Pakistan’s Express News has been target of attacks by the TTP, including one which claimed the lives of three media workers.
Condemning the cold blooded assassination of three media workers belonging to a private television channel, the Pakistani media has united against the culture of impunity that has gripped the country.
The audacious attack happened on 17 January in Karachi, when a group of men on motorbikes, fired a volley at close range inside Express News’ van stationed in North Nazimabad. The sole survivor was a cameraman. Soon after, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) contacted the television station and claimed responsibility for the attack.
TTP spokesperson, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said: “To kill certain people is not our aim”. The group said it targeted the media workers because they were “part of the propaganda against us”.
Analyst and director of media development at Civic Action Resources, Adnan Rehmat, believed the attack was “meant to browbeat and cow down a media that is becoming more outspoken and starting to criticize the Taliban”.
“It’s clearly a message to the whole of Pakistan’s independent media — to intimidate it and make it toe the militants’ line,” agreed Omar R. Quraishi, editor of the editorial pages of the English language Express Tribune, which is Express News’ sister organisation.
“What needs to be understood by all journalists and media groups in Pakistan is that an attack on Express Media Group is an attack on the whole media,” he pointed out.
“Express maybe in the firing line at the moment, but this is nothing short of an attempt to intimidate the media itself, and it will work,” journalist Zarrar Khuhro, of English daily, Dawn newspaper, formerly of ET, also conceded.
“This is because the state itself is so supine in the face of terrorists,” he said and added: “How can we expect one media group, or journalists as a whole, to take a stand when those who are supposed to protect the citizens of this country are bent upon negotiating with killers?” He was referring to the ruling Pakistan Muslim League’s insistence give peace a chance by holding dialogue with the Taliban.
Khuhro was, however, not entirely sure why ET was being singled out by the Taliban. ” Previously there have been rather insane social media campaigns against Express and it has been accused by the lunatic fringe of running anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam campaigns,” he told Index.
Ehsan said the Express TV had been attacked because the Taliban group considered its coverage “biased” and that it would continue to attack journalists they disagreed with. “Channels should give coverage to our ideology; otherwise we will continue attacking the media,” Express TV quoted him as saying.
This was the third such attack on the Express Media Group — which includes the Express Tribune and the Urdu-language daily Roznama Express, in addition to the television channel — in the last six months. In August and then again in December, unidentified gunmen shot at their newspaper office, in Karachi. Taliban claimed responsibility for the December incident.
But what is frustrating is that not one perpetrator has ever been caught. “This is a spectacular failure of the state and of the media sector’s ability to defend itself,” said Rehmat.
“If those involved in previous attacks had been caught, perhaps they would not have been emboldened to continue this campaign against the media,” said media analyst Owais Aslam Ali, secretary general of the Pakistan Press Foundation.
Rehmat finds a “fairly consistent pattern” in “these string of attacks” with over 100 journalists and media workers killed since 2000.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found soaring impunity rates in Somalia, Pakistan, and Brazil in 2013. The CPJ publishes an annual Impunity Index, which calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. “Pakistan’s failure to prosecute a single suspect in the 23 journalist murders over the past decade has pushed it up two spots on the index. A new onslaught of violence came in 2012, with five murders,” stated the report.
But these attacks have put the Pakistani media in an ethical conundrum: How much airtime to give to the Taliban to keep them appeased?
“Media is now confronted by a double whammy challenge — wail about terrorism while simultaneously giving air time to those who perpetrate this violence,” said Fahd Hussain, news director at Express News.
“There is no easy answer and no formulaic editorial decision making process. What makes it even harder for the media to take a clear stance is the deep fissure within the media industry itself,” he told Index.
But experts say while training of journalists towards safety can help mitigate the problem to some extent, the government must act proactively as well.
“What is needed is for the government to appoint a special full-time prosecutor dedicated to investigating attacks against the media and for the media houses to adopt and implement best practices in safety protocols,” said Rehmat.
The ambulances transporting the bodies of the six young men killed in Gadap Town on the outskirts of Karachi (Image: Ppiimages/Demotix)
In a fresh wave of violence that gripped the southern port city of Karachi at the turn of the new year, six young devotees of Sufi saint Ayub Shah in Gadap Town, on the outskirts of the city, were killed on January 7. Their bodies were found by the caretaker the following morning in a mud-house close to the shrine.
