Editor in Chief, 'The
Baloch Hal'; Author; Contributing Writer
Pakistan has announced a reward of 50 million rupees (approximately
$520,000) for anyone with information about people involved in a failed plot to
assassinate a renowned television journalist last week in Islamabad, the
nation's capital.
Geo Television, Pakistan's first 24/7 private news channel,
said Hamid
Mir, the host of popular talk-show Capital Talk was
the prime target of a car bomb plot. The attackers had fixed a bag with a half kilogram of explosive
material below the senior journalist's car seat, which was immediately removed
by the bomb disposal squad after Mr. Mir's neighbors spotted the suspicious
bag.
The
Pakistani Taliban have accepted responsibility for attempting to kill Mr.
Mir, saying that they have some other journalists on their 'hit-list.' The
Taliban spokesman, Ahsanullah Ahsan, did notdisclose the names of other journalists his
group intends to target in the future.
According
to Pakistani newspaper the Express Tribune, "Mir was on
his way to his office and the bomb was apparently planted when he stopped at a
market."
Mr. Mir,
who has worked with Pakistan's largest media conglomerate, the Jang Group, for
several years as a talk-show host and a columnist,
has recently been publicizing the death threats he has been receiving,
presumably from the Pakistani Taliban.
On
December 20, 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published the details of the warnings Mr. Mir had
received but, at the same time, acknowledged the grim reality that
"Pakistan's journalists cannot rely on the government for their own
protection, and the threats at times even seem to come from the
government." The CPJ, nonetheless, admired Mr. Mir's courage to speak in
public by describing his immediate response as "a textbook case of how to
handle the steady stream of intimidation that journalists face."
In
a column published in the Urdu language Daily Jang on October 18, 2012, Mr. Mir once again
informed his readers that he had received a fresh seven-page long letter from
the Pakistani Taliban entailing death threats. Publicly confronting the
Taliban, the senior journalist wrote, "as far as death threats are
concerned, you [Taliban] are not more powerful than General Pervez Musharraf.
We were not afraid of him nor can you intimidate us. You can kill me but cannot
suppress my voice."
While I
have extensively written about the issues of press freedom, censorship and deadly attackson journalists in Pakistan, Mr. Mir's
case, on its part, merits special attention because it reflects the new
dynamics of a worsening relationship between the Pakistani State, the press and
the non-state actors.
The
military has historically pampered the clergy and sections of
the media to consolidate its grip over political power and promote the pan-Islamic
and anti-India socio-political philosophy. While doing so, the military
patronized Islamic groups, such as the Taliban, and members of the media. Over
the past decade, the balance of power has drastically shifted in Pakistan where
the Taliban and the media have not only emerged as strong centers of power but
they have also significantly minimized sole reliance on the military for their
survival.
Hence,
gone are the days when the Pakistani military micro-managed the clergy and the
media. But it also does not mean that the latter have fully divorced the
powerful military. What is different this time is the uncompromising desire of
each of these entities to remain fiercely independent without necessarily
endorsing and blindly following the policies of other power centers.
That
said, the military, the media and the Taliban are all in a state of cold war
with each other. They have not broken up ideologically. They still share the
same pan-Islamic and anti-India, anti-U.S.A. vision. What they are unwilling to
do is to work together in an old fashion. They believe it is the time to gain
more power instead of sharing it.
In the
past ten years, since the liberalization of the media in Pakistan,
journalists have increasingly become popular, powerful and partisan.
Mr. Mir
is one such victim of Pakistan's changing political and security landscape.
Now, the old trick to remain closely associated with one power center in order
to stay safe does not seem to be working well for journalists. For
instance, Syed Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times, who was murdered last year, was believed to
have very close contacts within his country's military. When, Mr. Shahzad
crossed the 'red lines,' as they are unofficially defined by the military, and
went on to expose al Qaeda's penetration inside the army, the reporter was
immediately killed and the army was suspected of orchestrating the gory murder.
Mr. Mir,
who escaped Monday's plot, is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
While his old allies, the army and the Taliban, seem to have detached him, the
Pakistani liberals no longer sympathize with him, either, because Mr. Mir, a
die-hard right-wing journalist, calls them all "liberal fascists."
Mr. Mir
has remained such an avid admirer of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and
regularly refers to him him as "Sheik" [a respected elder] out of
respect in his columns. On May 5, 2011, he glorifiedthe world's most wanted terrorist as a
'smiling man' who had ended up as "truthful" after being killed by
the United States.
"The
Abbottabad Operation has given al Qaeda one such martyr that even the world's strongest
army was scared of his dead body. The level of fear [of bin Laden among the
American soldiers] was so high that they did not have the courage to bury his
dead body anywhere in the world... bin Laden's killing is not the victory of
the Americans; it was their defeat," he wrote.
In another column, on October 18, 2012, Mr. Mir recalled
his meetings with the al Qaeda chief and insisted that the Taliban should learn
to respect women the way "Sheik Osama" did.
Some of
Mr. Mir's recent articles depict him as more of a right-wing provocateur than a
professional journalist. Besides his praise of bin Laden, Mr. Mir's
glorification of those who kill fellow citizens in Pakistan under the infamous blasphemy law is also deeply disconcerting.
While
writing in Daily Jang on November 1, 2012, Mr.
Mir opposed the supporters of a secular Pakistan
because, according to him, a secular state does not protect zealot Muslims who
kill the people that commit blasphemy against Islam. Citing and glorifying at
least two instances when Muslim extremists killed alleged 'blasphemers,' Mr.
Mir described one such Muslim zealot, Ghazi Ilm-ud-din (1908-1929), as a
"martyr," indicating that Pakistan should retain its current
blasphemy laws.
Furthermore,
Mr. Mir regularly uses his editorial space in support of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, one of the FBI's most wanted
terrorists who was sentenced to 86 years by a Manhattan judge in
September 2010 for shooting at U.S. agents.
"I
feel as much sorry for my sister [Afia Siddiqui] as a brother does for his
sister," he wrote in his October 18, 2012, column, "it is
this reason when [C.I.A. contractor] Raymond Davis was arrested, I suggested
that Dr. Afia should be released in return of Davis' handover to the United
States." On November 15, 2012, he alleged that Pakistani "liberal
fascists" were portraying 'C.I.A.'s lies" against "that
oppressed woman" because... in the first place, they don't like her for
the headscarf she wears." On November 8, Mir expressed his displeasure over President Obama's
reelection for the same reason.
"I
am not happy over Obama's election," he wrote, "because I am sad over
the rejection of Dr. Afia's appeal [in the court]... as long as Dr. Afia
remains in the American custody, spending billions of aid in Pakistan will not
help to improve America's image in Pakistan."
It is
important for the Pakistani government to take quick measures to ensure the
safety of Mr. Mir and all other journalists in the world's most dangerous place
for reporters. This case raises the fundamental question of whether or not
journalists should publicly eulogize and glorify people who either call for
violence against humanity or have been convicted of having links with terrorist
groups. The other crucial question is how journalists should draw a line
between journalism and
activism.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/malik-siraj-akbar/how-the-taliban-turned-against_b_2195549.html
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