Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
Although I also am more inclined to believe that this is an ISI hit job, however, I seem to think that there is about 50% chance that the US is behind this as well. The objective for them is simple. To create more frustration against the current setup and to further the CIA's claim that Pakistan is almost a failed state. (forgot where they left off, did they say it is a failed state or is heading towards failure?)
you may b right..it might be one off Taliba/CIA job, but wat are our agencies doing then? selling cucumbers?. They dont seem like answerable to the ones who feed them, the bloody civilians, through their tax money.
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
you may b right..it might be one off Taliba/CIA job, but wat are our agencies doing then? selling cucumbers?. They dont seem like answerable to the ones who feed them, the bloody civilians, through their tax money.
Who benefits the most from Saleem Shahzad’s death?
**His death is likely to increase sell of his current book,“Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11: 9/11 and Beyond” many fold,his family and his publisher probably hatched a plan to kill him. Being a reporter on the beat he was hardly at home anyways. ** Happy?
I hope you do know that almost every other day a body of a young baloch is found dumped on roadside, brutally tortured. Almost always, that unfortunate young man was picked up by goons(aka ISI or agency) a few days ago like, saleem shahzad. Of cource, there is no proof of any involment of any of the agency. Who do you believe is doing this killing?
I guess u will be satisfied only if u see a video of some body from isi shooting the baloch with killer clearly wearing a ISI photo ID. :DAlso the photo on the ID should be current as a slight discrepancy between photo and his face will make u doubt the authenticity of the video. Even after the identity of the goon in the video is verified, some “foreign hand” could always have photoshoped the video:D
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
But there is a difference in that BLA / BRA and bunch of other outfits there are actively fighting an insurgency against Pakistan and its people with teachers and doctors routinely being shot dead.
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
Please be patient while you read this, I am still reeling. Still paralyzed by anger and numb by grief. Please be patient while I pick up the right words to protest the brutal killing of **Saleem Shahzad](http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/01/my-courageous-friend-and-colleague.html), a father, a husband, a brother, a son — a journalist.**
I am afraid that I might not find the right words. I doubt that no matter how many candles we burn, no matter how many protests we call, no matter how many times we shout and sloganeer it might never make a difference.
It’s like a ritual — frantic exchange of calls and texts, announcing the venue for a protest. It’s often the same people with similar placards, even the chants haven’t changed: “Zalimo jawab doh, khoon ka hisaab doh”.
Even the silence after is familiar. How do I defend the state we are in? What questions do I ask? In a state where the essence of honor, dignity and sovereignty have been distorted to justify the appearance of mutilated bodies dumped on roadsides; how do I even begin to mourn?
In his last piece, Shahzad wrote about the involvement of people from inside the navy, facilitating the attack on PNS Mehran. For this he was **summoned for briefing](http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/30/journalist-saleem-shahzad-goes-missing.html), he left a note with the Human Rights Watch, expressing concern over the threatening calls he had been receiving from the intelligence agencies.**
Right now senior analysts at various news channels are discussing the odds, “Are the intelligence agencies really involved in this murder?”, “There has been hearsay on their involvement in sending out threats and torture but they don’t just kill people!” “Was he really killed because of that piece he wrote? Could it be something else?”
It strikes me tremendously odd that the ISI’s involvement in torture and making threatening calls to journalists is spoken of with such casualty. It appears to be a norm — even if torture inevitably leads to death, aided by a hushed burial.
It’s a pity that these questions are being asked, knowingly that Shahzad’s torture that led to his death is not a unique case. Journalists like Wali Khan Babar, Zaman Ali and Hayat Ullah Khan have been killed in the line of duty.
Khan, who was an investigative journalist working in North Waziristan, abducted by ‘unknown assailants’ and found eight days later killed and dumped in a ditch near his house.
***“Abducted four days after he had taken photos of the aftermath of what Pakistani officials had said was an accidental bomb-making explosion that killed Abu Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian believed to be a senior al Qaeda operative. ****Hayat Ullah’s *](Tribal Areas - A Journalist In The Tribal Areas | Return Of The Taliban | FRONTLINE | PBS)photos, which showed clearly identifiable fragments of US Hellfire missiles in the rubble, directly contradicted the government’s story …here were five bullet holes in his head and his wrists were bound with government-issue handcuffs. The government promised investigations, two of which were delivered to Islamabad in late summer 2006. As of September 2006, neither report has been released.”