A note left near the dead, allegedly by the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP), stated that a similar fate awaited anyone visiting the shrine. The police told AFP the note said: “Stop visiting shrines!”
Sufism, strongly practiced in Pakistan’s Sindh province, is opposed by the Taliban who follow the Wahabi and Salafist school of Islam.
The brutal killings have reinforced the long-standing fear among the people of Karachi that the militant group which infiltrated the city a few years ago has now not only consolidated itself, but is also imposing its belief system.
“The part of Karachi where this incident took place is a known stronghold of the Taliban,” explained Imtiaz Ali, correspondent for Dawn newspaper. He said Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl’s body was also found in Gadap. Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, also one of the four men who founded the Taliban movement in Afghanistan in 1994, was arrested from there in 2010. Gadap has often been in the news during anti-polio campaigns which have had to be suspended in recent years after attacks on vaccinators and health workers.
Just a month back, 25-year-old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, had warned of the Talibanisation of Pakistan. “They are surrendering our culture, our history, our identity and our religion based on a lie cloaked in an imported, fictionalised version of Islam,” he said at an event announcing a two-week cultural festival to take place in February.
While Karachi is no stranger to violence, Ambreen Agha, research assistant at New Delhi’s Institute for Conflict Management, agreed with Zardari. This particular incident, she said, should definitely ring alarm bells for Pakistan’s security apparatus as it indicated the “deeper penetration” of Pakistani Taliban in the city.
“The TTP’s upward mobility should be taken as a serious threat for the concerned agencies,” she said, warning that the gradual trickling down of the “Talibanised ideology” posed a potent threat to the establishment.
It also puts a big question mark on the targeted “operation” carried out by security forces and law enforcement agencies in the city, which have been ongoing since September. Touted as a success by the government, Sindh governor Ishratul Ibad last week voiced his satisfaction, saying there was a “significant decrease” in target killings and kidnappings for ransom.
Labelling the operation nothing but “buffoonery and horseplay”, Agha, however, pointed out: “The tact with which the outfit [Taliban] carries out its activities and the pattern that they follow in the metropolitan city suggests something more than what meets the eye.” She added: “TTP’s operational success suggests implicit collusion with the gangsters and their political patrons.”
“The claims of success by the Rangers [paramilitary force] should be questioned,” said Zohra Yusuf, the chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Naeem Sadiq’s, a citizen of Karachi, says the militant attacks “are a result of the armed private militias, so faithfully encouraged by the government’s own ‘proliferation of weapons’ policy.” He believes the only way to prevent incidents like Gaddap, is to cleanse the city of weapons and has filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan calling for this. “De-weaoponise all individuals and groups – starting with the world’s most militant parliament with its 69,473 prohibited bore weapons!” he said.
When Shamsheer Khan, learnt about the drone strike on Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban supremo, on Nov 1, the 45-year old taxi-driver in Karachi, went to the mosque and prostrated before God to help the young fighter. “I prayed that if he were fighting a jihad against the Americans, Allah should protect him and if he had expired in way of jihad, to elevate him to the highest position of an Islamic fighter.”
Mehsud was killed in a US drone strike in the Dande Darpakhel, in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan. He had succeeded Tehrik Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) Baitullah Mehsud, in 2009, after the latter was killed in a similar attack by the drones.
Mehsud has claimed to have orchestrated several fatal attacks on the Pakistan army and also had a hand in the 2010 suicide attack in Afghanistan in which seven CIA agents were killed.
Strangely, Khan’s empathy for a perpetrator of violence finds resonance across the country where anger against drones is high, a reason for such an extreme anti-American sentiment.
Shortly after Mehsud’s death was confirmed, leaders from religious-political parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami’s (JI) Munawar Hasan called him a “martyr” and Jamiat Ulema-i Islam’s (JUI) Fazlur Rehman went a step further saying anyone killed by US is a martyr.
The taxi driver justified the violence saying: “When the leaders of this country have sold their souls to the West, somebody has to bring them back to the true path of Islam and if violence is what is needed, then be that.”
