CPJ.Pakistan.Roots.of.Impunity

FROM THE MILITARY’S PERSPECTIVE, WHY WOULD COMMANDERS
WANT REAL REPORTING TO EMERGE DURING THEIR OPERATION IN SWAT?
told him not to leave the hotel. I called the managing
director of Geo in Karachi. An hour later [Khankhel]
was killed with 32 bullets. The message? ‘Don’t badmouth
us.’”
When I asked the Pakistani security official about
Mir’s accusations, he said, “Let him interpret what he
wants to. But to the best of my knowledge we don’t
indulge in that kind of activity.”
Killing or threatening? I asked. “Both,” he said.
I told him I was surprised to hear that, given the
number of journalists who feel threatened by the ISI.
He stood by the claim nevertheless, and countered
that journalists listen to “reason and logic.”
“When I talk to someone,” he said, “I talk with
reason and logic and give my point of view. You want
to buy it? Fine with me. You don’t want to buy it? Fine
with me.” He said he could not speak for everyone
at the ISI. This was just how he conducted his own
meetings. Then again, if you encourage a journalist to
buy your point of view, and you are with the ISI, your
words carry far greater implications than those of an
average citizen.
Mir, who was often accused in the past of having too
close ties with the ISI and militants, told me, “I used
to tell colleagues, ‘Don’t trust the Taliban and you’ll
reduce the threat 50 percent. Maybe the state institutions
are better.’ We used to think they were on the
same side as us to get rid of extremists, but that was
our miscalculation,” he says now. In fact, the agency’s
philosophy is not that different in its view of killing
than that of the Taliban. As Mir told me, “Retired
agency officials tell me, ‘We believe that killing a human
being for the protection of the larger national
interest is not a bad thing.’”
From the military’s point of view, why would
commanders want real reporting to emerge
during their operation in Swat? It would expose
too much about the army, particularly the
ISI’s complicity in the rise of the Swat Taliban, and it
would undermine their propaganda. A BBC editor told
me that in 2009, the network was running FM broadcasts
in Charsadda near Mohmand. “The military shut
it down after the Swat operation in 2009. They told us,
‘We are running a propaganda campaign in Pakistan
and anything that goes against that screws up this
campaign.’” Tellingly, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
and Voice of America do not even have transmitters or
towers in Pakistan. “Even our transmitters are in Muscat,”
in Oman, said the BBC editor. “There’s no mobile,
The security establishment was furious with Husain Haqqani, ambassador
to the United States, for issuing visas to so many U.S. citizens.
AP/ANJUM NAVEED
no FM, no television in FATA. Until we have a strong
media run by the tribesmen there is no way out of the
poverty, illiteracy, and militancy.”
The killing of Musa Khankhel was not the only
journalist fatality to occur during the Swat operations.
In August 2009, Janullah Hashimzada, an Afghan journalist
who reported for The Associated Press, CNN,
Al-Arabiya, and Shamshad, a Pashto-language Afghan
TV station, was shot dead in a bizarre ambush. He was
on a passenger coach driving through Khyber Agency
when four gunmen driving a white sedan, the standard
intelligence agency vehicle, intercepted the bus. They
forced the bus driver out and then walked down the
aisle and shot Hashimzada in the forehead, killing him
on the spot. “Janullah was a very good friend of mine,”
said Daud Khattak, a journalist from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
who is now working for RFE/RL in Prague.
“Just a few days before he was killed he interviewed
the Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, and in his
story he said they interviewed him in the Hyatabad
area of Peshawar.” In other words, Mujahid was openly
living in one of the main settled cities of Pakistan. “We
told him it would be a problem,” Khattak said. “Zardari
was on his U.S. visit at the time.”
ROOTS OF IMPUNITY 23