The statement issued by the ISI is reflective of the relationship between our intelligence agencies and the people. It begins with denying involvement, showing sympathy to the aggrieved family and ends with a much familiar tone; a defensive one.
“It is regrettable that some sections of the media have taken upon themselves to use the incident to **target and malign the ISI](http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/02/isi-denies-role-in-saleem-shahzad-killing.html).” If that is indeed a message for the aggrieved family, the three children who have lost their father, I am afraid it might not be understood fully. It might be slightly difficult to focus on sovereignty and honor while your father’s battered and exhumed corpse is brought back home.**
When Salman Taseer’s body was riddled with bullets, we were told to be cautious, to practice self-censorship. When images of Shahbaz Bhatti’s blood splattered car popped up on our televisions screens, we were informed that we would be hunted down. Now that Saleem Shehzad’s tortured corpse has been discovered we are told to remain silent — I don’t know about you, but for me that’s not an option, never was.
*“Koi aur toh nahin hai pas-e-khanjar aazmai, * Hum hi qatal ho rahay hain, Hum hi qatal kerrahay hain”
“There is no one else holding the dagger,
We are the ones dying. We are the ones killing.”
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
^^ I wonder if the Pakistani people will ever be awakened enough to carry out a Tahrir square event, our nation is always looking for the * messiah* instead of thinking that it is their own responsibility.
CIA’s War Against ISI, Pakistan PSYOPS are one of CIA’s oldest weapons. And ISI is its latest target. The goal? Encouraging defections and rebellion and reducing morale inside armed forces and the Pakistani nation. The message? Do America’s bidding in the region or else.
DR. **FARRUKH SALEEM **| Sunday | 22 May 2011 | The News International WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha and the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate that he commands are under an asymmetric attack of a unique kind. The Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), the eyes and ears of the army, is in the midst of a ‘war of the mind’. The weapon is one of the oldest in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) stockpile. It is non-lethal but a definite combat multiplier. The weapon is all about ‘sight and sound’ and is dispersed either by the media, newspapers, magazines, diplomats, courts or by face-to-face interactions.
The CIA executes psychological operations (PSYOP) through the agency’s Special Activities Division (SAD) which in turn is a part of the National Clandestine Service. The US Army also conducts PSYOPs through the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) which is a dedicated PSYOP unit. The US Navy has a special-purpose radio/television dedicated to psychological operations units. The US Air Force’s 193rd Special Operations Wing uses a modified C-130 Hercules to provide an aerial platform for CIA’s PSYOPs.
During WWI, the US undertook PSYOPs through the Propaganda Sub-Section of the Military Intelligence Branch. In WWII, white propaganda was conducted by the Office of War Information and black propaganda by the Morale Operations Branch. During the Vietnam War the CIA-along with US Special Operations Forces-planned and executed the Phoenix Program. The CIA has also executed extensive PSYOPs in Korea, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Sweden and during the two Gulf Wars.
The CIA’s new target is the ISI. CIA has been carefully studying the ISI through defectors, intelligence reports and some native help. On or around May 3, a comprehensively reinforced Tactical PSYOP – targeting a specific enemy combat group – was launched in order to cajole, coax and impel the ISI into doing what the CIA considers are America’s national objectives.
The CIA’s Tactical PSYOP is targeting to deplete ISI’s esprit de corps by severely disrupting ISI’s internal cohesion. CIA is bent upon three things: reducing morale, promoting dissension and inducing defections.
Simultaneously, CIA’s Strategic PSYOP is targeting the Pakistani population at large. The goal here is to fracture ISI’s reputation within the Pakistani population and consequently to create a rift between the two – population and the ISI.
The CIA’s tools include demoralizing the target, instilling fear in-tandem with a diplomatic onslaught. Carriers of these tools include The New York Times, The Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Voice of America, Senator John Kerry, Marc Grossman, Admiral Mike Mullen, Tahawwur Hussain’s trial in Chicago, summoning of DG-ISI by a Brooklyn court, talk of ‘stealth drones’ and many others.
The American military mind is not much concerned as to how the message is carried – or by whom – but the impact of the message on the targeted recipient. In 2010, Lt General Caldwell, Commander, Nato Training Mission in Afghanistan, ordered a PSYOP targeting visiting American senators and 4-star generals to influence them into sending additional troops. Under US law, PSYOP units are prohibited from undertaking “PSYOP missions on domestic audience.” General Petraeus has now ordered an investigation into the alleged PSYOP against American senators.
To be certain, Osama’s elimination is purely tactical with little or no strategic value. America’s strategy of an ‘honorable exit’ hasn’t changed, before or after Osama’s death, but the tactical advantage is now being used to bring ISI down to its knees.
The eventual aim is to maneuver an ISI cave-in without having to fight for it. Sun Tzu, the greatest military strategist that ever lived, said: “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.” Dr. Saleem is a columnist for The News International. Reach him at [EMAIL=“[email protected]”]farrukh15[at]hotmail.com
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
A journalist, Babar Sattar, on ISI’s denial. He cites his own experience as well. His story is eerily similar to Saleem Shahzad’s story.
Let us assume that the ISI is being truthful here. How did we come to this pass where our leading intelligence agency is the prime suspect in the brutal murder of a journalist and, conscious of such a perception, feels obliged to issue a contradiction? **Was Umar Cheema of The News really tortured by spooks **or did he just imagine security personnel shaving his head? Was Kamran Shafi’s house never attacked? Is there some bright line rule that people will be roughed up but not killed? Or are the countless reported episodes of intelligence personnel intimidating journalists all lies? **Has the US-Indian-Israeli nexus successfully manipulated the minds of our media and intelligentsia? **Is this the best explanation for the suspicion that segments of our national security apparatus arouse?
I was “invited” to the ISI headquarter to meet with a brigadier who looked after internal security. I was offered a “tea break” while being informed that people within the GHQ had taken offence at my article. The brigadier read out “objectionable” excerpts from my article back to me and read from hand scribbled notes that spread over half-a-dozen pages to educate me on how I was wrong. He spoke for about 45 minutes before I sought permission to interrupt his speech and engage in a dialogue. At some point in this conversation he told me quite categorically that the army was more patriotic than the rest of us!
I wasn’t directly threatened at any point. However, I was informed, as a matter of historical record, that there was a time when the agency dealt with people only with the stick; but now things were different. During the meeting I felt obliged to reiterate my fidelity and loyalty to my country and was later ashamed and angry with myself for doing so.
I did not walk away from the ISI headquarters with a sense that this was another free exchange of ideas with a state official who disagreed with my opinion on how best to secure our national interest. In what is hard to describe accurately,** I felt an eerie sense of anxiety and a need to protect my back. Not from the Taliban or terror groups but from the same security apparatus that is mandated by law to protect and defend my constitutional right to life, liberty and physical security.**
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
Hmm now this is strange and fishy, usually telephone companies keep call record for about 6 months to one year and at least the previous months details are required for billing purposes! Saleem Shahzad’s call records for the last 18 days is missing, hmmmm…it cant be a coincidence, and I dont see how taliban could have that managed as well…i think all clues are pointing towards the most powerful stake holder in Pakistan…
Saleem Shahzad’s cell phone record erased
By Asad Kharal
Published: June 7, 2011
LAHORE:
The record of slain journalist Saleem Shahzad’s cell phone activity has been mysteriously erased – with the network log of the 18 days leading up to his abduction and murder being wiped clean from the system.
According to data obtained by The Express Tribune, the “last” call made by Shahzad was back on May 12.
Saleem Shahzad worked for Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and Italian news agency Andkronos International. The police are yet to register an abduction-cum-murder case against Shahzad’s killers.
The case is starting to look a lot like that of Umer Cheema, another journalist who was kidnapped and tortured recently and whose cell phone data was also deleted from the system in a similar manner.
Hamza Ameer, the brother-in-law of the slain journalist, found Saleem Shahzad’s mobile phone switched off when he tried to contact him at 5:42 pm on May 29.
According to data obtained by The Express Tribune, Shahzad made his “last” call on May 12 near a cell phone tower installed atop a bank in Islamabad’s Blue Area, Plot No94, Deen Pewalian in Islamabad.
Shahzad, according to cell data, was in Islamabad between May 1 and 8:27 pm on May 12.
The “second last” call received by Shahzad was made by his wife and it lasted slightly over a minute (the call was made between 12:16:05 and 12:17:19).
His wife’s “last” call received by Shahzad lasted just 13 seconds (made between 7:51:16 and 7:51:29).
Furthermore, Hamza Ameer said that police are yet to register a proper case of abduction and murder of Saleem Shahzad.
He said that he had filed a complaint after Saleem Shahzad had gone missing (The record shows the complaint No43 was filed at 2:20 am on Monday, May 30).
The complaint reads: “My brother in-law Syed Saleem Shahzad, the bureau chief of Asia Times Online, left today at 5:30 pm to appear in an interview on Dunya News (television), but since that time he has been missing. I request you to please probe the matter and search for him.”
Later, the Margalla police station had converted the same complaint into an FIR, without applying the section for abduction-cum-murder, Hamza Ameer said.
Another FIR was also registered in Mandi Bahauddin and Shahzad’s autopsy was also conducted in the district headquarters (DHQ) hospital in the same town on May 30.
The IGP on the direction of the CM Punjab has issued a notification regarding constitution of three-member committee headed by DIG Shoaib Dastgeer with a mandate to probe the matter.
DIG Shoaib told The Express Tribune that the investigators would meet the heirs of the slain journalist. He said that statements of eyewitnesses, if there are any, will also be recorded.
He said that because the autopsy of dead body of slain journalist had been conducted in Islamabad so according to law the murder’s section of 302 Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) will be added by the Margala police station where the FIR was first registered. He claimed that the team would finalise its report quickly.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 7th, 2011.
Correction, June 7, 2011
Due to an editing error, the original article incorrectly cited CPRC as the source for section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code.
The writer was a Ford Scholar at the Programme in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security at UIUC (1997) and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Studies Programme
Dear General Pasha,
I write this letter to you in the wake of the gruesome and gratuitous murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, friend to many, including myself.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, the agency you head, is being accused of Saleem’s murder. You must also know that the ISI is widely reviled and dreaded at home. For an agency that was set up primarily for strategic intelligence, this is quite an achievement. It is accused of driving in its own lane, monitoring the media, kidnapping, torturing and sometimes killing dissenters, political and otherwise, determining, arbitrarily, what Pakistan’s national interest is and how best we should go about pursuing it.
You must also know that some former officers have not only admitted to electoral fraud, rigging, making and breaking of political alliances, buying people through a mix of carrots and sticks, and browbeating the media, but consider having done so as part of their remit and in the best national interest. Perish the thought that any one of them would say peccavi, since some actually boast about it.
Whispers there always have been. But now much is being said aloud. The ISI is not accountable to anyone; it is all-powerful; it can kill mercilessly and, in this case, it has killed Saleem, so go these whispers. What would you say to this? Shrug and move on, as if it makes no difference, that this is about a few flies buzzing around, a minor nuisance at worst? The man, who now lies buried after being tortured to death, leaves behind three children and a wife. To me this does not look like anything minor.
And what has the agency you head done so far? Nothing, beyond getting an unnamed official to say that while the “unfortunate and tragic death of Syed Saleem Shahzad is a source of concern for the entire nation”, “the incident should not be used to target and malign the country’s security agencies”. Well, sir, to me this is totally unacceptable. What makes the security agencies exempt from criticism or accountability, especially if they are considered enemies by the very people they are supposed to protect?
I believe in giving everyone a fair hearing but the ISI has to do much more than get an unnamed official to issue a feeble condolence and follow it up with a veiled threat to the media to deserve such a hearing. And as far as maligning the agency is concerned or knowing what national interest is, this being no time for mincing words, let me assure you that I understand the theoretical and practical dimensions of statecraft better and more deeply than your entire agency. And I am not the only one.
Now, for a moment, let’s assume that the ISI has not killed Saleem. Let’s also assume that much of what is being said about the ISI it is the product of a heat-oppressed civilian brain, not a reality. Perhaps you would still like to know why people think such things of the ISI. So, here goes.
Nation-states are not biological entities; they are, to use the cliché, ‘imagined communities’. This, as the starting point, should give you some idea about how easily the concept of the state and its interest can be problematised. Democratic states garner the loyalties of their people through a sense of sharing and participation, through constitutionalism. In comparison, totalitarian and oppressive states use fear to keep the flock together. History shows that the latter break up at some point. No amount of oppression can keep the people chained; it is only a matter of time. Instead, oppression begets violence and deep turmoil. The problem with oppression is thus that it attracts what it sets out to avoid. Therein lies both the irony and the paradox.
Allied with this point is the idea of civilian supremacy, the fact that while the state becomes overarching, those representing it at any point of time have to operate on the basis of accepted and acceptable rules of the game. They are all accountable through two levels of agency. The first and primary level of agency is granted by the people through elections to their representatives; the second, a much more restrictive level of agency, is accorded by the peoples’ representatives to bureaucratic institutions, including the military and its intelligence agencies.
You, sir, are therefore a servant twice over, as are all your officers and other personnel. You are answerable to our representatives and those representatives are answerable to us.
Obviously, theory does not match fact in Pakistan and it is this anomaly which has brought the country to the brink of disaster. I have said this before and I will say it again: The military-ISI combine has no business defining Pakistan’s interest. That is our job and we, the civilians, will do it through our representatives. Your job is to implement, not formulate, policies.
Since it is your job to identify threats, you must understand the deep fault lines developing in this state. Today’s disarray is the product of flawed policies and even more flawed attempts at nation-building. Strategic vision, like charity, begins at home. If the people of this country feel proud to be Pakistanis, you will have that strength at your back. If they don’t, that makes you very weak too. And you can’t beat people into submission; nor kill them and expect all will be hunky-dory.
It is all about the fundamentals. Unless you get the fundamentals right, no amount of cloak-and-dagger stuff will reduce the threats the country faces. In fact, given what the people think about the agency you head, one of the biggest evolving threats appears to emanate from an organisation whose very reason for existence is to identify and evaluate threats to this state. Could there be a deeper irony than this?
I met you the first time in November 2007 when you were director-general military operations. I know you to be a straight-talking soldier. I would expect that you would do everything to prove that Saleem was not murdered by the ISI. Conversely, if the spoor is traced back to your agency, that you would ensure that whoever is responsible for it, no matter how highly placed, would face the law as a common murderer. That is the only honourable thing to do and nothing less would do, or be acceptable. That is also the only way you can save this country. Published in The Express Tribune, June 8th, 2011.
I couldn’t sleep the night that Saleem’s death was confirmed. The fact that he was tortured sent me back to a chilly night last September, when I was abducted by government agents. During Saleem’s funeral service, a thought kept haunting me: “It could have been me.”
Mourning journalists lined up after the service to console me, saying I was lucky to get a lease on life that Saleem was denied. But luck is a relative term.
Adil, my 2-year-old son, was the first person in my thoughts after I was abducted. Journalists in Pakistan don’t have any institutionalized social security system; those killed in the line of duty leave their families at the mercy of a weak economy.
When my attackers came, impersonating policemen arresting me on a fabricated charge of murder, I felt helpless. My mouth muzzled and hands cuffed, I couldn’t inform anybody of my whereabouts, not even the friends I’d dropped off just 15 minutes before. My cellphone was taken away and switched off. Despite the many threats I’d received, I never expected this to happen to me.
Sure, I had written many stories exposing the corrupt practices of high-ranking officials and pieces criticizing the army and the intelligence agencies. After they were published, Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s prime security agency, always contacted me. I was first advised not to write too much about them and later sent messages laced with subtle threats. But I never imagined action was imminent.
On Sept. 4, I was driven to an abandoned house instead of a police station, where I was stripped naked and tortured with a whip and a wooden rod. While a man flogged me, I asked what crime had brought me this punishment. Another man told me: “Your reporting has upset the government.” It was not a crime, and therefore I did not apologize.
Instead, I kept praying, “Oh God, why am I being punished?” The answer came from the ringleader: “If you can’t avoid rape, enjoy it.” He would employ abusive language whenever he addressed me.
“Have you ever been tortured before?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“These marks will stay with you forever, offering you a reminder never to defy the authorities,” he replied.
They tortured me for 25 minutes, shaved my head, eyebrows and moustache and then filmed and photographed my naked body. I was dumped nearly 100 miles outside Islamabad with a warning not to speak up or face the consequences.
The following months were dreadful. I suffered from a sleep disorder. I would wake up fearing that someone was beating my back. I wouldn’t go jogging, afraid that somebody would pick me up again and I’d never return. Self-imposed house arrest is the life I live today; I don’t go outside unless I have serious business. I have been chased a number of times after the incident. Now my son asks me questions about my attackers that I don’t answer. I don’t want to sow the seeds of hatred in his heart.
When Saleem disappeared, I wondered if he had been thinking about his children, as I had. He had left Karachi, his hometown, after receiving death threats, and settled with his wife and three children in Islamabad. From there, he often went on reporting trips to the tribal areas along the Afghan border. Tahir Ali, a mutual friend, would ask him: “Don’t you feel scared in the tribal areas?” Saleem would smile and say: “Death could come even in Islamabad.” His words were chilling, and prescient.
The killing of Syed Saleem Shahzad is yet another terrifying reminder to Pakistani journalists. He is the fifth to die in the first five months of 2011. Journalists are shot like stray dogs in Pakistan — easily killed because their assassins sit at the pinnacle of power.
When Daniel Pearl was brutally murdered by militants in Karachi in 2002, his case was prosecuted and four accomplices to the crime were sentenced. This happened only because Mr. Pearl was an American journalist. Had he been a Pakistani, there would have been no justice.
**Today, impunity reigns and no organization is powerful enough to pressure the government to bring Saleem’s killers to justice. Journalists have shown resilience, but it is hard to persevere when the state itself becomes complicit in the crime. Now those speaking up for Saleem are doing so at a price: they are being intimidated and harassed.
**
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
ANOTHER journalist’s story who was abducted and badly tortured, guess by whom again!
Guardian journalist was abducted, blindfolded, beaten and burned Waqar Kiani talks about attack outside Islamabad for the first time
[http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/11/24/1259075171101/declan_walsh.jpg](http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/declanwalsh) Waqar Kiani was driving out of Islamabad just after sunset when two vehicles, a Toyota jeep and a saloon car, ran him off the road. Two men yanked him out, bundled him into the jeep and applied a blindfold. Fifteen minutes later they reached a safehouse where Kiani was tied to a chair and greeted by an interrogator. The abuse started.
Kiani, a 29-year-old Pakistani journalist, was working for the Guardian at the time, July 2008. Two days earlier he travelled to Karachi on assignment for London-based reporter Ian Cobain, who was working on a story about alleged cooperation between Pakistani and British intelligence in the detention and abuse of suspected militants. The trail led Kiani to the headquarters of the Intelligence Bureau, a civilian spy agency, in an upmarket city suburb. Realising he was being followed, Kiani hastily returned to Islamabad. There, he found his apartment had been broken into and turned upside down. Some papers were missing. Hours later, he disappeared.
At the safehouse, the interrogator shone a bright light in Kiani’s face while others punched him in the kidneys and burned his arms with cigarettes. Accusing him of being a “British agent”, they peppered him with questions that indicated they had details of his bank account, his movements and his interactions with two Guardian reporters.
Kiani told them he was a journalist. “We don’t care about the Guardian, whatever that is,” one said. “We are just doing our job.”
During the beating Kiani vomited and was refused access to food, water or a toilet. Hours later the men bundled him back in a vehicle and started driving. He could only hear voices. “What shall we do with him?” said one. “Cut off his legs,” replied one. “Cut off his fingers,” said another, “so that he will not be able to write anything in future”. Another suggestion came: “We should shoot him and throw him in the river.”
Three hours later, Kiani was dumped on the roadside in Mianwali, 120 miles southwest of Islamabad. If he told anyone of his ordeal, they warned, they would abduct his wife, rape her and post a video of the assault on YouTube. They pushed him from the vehicle, still blindfolded, warning him not to look back or they would shoot.
The following day I went to see the interior minister, Rehman Malik. He was evasive, suggesting a “private gang” was behind the attack but promised to investigate. He assigned two policemen to guard Kiani’s home. I contacted Human Rights Watch, who offered advice.
But Kiani’s ordeal wasn’t over. For days afterwards, strangers loitered outside his apartment block. He received threatening phone calls, including one that threatened the “ultimate punishment” for having sought help. Local police were reluctant to register a case. Once, after being followed by an unmarked car, Kiani turned up at my house at 3am, terrified. He stayed the night.
The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, wrote a private letter to the Pakistani government, expressing his concern. Eventually the harassment stopped.
Now Kiani is back at work, most recently covering the death of Osama bin Laden. To this day he cannot identify his abductors. The Guardian did not publicise the abduction at the time out of fears for Kiani’s safety, but now he has agreed to talk about it for the first time.
“Our government and military establishment want their own kind of stories in the papers,” he said. “That’s why abuses continue to happen.” Meanwhile the interior ministry – which oversees the Intelligence Bureau – has not resolved the case.
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
Sach Bolnay ki Saza
Ya wohee Army hai jis k hosllay buland krnay k liye ham nay Taranay parhay or naghmay bhe gaye. In ki kamyabi k liye duain keeen or Masajid main Navawil bhe parhay, Is liye k yah log us wakt Pakistan se pyar krtay thay or Pakistan k liye jan bhee qurban kr daytay thay--Lekin aj wo army nahee rahee in ko iktidar, ayashi or Najaiz pesay kamanay ke buri tarah lat parh chuki hai. Inhain Lalach, hirs or Dolat kamanay k nashay nay Andha kar dia hai or ya apni Okat bhool chukay hain k in ka kaam Mulk ke hifazat krna hai na k Mulk ko lootna. In ko agar koee Saleem Shahzad ya Omer cheema in ka Asal kaam yad krata hai or in k darmayan kali bheron ko bay nakab krta hai to takleef kis baaat ke?????
Kia sach bolna Jurm hai or Hazoor agar ya Jurm hai to Dunya ki koee takat, kisi bhe saleem shahzad ko ya Jurm krnay se nahee rok sakti.Qaum k ya sahafi betay kabi sach bolnay se nahee Ghabrain gay. Lekin hamain is cheez ka Adraak krna hai k Sach bolnay ki ya saza na janay kab tak Qaum k Wafadar baiton ko milti rahay ge.
Re: Journalist who published story of nexus between Navy and Taliban is missing/ murd
The long sulk
Ayaz Amir
Friday, June 17, 2011
Corps commanders? Our guardians seem more like cry commanders these days, wearing their anger and hurt on their sleeves and refusing to come out of the sulk into which they went after Abbottabad…a place destined from now on to be less associated with Major Abbott and more with that warrior of Islam from whose parting kick we have yet to recover, Osama bin Laden.
True, May has been a cruel month for the army and Pakistan, with troubles coming not in single spies but entire battalions: the Mehran attack, Frontier Corps marksmanship in Quetta, Sindh Rangers zeal in Karachi, and the death by torture of the journalist Saleem Shahzad… this last bearing all the hallmarks of insanity tipping over the edge.
Which raw nerves had his reporting touched? Who could have kidnapped him on a stretch of road probably the securest in Islamabad? Mossad, RAW, the CIA, the Taliban? Definite proof we don’t have but circumstances point in an uncomfortable direction. If this is another conspiracy against Pakistan we ourselves have written its script.
Still, since when was sulking an answer to anything? It may suit kids and pretty girls but it makes an army command look silly, especially one prone to take itself so seriously.
Terseness should be a quality of military writing: that and precision. The rambling nature of the statement issued after last week’s corps commanders’ conference is likely to leave one baffled. It rails against the “perceptual biases” of elements out to drive a wedge between the army and the nation; contains such bromides as the need for national unity; and in part reads like a thesis on Pak-US relations, which it should not have been for the corps commanders to delineate in public.
The army has “perceptual biases” of its own. It should keep them to itself.
The National Defence University, one of the biggest white elephants in a city dedicated to this species, seems to be an idea ahead of its time. Pakistani generals putting on intellectual airs is no laughing matter. Half our troubles can be traced to ‘intellectual’ generals.
Admittedly, these are troubling times for Pakistan and the army command post-Osama is under a great deal of pressure. But the answer to this should be grace under pressure, coolness under fire, rather than desperation and hurt pride.
There are legitimate questions arising from the discovery of Bin Laden’s hideaway in Abbottabad. We should answer them without losing our cool. And, preferably, we should avoid the temptation of climbing the rooftops and beating the drums of national pride and dignity. Why is it so difficult for us to understand that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have compromised our sovereignty more than all the drones fired by the CIA?
And, please, let’s get rid of the notion that Islamist militancy is a response to the American presence in this region. Uncomfortable as this truth may be, Pakistan had become the crossroads of international jihad much before 9/11 and the subsequent American invasion of Afghanistan. The ISI was up to its neck with Afghan and Kashmir jihad much before these events. It won’t do to hide our heads in the sand and pretend that none of this happened or that the world is responsible for our woes.
In fact it is the other way round. The CIA footprint in Pakistan is a response to the jihadi footprint in this country. The Raymond Davises came afterwards. The flaming warriors of Al-Qaeda and its local affiliates, many of them trained and nurtured by the army and its subordinate agencies, came earlier. And if we are to be honest with ourselves, the CIA footprint, unconscionably large as it may be, could never come close to the enormous dimensions of the jihadi footprint on the variegated landscape of the Islamic Republic.
If half the passion the army is now showing in defence of national sovereignty in the wake of the Abbottabad embarrassment, had been displayed against Al-Qaeda-inspired jihadism we wouldn’t have been in the mess we are in now.
**The world has moved on, other concerns have risen to the fore and no one, anywhere, has any patience for these games any more. They just don’t fit into the framework of present-day events. Why can’t we move on?
Let’s disabuse ourselves of another notion. There is no international conspiracy against Pakistan. We are not that important an international player to merit that kind of attention. No one is eyeing the nebulous frontiers of our sovereignty. We are the authors of our own troubles and the sooner the army command starts accepting the truth of this the sooner can begin the task of rectification.**
Let us be firm with the Americans. Let us not allow them the freedom of our country. But at the same time it makes little sense to go out of our way to pick quarrels with them. It is fine to arrest local informants who may have helped the CIA to reach Osama bin Laden’s doorstep in Afghanistan. But this will be more convincing if some of our anger is also directed at our own failure to get a whiff of his presence in Abbottabad.
**Five long years secreted in a compound that should have excited the suspicion of the local police station let alone our vaunted intelligence outfits. So whether we like it or not there is a case to answer and this is best done calmly instead of going red in the face.
A line should also be drawn between the larger national interest and individual discomfiture. Abbottabad was not only deeply embarrassing for Pakistan as a whole. At a personal level it must have been deeply distressing for the army chief, Gen Kayani, and the ISI head, Lt Gen Pasha. They had confronted the CIA in the Raymond Davis affair, lecturing their American counterparts about violated sovereignty and the dictates of national honour. The Americans, knowing more than we did about the trail leading to Osama bin Laden, took our inflamed looks and angry words lying down. And our senior commanders puffed up their chests in the belief that they were standing up to the Americans.**
Gen Kayani declared that the back of terrorism had been broken. At a ceremony in the GHQ to remember our dead and wounded in the war in Fata, he said that prosperity could not be bought at the expense of national honour. And then May 2 came and the wind was taken out of our sails. The army command was shell-shocked and did not know what to say. Statements coming out of the Foreign Office and the GHQ soon after the American operation make for awkward reading.
Even so, whatever the blow to individual egos, Pakistan’s interests vis-à-vis the US should be projected with as little rancour and bitterness, and as much equanimity and composure, as possible. Our differences with the US should not be personalised.
True, this is not the time to attack the army or the ISI. Harsh winds are buffeting Pakistan from all directions and we will face them if all of us stand together. But the army command should also emerge from the deep bunker it went into after Abbottabad. It must emerge into the light and adjust itself to the new state of play.
It would also help if the Foreign Office, instead of always taking its cue from elsewhere, were to learn to think for itself. We do no favour to India by talking to it. It is in our interest as well. India would push its own agenda, which may be Mumbai or anything, as it has every right to do. We should push our agenda. But prior to foreign secretary-level talks what is the use of proclaiming through a loudspeaker that Kashmir was the “core issue” and it was imperative to discuss it? Do we want to step into the future or are we determined to stay in the past?
