sorry to see the back of him.

Here's a clip of one of Sethi's recent shows that illustrates why I think he is worth watching (clip courtesy Tahyr):




Watch this space for further developments.

Money Talks

Guess who was spotted on November 9 in Washington D.C. at a reception for American and Pakistani media personnel thrown by US AfPak ambassador Richard Holbrooke's media assistant Ashley Bommer? Mir Ibrahim Rehman, scion of the house of Jang and CEO of the Geo TV Network. He walked in with The Friday Times editor and Dunya TV's Najam Sethi but stayed long after Sethi left the party.

Mir Ibrahim Rehman (c) at his master's convocation earlier this year

Mir Ibrahim (MIR) apparently jetted in for a mysterious three-day visit to the US, during which, our sources say, the main objective was to convince the US administration that Geo was neither anti-US nor anti-democracy, the line being peddled by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government. MIR also wished to gather official American support for the Jang Group against the PPP boycott of the group as an instance of an assault on freedom of the media.

Our sources claim that MIR did not find too much traction among US officials against the idea of a media boycott, perhaps because the Obama administration itself has a similar boycott against Fox News (albeit without the shoe-throwing rent-a-demos and vile grafitti scrawls against Fox News owners). However, what is particularly interesting about the Jang Group's attempts to woo the American establishment is the fact that there has been apparently a lot of discussion within the US government about whether it should support and even subsidize a media group that has no qualms about running shrill propaganda against the US, and sometimes even promoting a pro-Taliban line. In particular, Hamid Mir's contribution to whipping up Blackwater hysteria in Pakistan, Ansar Abbasi's rants about Western puppets, and the space given to nutjobs such as Zaid Hamid (Aag TV) and Ahmad Quraishi (Aag TV and The News) have apparently raised quite a few eyebrows in the US administration.

The Americans have reason to be upset with the Jang Group, and MIR has reasons to find their upset unsettling. The running of the banal American propaganda Voice of America (VoA) programme Khabron Se Aagay [Beyond the Headlines] as an 'advertorial' on Geo since 2005 has netted the Jang Group and its owners, by some accounts, millions of US taxpayer dollars. Although the exact 'compensation package' doled out to Geo by the US government is still secret, it should be noted that the deal between Geo and VoA was mediated during the Bush-Musharraf era by the then Information Secretary Anwar Mahmood and advertising whiz-kid Asif Salahuddin, the latter of whom is reputed not to touch 'small' deals. Apparently, part of MIR's discussions with the US administration included those on the future of the Geo-VoA deal.

Incidentally, while Najam Sethi was ostensibly in the US for medical check-ups and may have been present at the Bommer reception only coincidentally, as we have reported in the past, he too has been trying to persuade American-backed NGOs to fund a new 'liberal' channel to be headed by him.

Coming back to MIR, it seems that more than American upset, a potential threat of withdrawal of lucrative financial support may be the trigger for a panic at the Jang Group. As they say, bullshit may walk but it's money that talks. I have a strong feeling that you may well see the (media) house line shifting very soon. If you suddenly begin to miss the casual anti-US vitriol in the group's publications and on Geo, you'll know why.

What the Hell Do Lawyers Really Want?

To be honest, I was always very ambivalent about the Lawyers' Movement, even in 2007. Unlike many of my friends and colleagues (many of them lawyers themselves) who were all gung-ho about what they saw as Pakistan turning a page in revolutionary terms and civil society asserting itself against dictatorship, I had plenty of misgivings about the movement.

This ambivalence was born not only out of my low personal opinion (based on past experience and history) about some of the leading lights and most vociferous supporters of that movement but also out of certain questions of logic about the aims of the movement - which were never satisfactorily answered - and a feeling that the activism generally ignored the larger socio-political regional environment in which it was taking place. This of course led to plenty of heated debates.

Unfortunately, to argue against a popular opinion is to often run the risk of your arguments being conflated with those of people you have nothing in common with but who may be arguing against it for very different reasons, usually to do with personal interest and preservation of the status quo. And this is how most of the heated debates wound up, with irrational conflating of the issues I raised with those that e.g. Naeem Bokhari or General Musharraf had with the movement. Later on, some supporters of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) - who had been at the forefront of the earlier movement - also raised similar issues but were seen to be trying to preserve a new status quo in which they were invested.

For the record, the aspects of the lawyers' movement that I questioned, aside from the character and politics of some of its leading lights, included:

- The tendency towards hooliganism and mob violence

- The tendency to blame all hooliganism and mob violence on 'external' agents and a refusal to punish those within its own ranks

- The unwillingness to countenance a dissenting point of view or any judgement that did not adhere to its opinions on a matter

- The claim that a previously severely compromised judiciary should be seen as having been washed clean by the events of March and November 2007 (the 'suspension' of the Chief Justice by General Musharraf  and the 'Emergency')

- The claim that the judiciary's stand against General Musharraf was motivated only by matters of principle...after all, all of the present 'clean' judiciary had been complicit in whitewashing General Musharraf's coup in 1999

- The repercussions of a judiciary restored to power on the backs of lawyers who would then be appearing before it

-  The inability to see the fallout of the precendences set during the movement

- The refusal to see the instability caused in the perspective of the geo-strategic Great Game being played out on Pakistan's borders

(None of these issues raised were meant, in any way, to condone either General Musharraf's inexcusable actions or the corruption of the Dogar-led court.)

Three years on, and in the midst of a new bout of a far more confused and divided lawyers' movement, all the same issues have come up once again, simply because they were never dealt with in the first place. In a twist to the usual refrain on the media that 'No Muslim can ever be involved in terrorism because it is against Islam', we now have lawyers claiming that 'No lawyer can be involved in anything illegal because they are meant to uphold the law.' What convenient logic.

Of course there are those who whisper about conspiracies to undermine the 'upright' judiciary and the character of some of the people in the limelight this time. There are those who have seized upon the fairly normal Punjab Police brutality as the only issue worthy of being focused upon. And there are those who lay the blame for the current conflagaration in Lahore at the door of political jostling for the upcoming Supreme Court Bar Association elections. As a sideshow we have the inimitable Mr Kurd - doing an encore of his clownish routines - vowing to drive the same judge away from the courts that he had a few months earlier said he would install carried on his shoulders.

But by far the biggest fraud is the pretence by those that oppose the lawyers' hooliganism this time that this is some sort of intellectual diversion from the purity of the original movement. It isn't really. It's simply a continuation of exactly what has gone before. And unless the outstanding issues are debated and addressed, we can expect far more of the same in the future.

Amazingly, Najam Sethi in his programme on Dunya TV yesterday pretty much said what I think about the issue (I say amazing, partly because he is not someone I see eye to eye with all the time and partly because I did not expect anyone on TV to articulate the issues in such a clear manner, even now). So instead of writing it out, I would encourage you to see the programme in its entirety.


Part I:




Part II:




Part III:




Part IV:




I look forward to your dissenting points of view.

Point Blank

Of course, everyone who has seen today's International Herald Tribune (IHT) which comes as part of the Express Tribune is wondering about the big gaping blank space on the international paper's printed op-ed pages.

Partial scan of IHT op-ed pages: empty space can be seen to the right of editorials  

You need only to see the front page of the IHT to see what that big gaping hole is all about. On the front page is the following teaser to what should have been inside:

One myth, many Pakistans

"A lethal attack on two mosques that killed more than 80 members of the Ahmadi religious sect was the result of years of ignoring religious diversity, writes Ali Sethi. PAGE 6"

Ali Sethi is of course the first-time novelist of The Wish Maker and journalists Jugnu Mohsin and Najam Sethi's son. You can read the full article, as it was published elsewhere in the IHT editions, here.

Having read the piece, however, I am at a loss to understand why it was considered necessary to pull this piece out, and that too so apparently last minute that nothing could be substituted for it. Sethi is not the most gifted of writers but, really, there is little in the article that is so shocking or so provocative that it should make the ET administration quake in their boots about possible repercussions. Even more bizarrely, ET editorials themselves have taken stronger lines against religious quackery and discrimination, one evidence of which can be seen here.

The blank space also recalls that particular era of Pakistani journalism, just after General Ziaul Haq imposed martial law in 1977, when military censorship was forcing newspapers to drop reports and articles that went against the regime. Newspapers responded by printing blank spaces in their stead, and sometimes entire front pages were printed blank, until the military authorities cottoned on to the fact that journalists were effectively conveying the brutal censorship to the public at large. Thereafter the military authorities forced newspapers to substitute other articles and reports for the censored material and forbade blank spaces. But of course the difference here is that there was no one ostensibly forcing the management of ET to censor its own partner publication.

What might be even more interesting to see is how the IHT editors and management respond to this censorship. Censorship of the IHT is no small matter - especially given how prized Americans hold the concept of free speech - and this may indeed have consequences for ET's relationship with IHT.

