Posts Tagged ‘Ahmed Quraishi’

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Will Ahmed Quraishi be the next memogate victim?

Friday, December 9th, 2011

The latest version of the media’s ‘memogate’ parlour game has turned from who knew what and when about the infamous memo to who knew what and when about the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May. Mansoor Ijaz invented this new version of the game by first alleging that Husain Haqqani and Asif Zardari secretly knew about the raid before it happened. He provides no evidence, of course, and his claim flies in the face of all logic and reason, but since when have logic and reason been required rules for our media parlour games? In fact, already the field has expanded to speculation that UK High Commissioner Wajid Hasan also knows something he’s not telling, including a front page article in The News that asks, “Will Wajid Hasan be the next memogate victim?” But why limit the field to only PPP officials? Surely there are plenty of people who can be brought to dock on the same quality of  speculation and innuendo.

Let’s begin with Ahmed Quraishi. On 6th May, Ahmed Quraishi was the guest on Voice of Russia‘s radio programme. During the interview he said that,

“At some level, maybe not the entire government, but at some level Pakistan definitely was on board with the United States before the operation was carried out and some of the logistics that were involved in that operation do indicate that it would not have been possible to carry out the operation in its entirety without a major, a good level of cooperation on the Pakistani side”.

Quraishi goes on to say that the Abbottabad operation “of course also vindicates the US intelligence community [and] the US military in Afghanistan”. Interesting.

Then on 10th May, Ahmed Quraishi further wrote that the operation that killed Osama bin Laden was a joint Pakistan-US victory. Here is how Ahmed Quraishi described the scene:

“Crucial and critical intelligence from Pakistan and the United States succeeding in pinpointing the location of al-Qaeda terror chief. ISI gave decisive leads on the trusted courier of bin Laden. The CIA and the US military put together a plan to take him out. By virtue of the more advanced American surveillance technology, Washington filled in the gaps and sealed bin Laden’s fate.”

Ahmed Quraishi then goes on to criticise the military for not explaining their larger role in the operation.

“Instead of ‘admitting’ failure, it was better for the army chief to object to CIA hijacking a joint victory and turning it into a one-sided victory and a one-sided attack on our military and ISI. And we could have certainly done without our foreign secretary quoting US national security adviser to confirm to our media that we did scramble some fighter jets in the end. The weak media management capabilities of our civilian and military bureaucracies are breathtaking.”

Neither is Ahmed Quraishi the only one who was making such statements. Let us take a moment to revisit the front page of The Nation on 3rd May, just after the raid:

The Nation front page of 3rd May 2011

The Nation front page of 3rd May 2011

The front page article by Sikander Shaheen quotes “top level official sources” saying that “200 Pakistan Army men provided ground support” for the operation while “four helicopters of the Pakistan Army hovered over the fortress-like hideout of al-Qaeda chief at Thanda Choh”. Shaheen goes on to quote “military sources” that “US dignitaries thanked the military leadership of Pakistan on intelligence sharing and the successful operation”.

It seems that perhaps not only Ahmed Quraishi but Sikander Shaheen, military and intelligence leadership, 200 jawans and four helicopter pilots should be under suspicion.

Let us be clear: We have not seen any evidence that Ahmed Quraishi, Sikander Shaheen, Wajid Hasan, Husain Haqqani, Asif Zardari…or anyone else had any advance knowledge or was privy to any secret information about the raid. During the aftermath of the raid, there was great confusion and many people were making guesses about what happened. Because of this, it is easy to take even the words of a democrat like Wajid Hasan or a hyper-nationalist like Quraishi and twist them to create suspicion. But that is not journalism.

The White House has categorically denied Mansoor Ijaz’s claims that anyone knew about the Abbottabad operation, and headlines speculating about whether one or another government official may have had secret knowledge of the American operation are completely irresponsible. Rather than carrying out witch hunts against government officials based on speculation and innuendo, perhaps it would be better if journalists thought about who was feeding them false information following the raid and who is feeding them information now.

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Posted in Conspiracy Theories, The Nation, The News | 1 Comment »

Campaign Against Najam Sethi Gets More Ridiculous

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

What appeared to be a coordinated smear campaign targeting Najam Sethi last week continues, today with Ahmed Quraishi using a clip from Mubashir Luqman’s show of 26th September and continuing to fan the flames. But rather than discredit Najam Sethi, Ahmed Quraishi’s latest move does more to discredit the smear campaign itself.

Here’s what Ahmed Quraishi says about Najam Sethi’s accuser:

Mr. Abraham was considered to be close to the pro-US lobby in the Pakistani government. In DC, Mr. Abraham was close to Ambassador Husain Haqqani and key figures in the US State Department working to cultivate influence inside Pakistani media. He often acted as a mouthpiece for the pro-US lobby, promoting talking points that served US interests and those of the pro-US Pakistani government.

That quote was from a post on Ahmed Quraishi’s website titled, ‘Najam Sethi & Family Demonize Pakistan For US Passports’ – a claim that Cafe Pyala notes may open both Mubashir Luqman and now Ahmed Quraishi to defamation suits since other than the slanderous statements, no one has been able to produce a single piece of evidence suggesting it’s true.

Here’s the problem with Sami Abraham’s statement based on what Ahmed Quraishi says – Sami says that he knows the accusations against Najam Sethi are true because when he was in America he was part of a secret American conspiracy to buy Pakistani media. Now that he’s back in Pakistan, though, he’s apparently turned on his old conspirators and is now accusing Najam Sethi. In order to believe Sami Abraham, one has to be willing to accept the word of a man who says different things depending on who he’s talking to, which is not a great recipe for credibility.

But let’s take a look at some statements by Najam Sethi to see just what Mubashir Luqman and Ahmed Quraishi find so offensive. Here’s a quote from Sethi’s editorial in last week’s The Friday Times:

By next April, the Taliban will be ready for a major operation to decisively derail President Obama’s Afghanistan agenda when the US establishment will be focused on the presidential election. America will be in desperate straits. In order to thwart the Taliban’s summer agenda, therefore, America is most likely going to “do more” in its winter agenda before next summer. Short of American boots-on-ground in Waziristan, only Pakistani boots-on-ground will work. But if the Pakistani army is still unable or unwilling to oblige, then cruise missiles and high altitude bombing could be options.

Should that come to pass, however, the war in Afghanistan will spill over to a war in Pakistan. And that should be the last thing America or its Western allies would want.

We’re supposed to believe that this is demonizing Pakistan? If this is Najam Sethi’s plan to earn a US passport, I hope he doesn’t sell his house too quickly.

Now let’s take a look at the other person who keeps popping up in this smear campaign: Ahmed Quraishi.

It does seem a bit ironic that Ahmed Quraishi would find a problem with anyone who takes money to act as a mouthpiece for a foreign government since that’s what, by his own words, Ahmed Quraishi has built his career on. This is not an accusation, it’s what Quraishi himself is proud to say. According to his bio, “Recently, Mr. Quraishi has been commissioned for public policy outreach projects as a consultant, serving mostly government clients in the larger Middle East region, including Pakistan”.

What governments are these? Well, that’s not completely clear, though he does make quite a big deal about his connection to the rulers of his home country, Kuwait, where he “was born, raised and educated”. Actually, though, Mr Quraishi’s education is not quite clear, either. His longer bio says that “he briefly attended a business school but did not graduate in that discipline”, and says that as he was “not very interested in academia” he got involved in political commentary. Quraishi goes on to brag that he used his Pakistani heritage as a means of avoiding suspicion in Middle Eastern politics.

“He got away with most of it in a region infested with suspicious governments because, well, he was a Pakistani, which literally made it difficult for security officials to place him within Middle East’ confusing maze of political alliances and rivalries.”

Actually, Ahmed Quraishi has been playing something of a girgit (chameleon) for years. When his columns appear in Jang Group publications, his by line says he “works for Geo TV”, though his role at Geo TV is unclear. His short-lived TV show on Aag TV, (Thori Si Siyasat), was canceled over a year ago. But even before Ahmed Quraishi was given a show, he was against Geo TV, saying it, too, was a tool of American interests. It should be noted that Geo TV still has a contract with Voice of America.

What is all the more curious about Ahmed Quraishi’s alleged affiliation with Geo TV is that he himself claimed last year that he is “not a journalist anymore”. His claim to have abandoned journalism came soon after it was discovered that Ahmed Quraishi was a member of the ‘American Association of Political Consultants’.

Profile page for Ahmed Quraishi on website of American Association of Political Consultants

Profile page for Ahmed Quraishi on website of American Association of Political Consultants

Though he claims he has never had one American client, which we are in no place to dispute, it does raise the question why he joined an American political consulting group that costs $250 USD (Rs. 21,855) per year for a single membership if he had no American clients.

Neither was this Ahmed Quraishi’s first dabbling in using media for political propaganda. In 2008, Ahmed Quraishi wrote that America was responsible for riots in Tibet. His by line then claimed that “He heads the Pakistan Task Force at FurmaanRealpolitik, an independent Pakistani think tank based in Islamabad”.

But Furmaan Realpolitik was not really a ‘think tank’, it was a PR business whose services included “Intelligence, Research & Analysis” and “Surveillance & Confidential Investigations”, and whose products “can be tailored to business, political and military requirements”. And what exactly were their products? According to their website, they sold, “Immaculate Deception Creations Tailored to Your Senses.” Subtle.

More recently, Ahmed Quraishi claims that he is a “Senior Research Fellow” with “Project for Pakistan in 21st Century and PakNationalists, which he recently claimed is a nationalist political lobbying group complete with volunteers and interns, but no known source of funding. He’s also on the Board of Advisors for PKKH, an “alternative policy institute and news service” associated with Hamid Gul, and Opinion-Maker.org, as well as assorted fake news sites like Views Times that published a column attacking Najam Sethi last week.

Though it’s not known who is funding Ahmed Quraishi’s current crop of “think tanks”, he seems to have Najam Sethi firmly in his sights, not only claiming that he is ‘demonizing Pakistan’ in order to get a US passport, but taking his accusations even further on his Facebook page and claiming that “Najam Sethi & Co. are claiming their share of the $40 MILLION that US govt has set aside to buy Pakistani media”. As usual, Ahmed Quraishi provides no evidence of this shocking claim, leaving us to wonder again if he is prepared to face a very expensive defamation lawsuit indeed.

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Posted in Dunya | 6 Comments »

Who’s afraid of Najam Sethi?

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Spats between politicians are a regular occurrence – Altaf and Nawaz’s verbal back and forths are the stuff of legend. This can be somewhat expected between politicians as they are competing for votes and attention from many of the same constituencies. Though journalists are also competitive, this is usually carried out on the merits of reporting and commentary and not in petty insults and accusations. Usually, though not always. In the past week, actually, we have seen a growing number of attacks aimed at one particular journalist, Najam Sethi. But rather than being part of a personal feud, it appears that these attacks may be part of a coordinated campaign.

On Monday, Mubashir Luqman discussed the supposed American threat of attack on his show Khari Baat. At the end of the programme, though, surrounded by his invited guests Maleeha Lodhi and Hamid Gul, Luqman lashes out at Najam Sethi (forward to 8:51).

This seemed to be a strange turn for the conversation to take, but what was even more strange was when Luqman went out of his way to attack Najam Sethi on PTV’s Morning Show.

As you can see, Noor becomes visibly uncomfortable with Luqman’s unprompted attack on Najam Sethi. Some might think that Luqman’s strange behaviour was the result of a personal feud between the two men, but then our attention was pointed to another article attacking Mr Sethi which appeared on a website ‘Views Times‘.

Like Mubashir Luqman’s attacks, the article accuses Mr Sethi as a tool of American policy. Only, this piece goes even further and makes the bizarre claim that Najam Sethi is advising the American government.

The Americans were left with no choice–they halted the 800 million in aid to the Pakistani military. They were banking on the advice given to them by Mr. Njam Sethi and gang.

Though he is an internationally renowned and award-winning journalist, it’s rather far fetched to claim the American government was taking policy dictation from Najam Sethi.

In stark contrast to Najam Sethi’s career, his attackers are mostly non-entities from an exposed propaganda ring. The website, Views Times is one of several fake news sites associated with propagandists like Ahmed Quraishi and Major Raja Mujtaba.

Actually, a Google search for a random line in the piece on Views Times found 49 results – all fake news sites like ‘Times of Bombay’ and ‘Times of Kabul’ and ‘Karachi Telegraph’. Oh, and the incredibly well funded PKKH, a project of Ahmed Quraishi, Shireen Mazari, and Hamid Gul.

Like too many of our fellow journalists, Najam Sethi has already suffered for giving voice to views that were unpopular in some quarters. He was ‘preventatively detained’ by Gen Zia, and later imprisoned by the government of Nawaz Sharif for exposing corruption. Of course he was accused then with the all-too-familiar charge of ‘treason’.

For his unwillingness to cower in the face of intimidation, Najam Sethi has received the Journalism Under Threat award from Amnesty International and the International Press Freedom award from Committee to Protect Journalists.

Whoever is behind this campaign to attack Najam Sethi, the question that must be asked is whether Pakistan’s media is truly ‘free’ so long as journalists are smeared, threatened, or worse when they report views that some do not like.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Shireen Mazari’s Latest Drama

Friday, June 17th, 2011

Director of ‘Kyonkay Saas Bhi Kabhi Baho Thi’ is very frustrated this week since his hit has been overtaken by an even bigger pukka drama. This week, Smriti Zubin Irani has been replaced by Shireen Mazari in the imaginations of aunties across the nation following her fateful encounter with an American at an Islamabad restaurant. A profanity filled version of this story first appeared on the website of Ahmed Quraishi, a former journalist who has written recently defending faked and manipulated news as a tool to push an ideological agenda. But look at the way neutral observers characterise the incident:

“The guy backed his chair and bumped into her. She tore into them. They just wanted to pay their bill and get out, but the restaurant wouldn’t let them pay because of the incident,” he said.

According to the version published on Ahmed Quraishi’s website, Shireen Mazari claimed that, “The man was somewhat bulky with a military build, which made him look intimidating”. But a photo of the supposed American was featured with the story on Ahmed Quraishi’s website and shows not a man with a “bulky military build”, but rather a man that appears to be shorter than the Pakistani man who came to his defence.

mazari's american

Actually, there are a few other problems with Mazari’s version of the story. She says at the beginning that “the American stood up at one point and banged his chair into hers. His action appeared to be deliberate”. But later in the story, she says that after she was yelling insults at the man he said, “Oh you are the lady who…” before she cut him off and told him to get out of the country.

This means that when the man allegedly rammed his chair into Mazari’s chair, he did not even know who she was. To believe Mazari’s version, one would have to accept that this man decided out of thin air to bang his chair into the chair of a random woman for no reason. Actually Ahmed Quraishi and Shireen Mazari would like you to believe that she “has been targeted for her criticism of US military and intelligence presence in Pakistan”, but that would mean that the man recognised her which he obviously didn’t according to Mazari’s own words.