But Mosharaf Zaidi, a political analyst has no illusions that Mehsud is none other than a “mass murderer.” Calling Mehsud “a martyr was a grave tactical error and a dangerously immoral thing to do,” he said, adding. “The TTP is a terrorist organisation that deserves neither any sympathy from Pakistan, nor from any other country,” he added.
Zahid Hussain, defence analyst and author blames it on a “complete disarray” he sees in Pakistan’s policy. “Nawaz Sharif wants to normalize relations with the US, but there is no clarity on how he wants to deal with the issue of rising militancy in Pakistan that also threatens the US interests in the region.”
When news of Mehsud’s death reached the rulers, the narrative changed slightly. Though not directly empathising with the TTP, Pakistan’s interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar said the drone attack had scuttled the peace process that the government was about to start with the Taliban. Imran Khan, also in favour of talks with the Taliban, threatened stopping the NATO supply line going through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is ruling, if drone strikes did not end.
“The TTP shura [council] had frequently derided the notion of peace talks and, even before the death of Mehsud, had not committed to negotiations,” pointed out said Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, noted peace activist and an academic.
Still, if negotiations have to happen, Zaidi said these “must begin with the organisation’s [TTP] acceptance of the Pakistani constitution and the sovereignty of the Pakistani republic over Pakistani territory.” He, however, was sceptical of saying “no sign of such an acceptance” seemed to exist.
To a nation, in the throes of daily violence, last week’s events have only led to historic bewilderment bordering on the dangerous. A wave of confusion seems to have enveloped the people blurring the distinction between a hero and a villain.
“It only confuses an already shattered national discourse in Pakistan about rule of law, national sovereignty and a bright future for Pakistani children,” said Zaidi.
Hoodbhoy finds Mehsud being termed a martyr incredulous. “It indicates some kind of collective mental disorder!” he said, adding: “The Pakistani mind, whipped into hyper anti-Americanism by the media and parties like PTI and JI, appears to have lost its sense of balance.”
To Zaidi, Pakistan’s handling of the TTP has been nothing short of tragic. He puts the blame squarely on both the government and political leaders who helped “create a narrative in which Mehsud, seems to have become a victim of drones.” He said the drone strikes would not exist if the Pakistani state had taken care of the criminals and terrorists that have been “festering and building up in FATA and beyond since well before 9/11”.
With the new TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah though, there is little doubt among the Pakistani people over who their foe and versus friend is. Fazlullah had virtually held the valley of Swat hostage and embarked on a systematic, violent movement to wipe out dissent back in 2007-2009. Last year it was his men who had shot Malala. Eventually the army had to step in and flush him and his followers out of the region.
To Hoodbhoy, this change of guard has given the Pakistani state a “narrow window of opportunity to hit Fazlullah and his band of terrorist thugs before he consolidates his power.”
But, he questioned: “Will we be able to find the courage and strategic wisdom? He answered it himself with a grim: “I doubt it!”
On 10 Nov, the Inter Services Public Relations, which is the official PR cell of the army, condemned the use of the word martyr to describe Mehsud, saying it misleading and irresponsible.
Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted by the Taliban for fighting for girls’ education, will address the United Nations today.
The speech will be her first public appearance since the attack in October 2012. Malala, who won Index on Censorship and Doughty Street chambers Advocacy award this year, was shot in the head and chest by an unknown assailant while she was on her way home from school. The Pakistani Taliban spokesman took responsibility for the attack, saying that the young girl was “anti-Taliban and secular”.
Watch Malala’s speech live here:
At 11, Malala began blogging anonymously for BBC Urdu about living in Swat, a Taliban-controlled district in Pakistan. She eventually became an outspoken advocate for girls’ education, and brought international attention to the importance of education for children. Since her attack, she has established the Malala Fund, an organisation that demands education for all.
UNESCO has called the right to education a “fundamental human right”, that serves as a foundation for all other rights, including freedom of expression. With 200 million children denied the basic right to an education around the world, Malala’s fight is important now more than ever.
Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, accepted the Index award on his daughter’s behalf saying: “I want to give a message to the world. I didn’t do anything special. As a father, I did one thing, I gave her the right of freedom of expression. All fathers and mothers, give your daughters and sons freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is a most important right. The solution of any conflict is to say the right thing, to speak the truth.”
Listen to what Malala’s father had to say at this year’s Index awards:
