What a fucking waste of a Sunday. Here I was minding my own business, trying to do some work, relax a little bit, surf the net and... I ended up watching 15 minutes of some five-day old desperate-for-ratings morning show on Samaa TV, hosted by an even more desperate-for-recognition C-grade actor called Maya Khan. I usually steer clear of vapid morning programming on all channels but I watched because so many people were feeling so outraged by what had gone on in the programme that I thought I might as well check.
And guess what? Everyone who was outraged by this show is perfectly right to be outraged. I am outraged. No, actually, outrage seems a small term for what I felt while watching the shenanigans of this miserable cow Maya Khan and her motley crew of rich Defence-type airheads and gossipy burqa-clad crusaders. I felt physically nauseous. This was a new low in sensationalist television crap.
Here were a bunch of television vigilantes serving as the television arm of the Jamia Hafsa crusaders in Islamabad, the cretinous sisters of the Taliban's moral police Amar bil Maaroof, nonsensically claiming to have a "picnic" in a park while harassing poor couples whose only crime seems to be exercising their right to privacy and consensually talking to a member of the opposite sex. (Note that NONE of the couples harassed by this bunch of airhead crusaders were indulging in any act of public indecency as claimed by one man towards the end of the clip.) This is total and utter bullshit. Not only does Samaa TV's goon squad invade the privacy of people, it blatantly ignores the consequences of putting these poor people's faces on air (who knows or cares what their domestic circumstances are) and lies to them about having their mikes and cameras switched off. This is unethical behaviour beyond all limits.
But there is a bigger social issue that the likes of Maya Khan and her rabid cohorts will never understand: the rapidly diminishing public space for the less affluent sections of society. The rich have a thousand options, proverbially speaking. Where are couples who cannot afford upmarket restaurants or have access to private house parties supposed to go to just sit and talk if not places such as parks or by the sea? And the addle-headed cow who argues about unmarried couples not being allowed to see each other? Who let her out of her house to go to a salon and get on television in the first place?
Is this what we have come to with the 'freedom' of the media? A blind rush for ratings at the expense of any civic, social or even common sense? Here is a wonderful Open Letter to Maya Khan from a far more restrained Mehreen Kasana. And there is also a petition that you can sign addressed to Samaa TV CEO Zafar Siddiqui, which I would urge you all to sign. Some people have also initiated letters to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) asking it to take notice of this content.
However, I think this is far too little for the likes of Maya Khan and her mongrels. This kind of socially destructive vigilantism should be nipped in the bud and taken note of by the government itself. The entire crew and aunty brigade should all be charged, perhaps for taking the law into their hands, for invasion of privacy and also for sexual harrassment. A message should be sent out to ratings-hungry television channels that there are limits to what they can do.
Incidentally, it may be recalled that Samaa has caused serious damage before. Thankfully, it had sacked Meher Bokhari after her sensationalist comments about Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer helped create the atmosphere that led to his assassination. One had hoped it had learnt its lesson. It looks like it needs a sharp reminder.
“I have never worked for any well-funded international news organizations. Nor have I worked for the mainstream national media. My affiliations have always remained with alternative media outlets. This has left me with narrow options and very little space to move around in… However, independent reporting for the alternative media best suits my temperament as it encourages me to seek the truth beyond “conventional wisdom”. ”
Available outside Pakistan
Before it led him to a tragic death, Saleem Shahzad’s quest for that elusive truth beyond conventional wisdom took him from walks on Clifton Beach with a military officer-turned-Al Qaeda strategist to nights spent in mud huts with Taliban militia men as helicopters passed overhead and drones struck in the distance. It took him from Pakistan to Iraq to Lebanon to Afghanistan and back to North Waziristan to meet raw recruits and hardened militants. Inside Al Qaeda And The Taliban, however, is not a book about one man’s fascination with other men who like guns. It is a well-researched, cogent argument for the need to recognize that a common tactical goal – death to America the 'Great Satan' – “does not make the two a single entity. Theirs is a unique relationship, in which Al Qaeda aims to bring the Taliban and all Muslim liberation movements into its fold and to use them to forward it’s global agenda.”
The creation and uses of the mujahideen – who helped defeat the Soviet Union – as a strategic asset to be deployed at will by the Pakistani military to help actualize its regional ambitions, has already been well documented. Shahzad’s book does, however, flesh out how exactly the transformation of some of them from idealistic Muslim youth seeking to repel invaders from Muslim lands into uber-violent jihadis thirsting for the blood of their former handlers, came about. Consider the story of Bin Yameen, also known as Ibn-e-Ameen, who the author identified as the actual enforcer behind the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) movement to declare Sharia law in Swat in 2009.
“Bin Yameen was 6 feet 2 inches tall, had a broad chest, was fair in complexion, and had a full head of hair. His looks were God’s gift, but his short temper was not inbuilt.… Born as a Behloolzai, a subtribe of the Youzufzai tribe, Bin Yameen was never the playboy of his village or a poet. He was a school dropout at the matric level. While he was still in his teens he went to Afghanistan and fought alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance forces of Ahmed Shah Massoud. He was arrested in his first battle and then spent seven long years in the inhuman jails of the Northern Alliance. Bin Yameen often remembers how his fellow Taliban detainees died in the jail. Sometimes he witnessed their swift deaths while they were talking or cooking. After the Taliban defeat, he was released by the United States.
“But it was not his seven years in the Northern Alliance jails that embittered him. After his release from [a Panjsheri] prison, his manners were still extraordinarily polite. He always stood up to welcome any guest. The marriage and love life of any Pashtun has always been a very private business. No Pashtun from a village background would ever confide in anyone over matters of the heart. But Bin Yameen used to proudly say that his wife (also his relative) had fallen in love with him and that before their marriage, when they were only engaged during his prolonged imprisonment in Afghanistan, all the family members had pressed her to break her engagement to him and marry someone else. But against all Pashtun traditions, the girl defied her family and said that her name would be tied to Bin Yameen’s forever, whether he lived or died. When Bin Yameen was released and went back to his village the first thing he did was to marry her, proud that this was the girl who had steadfastly stood by him despite all the pressures put on her by her family to forget him.
“Bin Yameen always said that all the pain and agony of his days in the Afghan prison disappeared after the marriage. It was as if nothing had happened. He started his new life with a loving wife. His wife delivered a son and they moved to Peshawar.”
The turning point for this man, according to the author, came after the December 2003 attempt on then President Musharraf’s life. In its aftermath, security agencies starting rounding up the jihadis they had till then supported.
“On August 21, 2004, Pakistan’s security agencies raided Bin Yameen’s house in Peshawar. He was sleeping with his wife. In the next room were two prominent jihadis.” The two managed to escape but the police who had broken into the house captured both Bin Yameen and his wife and “literally dragged them to their vehicles. Bin Yameen was half asleep and half awake, but he saw strangers touching his wife. He attacked them like a wounded lion. He tried to snatch their guns. It took dozens of security personnel to overwhelm him... Later his wife and son were released but Bin Yameen never forgot the humiliation suffered by his wife at the hands of Pakistan’s security personnel.”
After his release three years later he went on to become Al Qaeda’s secret mole in TNSM. They recognized the value of his “unbelievable” hatred – his politeness had become an insatiable thirst to slit the throats of Pakistan army personnel – and recruited him precisely because of it. Interestingly, this is the only time a woman (Bin Yameen's wife) makes an appearance in the book as anything other than a suicide bomber, Osama Bin Laden's daughter, or a purdah-observing student of the Lal Masjid seminary. The world Shahzad wrote about is clearly a world of men, for men, and the lives of women do not in any way figure in the anecdotes, conversations, analysis or vignettes that peppers its pages.
The militants in Swat were eventually pushed back into the Hindu Kush mountains, but Shahzad suggested there was another way to look at this apparent military victory.
“Pakistan’s secularists then boldly stood up against the Islamization of Pakistan. They called for the wings of Islamic seminaries in the country to be clipped. The government arranged religious conferences led by Sufis who spoke out against the Taliban. The Taliban retaliated by killing prominent Islamic scholars like Sarfaraz Naeemi. It seemed at first that the situation had turned against the militants, but behind the scenes Al Qaeda had succeeded in exploiting the ideological contradictions in Pakistan’s society, and deepened the ideological divide.
“In pursuit of this, Al Qaeda’s dialectical process, thousands of people were displaced, hundreds of people were killed, the national economy of Pakistan was on the verge of collapse, and Pakistan became completely dependent on US aid.”
Inside Al Qaeda And The Taliban offers many other examples of Al Qaeda’s ideological opportunism. Shahhzad sketches with forensic skill the way the movement capitalized on the growing disillusionment of operatives like Ilyas Kashmiri, the brothers Captain Khurram and Major Haroon, Major Abdul Rahman (three of whom were instrumental allegedly in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks), and Lal Masjid's Maulana Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, with the institutions that had once fostered them. Any questions or doubts anybody has about the chronology or motivations for the Lal Masjid incident might well be addressed by reading his take on life beyond the soundbites, the still images, the regurgitated narrative of revolutionary fervor meeting arrogant military might.
Shahzad also establishes chronologically, in detail, the character and purpose behind the umbrella group of what is today known as the TTP or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. He traces how Al Qaeda, the heart of which is a philosophy held sacred by mostly foreigners who are relatively few in number, has over time infiltrated, influenced and started controlling these 'Neo Taliban.'
According to Shahzad, both the Masjid and the TNSM takeover of Swat were meant to divert attention from the tribal areas and buy Al Qaeda more time to consolidate its position there. Its ultimate goal? Expand the theater of war to include all modern day parts of ‘ancient Khurasan’, where the prelude to the “End of Times” battles were prophesied to begin. Khurasan today includes parts of Iran, the Central Asian republics, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. Ghazwa-e- Hind, or the battle for India, is also supposed to happen. After this the Muslim armies will march to the Middle East to join forces with the promised Mahdi and do battle against the Antichrist and its Western Allies for the Liberation of Palestine.
Essentially, Al Qaeda recognized Af-Pak way before the American and Pakistani establishment did. This is because, according to Shahzad, the organization has – thanks to the inspired use of its ‘human resources’ – always remained one step ahead of the great game.
“Before October 7, 2001 – when the United States attacked Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks, most of Al Qaeda’s top minds had already left the country, their mission focused on several targets:
• to ideologically cultivate new faces from strategic communities such as the armed forces and intelligence circles
• to bring in new recruits and establish cells
• to have each new cell assigned to raise its own resources and devise a plan, but have only one cell implement the plan, while the others served as decoys to 'misdirect' intelligence agencies”
Methods for ‘raising resources’ have included robbing banks and kidnapping Hindus and Ahmedis for ransom.
Since Musharraf first allied Pakistan to the US post-9/11 and the inevitable crackdown on jihadis began – the author’s thesis goes – Al Qaeda has waited, watched, and selected the, if not brightest, at least most committed former children of the US/Pak military machine to turn on their parents. On one level, it is Freudian: kill your mother (Pakistan), kill your father (the army, any army, dates are fluid, and which parent remembers the exact moment of conception anyway?). On another level, it is frightening: we are not even targets, we are collateral damage, and the suicide bombers' strings are being pulled by a parasitic entity that spreads from host to host in less time than it takes for Ansar Abbasi to go from ‘ISI good’ to ‘ISI bad.’