Watch this (non-blank) space for developments.

Newsweek Sets Up Local Shop

Newsweek, the American publication that labeled Pakistan "the most dangerous nation in the world", is about to set up shop in the same dangerous place.

A nice way to corner the market?

According to Islamabad-based Farhan Bokhari's piece on March 4 in the Financial Times of London, the local franchise / edition will be launched with 30,000 copies (four times the current circulation of 7,500 according to Newsweek itself) in September under a license agreement with a "local media company," called AG Publications. According to Adil Najam of the All Things Pakistan blog who carried a report on this precise topic first, the editor of the local edition will be Fasih Ahmed, former City Editor of the Daily Times, Newsweek correspondent as well as former Daniel Pearl Fellow and cited in Bokhari's piece as the Managing Director of AG Publications.

 Iqbal Z. Ahmed: LPG King

Now most people have probably never heard of AG Publications - perhaps because they don't actually publish anything of note yet and don't even have a web presence - but they may know the AG Group, of which it is a venture. The AG Group, of course, is owned by the well-known / notorious (take your pick) businessman / philanthropist Mr. Iqbal Z. Ahmed, who has been in the news a lot the last few years for having a near monopoly on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in Pakistan, his push for the controversial rental power projects (RPPs), his ties with American businessmen entering Pakistan's energy sector, his largesse towards generals, politicians and bureacrats, and his closeness to both General Musharraf and Asif Zardari.

It should then not surprise you too much to learn that Fasih Ahmed is the able son of Mr. Iqbal Z. Ahmed and is himself a director of the Jamshoro LPG manufacturing plant. Here he defends daddy's companies against allegations of price-gouging and corrupt practices on Aaj TV's Bolta Pakistan (worth watching).


Part 1




Part 2




Part 3




Part 4




Part 5





Now, I don't wish to offer an opinion at this time on the merits of the allegations against Iqbal Z. Ahmed's business practices - for all I know, Fasih Ahmed's defence may be perfectly reasonable. But my question relates to what Daroon e Khana had been speculating yesterday about why we never see negative stories in the media about certain big businesses. I am not so naive as to think that all big media is not owned by big corporate houses with multiple business interests (although I do think this is where a lot of the problems of the media lie). But wouldn't having an editor who is also a director in one of the largest energy sector companies in Pakistan be some sort of clash of interests? Unless of course Newsweek intends only to do PR-type stuff from Pakistan and not really cover anything politically edgy.

There is also speculation about why exactly Newsweek is entering the Pakistani market, hardly a great market for English-language media. Despite the high-sounding rhetoric from Newsweek publishers about the "very vibrant media" in this country and a "strategy to broaden out into different markets", some have speculated that this is part of the new push by the American government to "engage" the opinion-forming media in Pakistan by doing what comes naturally to it, i.e. throw money at it. (On a side-note, let it be placed on record that according to my sources, among others, former Daily Times editor Najam Sethi has submitted a proposal to the Americans to fund a new channel, headed by him, which would help present the "liberal", "anti-Taliban" viewpoint to the Pakistani public.)

But of course this may be unfair to the strategists of Newsweek, who may have nothing to do with the plans of the US government. On the other hand, Adil Najam has speculated slightly differently about why the weekly would chose to enter a market where English language TV channels have converted to Urdu and where the circulation of the English press is, to put it mildly, pathetic:

"[I]t seems that Pakistan edition will be in English and aims, eventually, for a South Asian market, with both international and local content. Given that Indian laws regarding foreign publications are more stringent, it is speculated that although Newsweek is setting up shop in Pakistan, the real market it is eying is the much bigger Indian market."

Hmmmm. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might have said in Pakistanland.


: : : UPDATE : : :


Adil Najam may have got some of his details wrong it seems. As Nadir Hassan and Umair J have pointed out in the comments, Ejaz Haider, formerly of Daily Times, and currently with The Friday Times and Samaa TV, was announced publicly (on a Facebook page!) as having signed on with Newsweek Pakistan in mid-January.Other sources indicate that his last day at Samaa will be March 21. 


Nadir as well as other sources have indicated that Najam Sethi will also be part of the new editorial team. If indeed these reports are correct, he will almost surely be the editor and Fasih Ahmed (who worked under him at DT) may in fact NOT be the editor but simply the publisher of Newsweek Pakistan. That would take care of the clash of editorial interests I had expressed concern about and put the management's clash of interests at par with the rest of the media in Pakistan (and elsewhere).