Angels of death
By Huma Imtiaz, May 31, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - 3:27 PM
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Nearly two days after he went missing from Islamabad and less than a week after filing the first of a two-part story about negotiations between Pakistan's navy and al-Qaeda, Syed Saleem Shahzad's tortured body has been discovered near Jehlum, Punjab. Many actors, including journalists and Human Rights Watch, have blamed his kidnapping and subsequent execution on Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI).
While we may never know the full story behind Shahzad's disappearance and murder, his death fits into what has become a disturbing pattern. Journalists are picked up when they are driving down the streets, whether in the capital Islamabad or a village, and eventually are dropped off -- tortured in the case of Umar Cheema, who was abducted by security agencies after he filed a series of reports on the Pakistani military -- or killed, as in the case of Hayatullah Khan, whose body appeared after he tried to cover a reported U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's tribal areas. Khan's assassins have never been found.
Reporting on the security services for Pakistan's electronic media is a tricky, deadly game. In most cases, journalists end up censoring themselves, fearful of the either verbal or physical repercussions. In some cases, when journalists do file reports, channels refuse to air them -- again, fearful of upsetting the men in Rawalpindi.
Last week, the Chicago trial of Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistan-Canadian charged with providing material support to David Headley in preparation for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and a plot to attack the Jyllands-Posten newspaper office in Denmark received next to no coverage on Pakistani TV. Headley claims he was trained by the ISI and had handlers from the spy agency that helped him through the reconnaissance and planning of the Mumbai attacks. I reported on the trial for a Pakistani print publication, but it was deemed too "sensitive" to be aired or talked about on TV (though it did appear in the press). However, Headley's statement today that the top leaders of the ISI were not involved in the plotting of the attacks has suddenly made it to the headlines on various news channels.
This silence and then sudden explosion of coverage was startling, and an uncomfortable but not wholly unexpected reminder that thousands of miles away in Chicago, where the ISI does not have any authority, their shadow still extends over our work as journalists.
In the 1990s, journalists in Pakistan used to refer to members of the ISI as farishtas, which in English means "angels." "The angels are at work," they used to remark, when election results were delayed, a reference to the ISI rigging the polls to achieve a desired result. For journalists, reporting on these angels increasingly means exposing yourself to great danger, and the ever-present threat of disappearing in the middle of the night, perhaps never to be seen again.
Huma Imtiaz works as a journalist in Washington DC.
BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani Army/ISI own Pakistani State
Contrived silence to unfavorable news and then sudden explosion to favorable news over the same event (of Headley trail in Chicago) in Pakistani news media shows how the public opinion is manipulated and built up that has led to such Islamic radicalization of entire Pakistani society by design of powers to be in Pakistani government controlled and owned by Pakistani Army/ISI.
Democracy is just a façade tolerated by Pakistani Army to continue the gravy train of foreign aid after Musharraf‘s departure.
There was a reason why ex-CIA official Bruce Reidel called ‘this jihadist Frankenstein’ monster in 1990s to the creation of Pakistani Army and Intelligence. There was a reason why Bob Wooward said that ’Pakistan is living a lie’ to news media after publication of his book titled ’Obama’s wars’.
Pakistan boldly holds the Western world to ransom. It garners generous financial aid and military supplies from the US and has successfully projected itself as recourse of last resort in its geographical theatre. It runs circles around international sanctions and bans by nurturing a large number of home-grown terrorist outfits forever changing nomenclature. In addition, it maintains seemingly endless supply of freelance non-state actors that allow it the fig-leaf of plausible deniability.
Its hard to say which option is worse: that Kiyani sahib and the other overdressed buffoons in GHQ cannot control the terrorists operating in their own agencies or that they are the ones running the jihadist faction? Bad news either way. Very bad news.
Worn out on the reactionary, whiny Pakistani apologists
This problem was cultivated by their ISI. Yes, some US funding found its way to the Taliban via the ISI. But that US funding was not intended for the Taliban... whereas the ISI purposely cultivated the Taliban as a counterweight to Afghan governments unfriendly towards Islamabad and friendly towards Delhi.
The Pakistanis are now self-righteously indignant about our 'violating their sovereignty' to kill Bin Laden. So they're upset that we came in to kill a man who killed 3000 people... a man their government apparatus was hiding... and now they're indignant and conspiratorially-minded about the US and India supporting the Taliban to kill Pakistanis. Pakistan is one big psychopathic personality. If they just do themselves in, we'd be better off. There is no easy way around their paranoia about the US and India. They're just completely uninformed, prone to conspiracy theories, and supporters of people who target and kill innocent men, women, children, journalists, and others for political gain.
This crap about "every country does it" is also getting stale .What other country (name ONE) trained half a million of its OWN citizens as international terrorists in multiple islamist terrorist organizations and then lost control of most of them? Name ONE.
Pakistan is sui generis. The army needs to be put under adult supervision before they blow everyone up.
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