Other points that the book makes:
• Al Qaeda wants to keep the US in the region, engaged and off balance, till such time as the world’s mightiest ‘military machine’ has been bled dry
• Al Qaeda does not wish for a peace deal between the US and the Afghan Taliban because they want to continue to use US occupation of ‘Muslim lands’ as a rallying call for Muslims around the world. The creation of the TTP, the ‘Neo Taliban’, could also be seen as a move to woo fighters away from purely Afghan Taliban interests, which have more to do with ending the US invasion than they do with waiting for the Mahdi
• Al Qaeda feels – correctly as it turns out – that Pakistan’s tribal areas, with their virtually impregnable mountain ranges, are the perfect bases for the global Islamic insurgency. (Sadly, the book was completed before the ‘Arab Spring’, and any opportunity for the author to comment on how that changed the propaganda context.)
• Al Qaeda accomplished what no one had been able to do in Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies before: break the back of the local sardar/ jirga system
• Al Qaeda’s “Egyptian camp” of core ideologues can be perceived as the ‘intelligentsia of fundamentalism.’ This can either mean they are highly intelligent, learned, well read scholars of history, religion, philosophy and warfare. Or that every third Friday after lights out they regroup in a forest wearing all black to drink wine, smoke cheroots and debate existentialism. Probably the former.
• Saudi Osama Bin Laden might have been the face of Al Qaeda, but Egyptian Ayman Al Zwahiri was always the brains
• Zwahiri’s strategic vision has been to divide and rule, create splits between establishment/ ruling elite and the ordinary citizens of Muslim countries, discord between rulers and people being fertile recruiting ground for pan-Islamic ideals as well as yet another way to diffuse energy that might otherwise be directed at tackling Al Qaeda itself
Like the title suggests, Shahzad’s book is more about the growth and spread of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and tracing the patterns of diversion and consolidation contained therein than it is about the merits and demerits of the policies of the United States of America. It assumes that anyone reading it already has a cursory grasp of recent history. There is, therefore, only the occasional reference to the ‘cowboy’ nature of the American state (throw a rock at it and it will charge you in a tank). It is pretty much assumed that that a particular nation’s role in getting itself into the situation it finds itself in today is understood. Similarly short shrift is paid to Pakistan’s political leadership. Despite the role of the Jamaat-e-Islami, members of PML(Q), Imran Khan and Maulana Fazlur Rehman in giving militants legitimacy in the eyes of the public, they come across as a bunch of non-entities, attached like remoras to the sharks in the water.
It is also pretty much assumed that the reader understands that the Pakistani establishment’s official policy towards the spread of pseudo-Islamic fascism is dictated largely by the aforementioned American cowboys.
“Benazir Bhutto’s murder had undone the US scheme for Pakistan. Washington was compelled to change its entire roadmap. Under the new arrangement General Musharraf was an irritant and he was bade farewell. The United States then welcomed Zardari as the new president… it was now Admiral Mullen and General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani who were central to the Pakistan-US equation.”
Shahzad listed some of the salient features of the new relationship. They included: The Pakistan Army being in sole charge of military operations while “parliament and the civil administration were there simply to provide coordination and moral support ”, a US$1 billion plan to expand the US presence in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad, private security firms (DynCorp aka Blackwater) setting up offices in Islamabad “where they had already rented 284 houses, besides setting up bases in Peshawar and Quetta. In addition, Pakistan was to provide land in Tarbela to the United States for its operations ”, and the ISI setting up a “syndicated intelligence service under a proxy network to provide information to be transmitted to the CIA predator drones used to target the top Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”
That plan never came to fruition though. Shahzad established how often the Pakistani national security apparatus was outmaneuvered, sabotaged or made to just look plain stupid. This ranged from things like assuming the US would be defeated in Afghanistan in five years, after which ties with militants it wanted dead could be quietly resumed, to not predicting that the deadly cadres would turn their attention to Pakistan’s cities, to not knowing Musharraf's security officer Major Farooq was a member of Hizbur Tahrir and helped Major Haroon bring night vision goggles into the country from China, to not preparing adequately to fight a guerilla war, to mistreating the wrong prisoners during interrogation, to pampering the wrong prisoners during detention, to not knowing militants were about to utilize a shelved ISI contingency plan for a terror attack in India in the tragic events in Mumbai in 2008.
To this we can now add, not knowing Osama Bin Laden was in Abbottabad, and not knowing who killed Syed Saleem Shahzad.
Syed Saleem Shahzad: writing with his blood
We are left to draw our own conclusions about, on a policy level, how much of that failure to recognize an enemy within was deliberate or unwitting. Khaled Ahmed, in this excellent piece for The Friday Times, lists what some of those conclusions might be: TTP does nothing without approval from Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda killed Benazir, Pakistan army has ex-officers in Al Qaeda as well as serving officers collaborating with these ex-officers, and Islamic radicalization of Pakistani society and media mixed with fear of being assassinated by Al Qaeda agents - who include ex-army officers - have tilted the balance of power away from the state of Pakistan to Al Qaeda.
The book also examines the ideological and literary inspirations behind Al Qaeda, and compares and contrasts it with other ‘Muslim liberation’ movements across the globe. These brief chapters, and the few times Shahzad felt compelled to romanticize mountain warriors as Iqbal’s shaheen(s) “Swooping, shocking, then retiring, pouncing on the prey/ I do all this to keep my blood warm”, are the only times the author’s voice deviates from the dispassionate narrator position he inhabits for most of the book.
It takes a particularly courageous, or particularly foolish, person to probe the murky world of terror outfits and ambiguously-oriented militaries in the way that the late author did. Those who do tend to either be accused of fulfilling someone else’s agenda, or dismissed as conspiracy theorists because most of what they write cannot be verified immediately. This dilemma, and the narrative sensitivity Syed Saleem Shahzad displayed when discussing abstract philosophy and human psychology, only makes one more curious about who he was, how he was able to experience people and places others have been unable to access, and which of the exceedingly dangerous positions he put himself in was responsible for his horrific murder.
I was actually going to put up a different post, on Pak-US relations, tonight but some last minute technical glitches mean that post will have to wait another day at least. Meanwhile, the next big political scandal is about to hit the headlines so I thought we could give you all a bit of a heads-up.
Some of you may have already heard about the Kim Barker - Nawaz Sharif hullabaloo (if you haven't, I can assure you you will be hearing a lot more of it in the coming days). I learnt about it only after a journo colleague mentioned it in vague terms. Then I came across a clip of Mubashar Lucman's show on Dunya TV from a couple of days ago discussing the same in his usual sensational manner (which @kamran9558 sent us). In case you don't have any idea of what I'm referring to, it basically involves what former South Asia correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and current ProPublica reporter Kim Barker has written in her book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan about her interactions with Sharif. Let's just say that it doesn't paint an entirely flattering picture of the former prime minister. The book came out in the US about a month ago and having sold out in bookstores across Pakistan (probably in small numbers), is being re-ordered in large quantities.
Kim Barker, author of 'The Taliban Shuffle'
We all know why Dunya would be interested in making the contents of this book into an issue (Dunya's owner, Mian Aamir Mahmood, is of course associated with Sharif's rival party the PMLQ). Now Sharif's other nemesis, General Musharraf has jumped into the fray calling on Sharif to apologize to the nation for, according to him, helping Barker find the whereabouts of Mumbai attacker Ajmal Qasab's hometown and for leaking "important intelligence reports of the country" to her. It should be pointed out that the book is about much more than Sharif (it is scathing, for example, about Afghan President Hamid Karzai who Barker calls "whiny and conflicted, a combination of Woody Allen, Chicken Little and Jimmy Carter"). But, as far as Pakistan is concerned, I am willing to bet that the Sharif-related episodes are what are going to sell this book.
I have to admit that I found the Nawaz Sharif-related writing hilarious. It confirmed much of what one already knows about Sharif, his ability to be easily distracted, his obsession with hi-tech gadgetry and his inherent shyness which manifests itself in an inability to communicate. But unfortunately for him, it also depicts a lonely, almost desperate man. I say unfortunately for him because it is this evidence of his humanity which is probably going to be used by his political opponents to attack him.
Since all sorts of people will come up with all sorts of spin on the contents of the book, I thought I would share with our readers some choice excerpts from the book related to the author's conversations with Nawaz Sharif. You really have to read through the excerpts to understand how Barker's relationship develops with Sharif. These excerpts are shared without comment and without authentification as to their veracity; you are free to make up your own mind about them.
Warning: This is a fairly lengthy post. But you will understand the reason for the length once you read through the excerpts. And I am fairly certain you will enjoy it.
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:::UPDATE:::
Because of a request from author Kim Barker we are removing the lengthy excerpts originally posted below. A few shorter excerpts remain to provide a taste of the book.
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From "The Taliban Shuffle" by Kim Barker (published by Doubleday):
"With Bhutto gone, I needed to meet the lion of Punjab, or maybe the tiger. No one seemed to know which feline Nawaz Sharif was nicknamed after. Some fans rode around with stuffed toy lions strapped to their cars. Others talked about the tiger of Punjab. By default, Sharif, a former prime minister like Bhutto, had become the most popular opposition leader in the country. He was already the most powerful politician in Punjab, which was the most powerful of Pakistan’s four provinces, home to most of the army leaders and past rulers. Some people described Sharif as the Homer Simpson of Pakistan. Others considered him a right-wing wing nut. Still others figured he could save the country. Sharif was once considered an invention of the establishment, a protégé of the former military dictator in Pakistan, General Zia, but like all politicians here, he had become a creature of himself. During his second term, Sharif built my favorite road in Pakistan, a hundred and seventy miles of paved, multilaned bliss.....
......
"One of Sharif’s friends tried to explain him to me: “He might be tilting a little to the right, but he’s not an extremist. Extremists don’t go do hair implants. He also loves singing.”
......
"The inside of the house appeared to have been designed by Saudi Arabia—a hodge-podge of crystal chandeliers, silk curtains, gold accents, marble. A verse of the Holy Quran and a carpet with the ninety-nine names of God hung on the walls of Sharif’s receiving room, along with photographs of Sharif with King Abdullah and slain former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Finally I was summoned. “Kim,” Sharif’s media handler said, gesturing toward the ground. “Come.” I hopped up and walked toward the living room, past two raggedy stuffed lions with rose petals near their feet. So maybe Sharif was the lion of Punjab... His press aide tapped his watch, looked at me, and raised his eyebrows. I got the message and proceeded with my questions, as fast as I could. But it soon became clear that this would be unlike any interview I had ever done.
“You’re the only senior opposition leader left in Pakistan. How are you going to stay safe while campaigning?” In Pakistan, campaigns were not run through TV, and pressing the flesh was a job requirement. Candidates won over voters by holding rallies of tens and hundreds of thousands of people. Even though Sharif was not personally running, his appearance would help win votes for anyone in his party.
Sharif looked at me, sighed, and shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s a good question. What do you think, Kim?”
“I don’t know. I’m not the former prime minister of Pakistan. So what will you do?”
“Really, I don’t know. What do you think?”
This put me in an awkward position—giving security advice to Nawaz Sharif. “Well, it’s got to be really difficult. You have these elections coming up. You can’t just sit here at home.”
“What should I do?” he asked. “I can’t run a campaign sitting in my house, on the television.”
......
"I stood up. Sharif’s aide was already standing. “I should probably be going,” I said. “Thanks very much for your time.” “Yes, Mian Sahib’s schedule is very busy,” Sharif’s handler agreed.
“It’s all right,” Sharif said. “She can ask a few more questions.” I sat down. I had whipped through most of my important questions, so I recycled them. I asked him whether he was a fundamentalist. Sharif dismissed the idea, largely by pointing to his friendship with the Clintons. I tried to leave again, fearing I was overstaying my welcome. But Sharif said I could ask more questions. “One more,” I said, wary of Sharif’s aide. Then I asked the question that was really on my mind.
“Which are you—the lion or the tiger?”
Sharif didn’t even blink. “I am the tiger,” he said.
“But why do some people call you the lion?”
“I do not know. I am the tiger.”
“But why do you have two stuffed lions?”
“They were a gift. I like them.”
......
"We drove to the next rally. I looked at my BlackBerry and spotted one very interesting e-mail—a Human Rights Watch report, quoting a taped conversation from November between the country’s pro-Musharraf attorney general and an unnamed man. The attorney general had apparently been talking to a reporter, and while on that call, took another call, where he talked about vote rigging. The reporter had recorded the entire conversation. I scanned through the e-mail.
“Nawaz,” I said. I had somehow slipped into calling the former prime minister by his first name. “have to hear this.” I then performed a dramatic reading of the message in full, culminating in the explosive direct quote from the attorney general, recorded the month before Bhutto was killed and just before Sharif flew home... It was unclear what the other man was saying, but Human Rights Watch said the attorney general appeared to be advising him to leave Sharif’s party and get a ticket from “these guys,” the pro-Musharraf party, the massive vote riggers.
Sharif’s aide stared at me openmouthed. “Is that true? I can’t believe that.” “It’s from Human Rights Watch,” I said. “There’s apparently a tape recording. Pretty amazing.”
Sharif just looked at me. “How can you get a text message that long on your telephone?”
“It’s an e-mail,” I said, slightly shocked that Sharif was unconcerned about what I had just said. “This is a BlackBerry phone. You can get e-mail on it.”
“Ah, e-mail,” he said. “I must look into this BlackBerry.”
......
"After more than eight years of political irrelevance, Sharif was back. I sent him a text message and asked him to call. A few hours later, he did, thrilled with his victory.
“I saw a car today, where a man had glued blankets to it and painted it like a tiger,” I told him at one point. “Really?” he asked. “Yeah. It was a tiger car.”
He paused. “What did you think of the tiger car, Kim? Did you like the tiger car?”
Weird question. I gave an appropriate answer. “Who doesn’t like a tiger car?”
......
"This time, in a large banquet hall filled with folding chairs and a long table, Sharif told his aides that he would talk to me alone. At the time, I barely noticed. We talked about Zardari, but he spoke carefully and said little of interest, constantly glancing at my tape recorder like it was radioactive. Eventually, he nodded toward it. “Can you turn that off?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, figuring he wanted to tell me something off the record.
“So. Do you have a friend, Kim?” Sharif asked. I was unsure what he meant.
“I have a lot of friends,” I replied.
“No. Do you have a friend?”
I figured it out.
“You mean a boyfriend?” “Yes.” I looked at Sharif. I had two options—lie, or tell the truth. And because I wanted to see where this line of questioning was going, I told the truth. “I had a boyfriend. We recently broke up.” I nodded my head stupidly, as if to punctuate this thought.
“Why?” Sharif asked. “Was he too boring for you? Not fun enough?”
“Um. No. It just didn’t work out.”
“Oh. I cannot believe you do not have a friend,” Sharif countered.
“No. Nope. I don’t. I did.”
“Do you want me to find one for you?” Sharif asked. To recap: The militants were gaining strength along the border with Afghanistan and staging increasingly bold attacks in the country’s cities. The famed Khyber Pass, linking Pakistan and Afghanistan, was now too dangerous to drive. The country appeared as unmoored and directionless as a headless chicken. And here was Sharif, offering to find me a friend. Thank God the leaders of Pakistan had their priorities straight. “Sure. Why not?” I said. The thought of being fixed up on a date by the former prime minister of Pakistan, one of the most powerful men in the country and, at certain points, the world, proved irresistible. It had true train-wreck potential.
......
"In the sitting room, I immediately turned on my tape recorder and rattled off questions. Was Sharif at the negotiations? What was happening? He denied being at any meetings, despite press reports to the contrary. I pushed him. He denied everything. I wondered why he let me drive all this way, if he planned to tell me nothing. At least I’d get free food.
He looked at my tape recorder and asked me to turn it off. Eventually I obliged. Then Sharif brought up his real reason for inviting me to lunch.
“Kim. I have come up with two possible friends for you.” At last. “Who?”
He waited a second, looked toward the ceiling, then seemingly picked the top name from his subconscious. “The first is Mr. Z.”
That was disappointing. Sharif definitely was not taking this project seriously. “Zardari? No way. That will never happen,” I said.
“What’s wrong with Mr. Zardari?” Sharif asked. “Do you not find him attractive?”
Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, was slightly shorter than me and sported slicked-back hair and a mustache, which he was accused of dying black right after his wife was killed, right before his first press conference. On many levels, I did not find Zardari attractive. I would have preferred celibacy. But that wasn’t the point. Perhaps I could use this as a teaching moment.
“He is the president of Pakistan. I am a journalist. That would never happen.”
“He is single.” Very true—but I didn’t think that was a good enough reason. “I can call him for you,” Sharif insisted. I’m fairly certain he was joking.
“I’m sure he has more important things to deal with,” I replied.
“OK. No Mr. Z. The second option, I will discuss with you later,” he said. That did not sound promising.
......
"I needed to get out of there. “I have to go.”
“First, come for a walk with me outside, around the grounds. I want to show you Raiwind.”
“No. I have to go. I have to go to Afghanistan tomorrow.”
Sharif ignored that white lie and started to talk about where he wanted to take me. “I would like to take you for a ride in the country, and take you for lunch at a restaurant in Lahore, but because of my position, I cannot.”
......
"Once the interview was finished, Sharif looked at me. “Can you ask your translator to leave?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.” My translator looked at me with a worried forehead wrinkle. “It’s OK,” I said. He left.
Sharif then looked at my tape recorder. “Can you turn that off?” I obliged.
“I have to go,” I said. “I have to write a story.”
He ignored me. “I have bought you an iPhone,” he said.
“I can’t take it.”
“Why not? It is a gift.”
“No. It’s completely unethical, you’re a source.”
“But we are friends, right?” I had forgotten how Sharif twisted the word “friend.”
“Sure, we’re friendly, but you’re still the former prime minister of Pakistan and I can’t take an iPhone from you,” I said.
“But we are friends,” he countered. “I don’t accept that. I told you I was buying you an iPhone.”
“I told you I couldn’t take it. And we’re not those kind of friends.”
He tried a new tactic. “Oh, I see. Your translator is here, and you do not want him to see me give you an iPhone. That could be embarrassing for you.”
Exasperated, I agreed. “That’s it.”
He then offered to meet me the next day, at a friend’s apartment in Lahore, to give me the iPhone and have tea. No, I said. I was going to Faridkot.
Sharif finally came to the point. “Kim. I am sorry I was not able to find you a friend. I tried, but I failed.” He shook his head, looked genuinely sad about the failure of the project.
“That’s OK,” I said. “Really. I don’t really want a friend right now. I am perfectly happy without a friend. I want to be friendless.”
He paused. And then, finally, the tiger of Punjab pounced. “I would like to be your friend.”
I didn’t even let him get the words out. “No. Absolutely not. Not going to happen.”
“Hear me out.” He held his hand toward me to silence my negations as he made his pitch. He could have said anything—that he was a purported billionaire who had built my favorite road in Pakistan, that he could buy me a power plant or build me a nuclear weapon. But he opted for honesty.
“I know, I’m not as tall as you’d like,” Sharif explained. “I’m not as fit as you’d like. I’m fat, and I’m old. But I would still like to be your friend.”
“No,” I said. “No way.”
He then offered me a job running his hospital, a job I was eminently unqualified to perform. “It’s a huge hospital,” he said. “You’d be very good at it.” He said he would only become prime minister again if I were his secretary. I thought about it for a few seconds—after all, I would probably soon be out of a job. But no. The new position’s various positions would not be worth it.
Eventually, I got out of the tiger’s grip, but only by promising that I would consider his offer. Otherwise, he wouldn’t let me leave. I jumped into the car, pulled out my tape recorder, and recited our conversation. Samad shook his head. My translator put his head in his hands. “I’m embarrassed for my country,” he said.
After that, I knew I could never see Sharif again. I was not happy about this—I liked Sharif. In the back of my mind, maybe I had hoped he would come through with a possible friend, or that we could have kept up our banter, without an iPhone lurking in the closet. But now I saw him as just another sad case, a recycled has-been who squandered his country’s adulation and hope, who thought hitting on a foreign journalist was a smart move. Which it clearly wasn’t."
So, um, Mosharraf Zaidi had recently written an article in Foreign Policy called "The Talibanization of America", which is certainly worth reading for his intelligent recasting of the debate over Islam and Islamophobia in the US, though I have serious issues with his implication that the only valid debate is one between religiously-inspired identities. And with an English speaking Pakistani-American schooled at the Karachi American School who is more than a little fond of heavy metal and rap, sneeringly referring to governments in Pakistan as being run by "culturally dislocated Muslims." It's the sort of essentialism Mosharraf's otherwise well argued writing can do without.
But I bring that up only as a by-the-way talking point because what I really want to share today is the 1996 video below. It is of Christine O' Donnell, a Tea Party Express candidate and right-wing activist who defeated the favoured Republican candidate today in the party's Delaware primaries. As you may recall, the Tea Party is sort of the extreme right of the Republican spectrum whose members have been in the forefront of casting Barrack Obama as a (OMG!) Muslim communist and leading the fight against the New York Muslim Cultural Centre to be known as Cordoba House. According to analysts, the win for her has put a rather large stumbling block in the GOP's (Republican Party's) hopes of winning the Senate in the November elections, since they do not believe O' Donnell has a chance of winning the face-off against her Democratic rival.
In any case, here is the video from MTV that one TV programme dug up. It's O' Donnell's campaign against, um, well, you know...
The Taliban just get a bad rap sometimes, I tell you.
I have such mixed emotions about the WikiLeaks expose of the Afghan War Diaries and so many strands of thought that I want to pursue that this is going to be a difficult post. But I'm going to try and present at least some of them in as coherent a manner as I can. I hope you will bear with me. For my own sake (and probably for readers' sake as well) I will break up the different strands with sub-heads.
Is The WikiLeaks Expose A Good Thing?
Generally, yes. Any puncturing of the facade of unaccountable power is a great thing in my book. But particularly when it involves exposing the reality of a conflict that very few outside the conflict zone have even a basic understanding of, it is invaluable. We are fed so many lies by governments and the hand-in-glove media that narratives that challenge those fabrications and lead to questioning among the public are the only way to challenge that hegemony.
However. There are a couple of things which also bother me about the recent leak of apparently over 92,000 previously secret files. The first is based on taking the leaks at face value. As most of us know by now, the secret documents are mostly raw field intelligence reports, that is they are the reports filed by Western soldiers on the frontline reporting incidents, interactions and intelligence culled from various sources. These were meant to be internal documents for their superior officers. Not only do they reflect the competence and biases of the soldiers writing them up as well as contain cover-ups (after all, soldiers don't want anything bad to reflect on themselves in front of superiors), they have not been verified, double-checked or passed up through a filtration process that assesses their credibility via other sources. So, yes, there is a vicarious thrill to seeing what things are like for soldiers on the frontline or how a military operates in such a situation, and there may be very useful information to be gleaned from them, but in and of themselves, they are not terribly helpful for the average reader to understand what is actually going on. Readers who take these reports at face value - as most readers are tending to do - are likely to mire themselves further in the "fog of war" rather than cut through it, to paraphrase Mahir Ali in Dawn today.
As a parallel, imagine for a moment having access to an investigative reporter's notebook that details every observation, every possible lead, every interview, every hunch, every rumour or remark heard. Many of these leads, hunches and rumours could be simply false and not all observations, interviews and overheard remarks are helpful in clarifying the story. Now imagine having access to the notebooks of thousands of reporters working on the same story and believing everything as true. That is the danger of treating these documents as gospel, just because they were classified as secret and have now been leaked.
Julian Assange: mystery man
The second thing that makes me uneasy is WikiLeaks itself. I know this will probably sound terribly conspiratorial, but I cannot say with 100 percent surety that it is not all part of some grand psy-ops strategy: you know, build up an institution with calculated cred boosters (e.g. the leaked Iraq helicopter footage) and then use it to release info you want to release. It's not like it has never been done before, although of course never on a global level. Okay, I know I'm probably sounding like a nutter now but bear with me. Yes, I've read the wonderful profile of maverick Julian Assange (the driving force behind WikiLeaks) in The New Yorker, but I never quite understood the over-dramatized cloak and dagger stuff. Are we really being asked to believe that a man as publicly recognizable as Assange, who jets from continent to continent, can escape being tracked by international security agencies? Or that WikiLeaks, which claims to run entirely on donations (including credit card donations), does not have a single bank account or money transfer that is trace-able? Really?
Ok, forget my questions about WikiLeaks. Is it really beyond the realm of possibility for WikiLeaks and Assange, no matter how pure of heart they are, to be used by psy-op warriors wanting to put certain things out in the public realm? Are we really being asked to believe that 92,000 plus secret documents can be easily smuggled out of the Pentagon (on a Lady GaGa CD, no less, if some reports are to be believed) without anyone having any inkling? Anything is possible I guess but the probability on the other hand is a different matter.
Forgive me for being a doubting Thomas and slightly cynical. But these are the reasons I would not take the leaks at face value even as I accept the mining of the data for useful information. I hope my doubts about WikiLeaks are misplaced though.
Do We Learn Anything New in the Leaks?
I guess the answer to this depends on how much you know of Afghanistan and how much you have followed the story of the conflict there. For most old hands, there is nothing sensationally new in the documents (at least from what has come to light so far). But you do get a lot of details and a very good idea of the way much of them are covered up. For example, the number of attacks on Coalition Forces (CF) and the far larger number of civilian casualties than have been reported previously. Or the almost comic attempts of American soldiers to win hearts and minds among the local populace. And most of all you understand in the minutae why this conflict will end unsuccessfully for the US.
Is This The Smoking Gun Against Pakistan?
In one word, no. The allegations against Pakistan's military establishment for playing a double game in Afghanistan may well be true (I will come back to this later) but these documents do not prove it. At best they remain allegations. Most of the documents detailing the ISI's backing for the Taliban are, as already pointed out, based on questionable intelligence sources, either Afghan intelligence operatives (who have well known hostility to the ISI) or paid informers (who have a vested interest in selling sensational stories). Some of them are plainly laughable, such as the alleged ISI plan to poison Western forces' beer supplies. According to the intel, the alcohol was going to be purchased from Miranshah in Waziristan - yeah, right! - and Peshawar, mixed with poison and then airdropped and trucked into Afghanistan for Coalition Forces to consume (it would seem from this that the CF are quite keen on the FATAbrau brand and short of their Budweisers).
One of the most respected Afghanistan experts and a former European Union deputy head of mission in Afghanistan, Michael Semple, had this assessment to make about the reports in The Guardian (by far the most level-headed assessment I have read so far in the Western press and certainly worth reading in its entirety):
"Although most of Afghanistan's trade comes through Pakistan and Pakistan was the main place of refuge for Afghan refugees during the 1980s, the most popular way of establishing credentials as an Afghan nationalist has long been to denounce Pakistan as the enemy.
Among the 180 reports of ISI interference, most are drawn from informants or briefings from the Afghan intelligence service, who describe in lurid detail direct involvement of ISI officers in trying to wreak havoc inside Afghanistan. The bulk of them can now be dismissed as unreliable either with the benefit of hindsight (they warn of impending disasters which never happened) or on the basis of implausibility (conveying details the source could not have known) and because they fit in with a pattern of disinformation (stories constructed from recurrent themes and familiar characters).
One set of informants most likely passed on these reports because they found there was a market for them. More politically motivated informants, such as those Afghan officials who supplied briefings which US personnel later wrote up as intelligence, probably wanted to strengthen US backing by turning the US against Pakistan."
It is important to reiterate that most of these intel reports have not been been verified or confirmed as correct. The one exception to this (as far as I can tell so far) may be a Polish intelligence report about an allegedly ISI-backed impending attack on the Indian consulate in Kabul a week before it happened. That intel was apparently corroborated by US intercepts of communication, which were presented to the Pakistan government by the CIA Deputy Head Stephen Kappes.
Which brings me back to the issue of whether the ISI (or at least elements within it) really is involved in backing the Taliban in Afghanistan. There has been enough chatter around the issue for one to believe that there may be some kernel of truth to the matter. I have no proof and none has been conclusively presented but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to support the thesis - after all, could the insurgency succeed without backing from any quarters in Pakistan? But putting your realpolitik hat on, try and think about it slightly differently. There are two questions:
Q1. Is the ISI's double-game directed against the US or against India, whose influence it is trying to counter in Afghanistan? I am no fan of the ISI and its shenanigans but given the mindset of the Pakistan army and the agency's mandate, would it not be completely understandable for it to work to undermine Indian influence on Pakistan's western flank? And who would be a more logical partner than the opposition to the government that it believes is completely in India's pocket? And it's not as if Indian intelligence agencies do not have their own goals in Afghanistan and have not actively pursued the objective of marginalizing Pakistan's interests in the country. Now, you may argue that the problem is that by using the Taliban to undermine Indian influence, the ISI would necessarily be pitting itself against US interests as well. And you may be right. But I am willing to bet (if this hypothesis is true) that the ISI believes it can limit the fallout - it would probably be as wrong as it has been in the past with such things but it would still believe it.
Q2. In strategic terms, is Pakistan hedging its bets vis a vis the Taliban, so entirely shocking? Given past history of US involvement in the region, given how badly the US war in Afghanistan has gone, given the history of broken promises regarding safeguarding Pakistani interests in the region (vis a vis India) and given the increasing domestic pressure in the US to pull out, is it entirely surprising if Pakistan should? Especially if it feels the US will eventually leave behind a mess like the last time it pulled out? Especially if it fears that once the US forces move out, it will have to confront hostile neighbours on both sides?
Now, I should clarify that I would be the last person you would think of as a Taliban supporter. I am merely attempting to argue within the security state paradigm, the way the military probably is thinking about this. It's not something I like (because of what the Taliban represent and what the other repercussions would be on Pakistan) but given the geostrategic imperatives of the region, it is something I can almost understand.
The biggest irony about the WikiLeaks saga is that while the documents may not have provided any smoking gun of Pakistani backing for the Taliban, the dismay in Western (particularly US) audiences over the failing war effort will almost surely lead to increasing pressure on their governments to pull out forces sooner rather than later...which would help entrench Pakistani military opinion that backing the Taliban is the sensible thing to do, as an insurance policy for the coming mess.
We are screwed either way.
So, Why The Inordinate Focus On Pakistan?
I wanted to end this post with my assessment of the possible game plan around the leaks. Particularly a comparison of how a marginal media player such as The Guardian has presented the findings as opposed to the major media player, The New York Times, since the two vastly different takes tell us a lot about the stakes involved. Plus how the issue has been dealt with by other media players in interested areas such as India. But this post is already too long and I am completely exhausted. So I will defer this portion for another separate post (or perhaps an update on this one) when I am slightly refreshed. Till then.
‘Attack on Ahmedis conspiracy to repeal laws against them’
Wednesday, 09 Jun, 2010
"LAHORE: A gathering of the leaders of 13 religious and political parties in Lahore claimed that the attack on Ahmedis on May 28 was part of a conspiracy to repeal the laws against them, BBCUrdu reported.
The meeting was held in an office of the Majlis Ahrar Islam in Lahore's MuslimTown. The parties concluded that a conspiracy was in place to debate the laws against Ahmedis, the report said.
Maulana Zahidul Rashdi, who is a founding member of the Muttahida Tehrik-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwat and also the Secretary-General of the Pakistan Shariat Council, read the joint statement at the meeting’s conclusion: The attack on Ahmedis is being used as an excuse to generate suspicions regarding the concept of khatm-i-nabuwat.
The gathering was attended by leaders of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Jamiat-i-ulema-i-Islam Fazlur Rahman group, Jamaatud Dawa and Markazi Jamaat-i-Ahl-i-Sunnat among others.
During the meeting, Maulana Ilyas Chinioti, a member of the PML-N and the Punjab provincial assembly, condemned Nawaz Sharif's statement in which he had sympathised with the Ahmedis and called them his brothers.
The meeting's participants demanded that Nawaz Sharif immediately withdraw his statement."
So, if we understand these hyper-hyper-moron mullahs correctly, either the Ahmadis perpetrated a massacre in their own community to force people to question the laws against them (yeah, that really got Pakistani opinion in an uproar didn't it?), OR the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) mercenaries who have been identified as the terrorists are actually pro-Ahmadi, liberal activists.
Wow. How much bhang do you think these guys consumed at this meeting? I think we deserve to know.
Five Rupees recently had a post about how Diplomacy Is Weird, basically because diplomatic double-speak is the engine international relations thrives on.
You want really weird diplomacy? How about this from Peter Galbraith, who used to be No. 2 in the UN mission in Kabul and was fired after accusing Afghan President Hamid Karzai of widespread fraud during the last presidential elections:
“I don’t know how to put it diplomatically, so I guess I won’t — Karzai is a weirdo,” Galbraith said.
I may be wrong but I'm fairly sure this is the first time the word 'weirdo' has been used publicly in international strategic analysis.
Hamid Karzai: High Official? (Source: AP)
Galbraith, has earlier accused Karzai of smoking hash, which he feels is why the Afghan president tends to fly off the handle and make erratic statements. To be fair to him (Peter, that is), who wouldn't think that if the man most regard as the West's puppet in Afghanistan, able to survive only because of round-the-clock security provided by American commandos, were to suddenly threaten to join the Taliban?
Great. So now we have to contend with a hostile and high, weirdo puppet! But it does explain why Pakistan always referred to him as the "'tokin' Pakhtun" in the Northern Alliance government.
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.
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 SerenaHotel, 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.
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