If this is the case, did Shireen Mazari start a fight simply to write an anti-American drama in which she is the victim? What actually happened on that day is hard to know for certain. Clearly Shireen Mazari feels wronged, though there is no evidence that the man acted deliberately or meant any insult to Mazari. Rather it appears according to her own story that she assumed the worst because of her intense anti-American emotions. Also, her saying that “Yes I am one of those Pakistanis who want you out of this country” makes one wonder how Mazari believes any of the millions of Pakistanis living in America, UK, or EU should react if a racist xenophobic tells them to “get out of this country”.

What we do know is that this drama has done more to cast Pakistan in a bad light than it did any nameless Americans who had the misfortunate experience of dining in the same place as Shireen Mazari. According to an article about the incident published in The Telegraph:

Scurrilous websites and some mainstream newspapers delight in blaming America for every misfortune to befall Pakistan – from last year’s devastating floods to terrorist atrocities. Conspiracy theories, alleging CIA plots to destabilise Pakistan, are common currency on the nation’s evening talk shows.

Picking fights with foreigners so that you can report the incident on ‘scurrilous websites’ and conspiracy prone talk shows serves neither the interests of journalism nor the national interest. But this incident does pose important questions for the producers and anchors who invite Mazari to discuss matters of foreign policy. Can she be considered an objective or trustworthy analyst, or is her thinking so painted red by her anti-American emotions that she will see insults where none exist?

One thing is certain – Shireen Mazari should leave such dramatic plots to the cast of Kyonkay Saas Bhi Kabhi Baho Thi.

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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism Distort Reporting on High Level Talks

Monday, April 25th, 2011

Daily TimesA column by Shahzad Chaudhry in Daily Times starts with a very informative history of drone strikes that illustrates how the tactic has increased over time. But then the author veers very much off of a straight path and begins weaving in baseless conspiracy theories.

Questions are being asked of illicit relations between such agents and the Punjab-based militant groups and the increasing incidence of bomb blasts in Punjab and other centres, seeking hidden motives characterising these as the CIA’s sinister moves to cement further dissent in Pakistani society.

Chaudhry continues on to say that “The CIA has always had a separate agenda from the declared stance of both the state and defence departments in Washington”. But what is the evidence for any of this, and why does his informative history of the drone program spiral out of control and into a conspiracypalooza? Though some countries intelligence agencies may operate very independently from oversight of parliament, the US has kept its intelligence agency on a tighter leash following embarrassing incidents of the past. According to a report in TIME:

Bucking a veto threat by Obama and overruling a deal among the White House, Republicans and two Democratic committee chairmen, Pelosi is pushing to dramatically expand congressional oversight of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. At issue is Congress’s ability to monitor the intelligence programs deemed most sensitive and closely held by the Executive Branch. And the battle is turning into the biggest confrontation yet over Executive power between the liberal House Speaker and a White House that has moved steadily to the center on national security matters.

Pelosi wants the CIA and other intelligence agencies to inform all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees when they launch any covert action or other controversial program, not restricting that information to the chairmen and ranking opposition members and party leaders, or “Gang of Eight,” as required by current law. She also wants the congressional intelligence committees to have the power to task the Government Accountability Office (GAO) with auditing any intelligence program, Democratic aides say, a power the GAO has for classified Pentagon programs but not for the intelligence agencies. “The Speaker has made it very clear that she wants disclosure for the full membership of the intelligence committees, not just the ranking members,” says Pelosi’s press secretary, Brendan Daly.

It is pertinent to note also that even after all the Wikileaks documents have been released and made available to the public, no evidence of a CIA plot to destabilize Pakistan has surfaced. Surely in the thousands of top secret documents there would be some mention of such a nefarious scheme.

The News (Jang Group)Another column, riddled with contradictions and conspiracies, is by none other than Ahmed Quraishi writing in The News. The author begins by asking “Is ISI the problem?” You can imagine what Ahmed Quraishi’s answer will be before even reading one more word. But what is worth mentioning are the contradictions and conspiracies in his answer.

Ahmed Quraishi states that Admiral Mullen’s suggestion that ISI maintains links to Afghan Taliban factions is “factually incorrect” and blames the Pakistani side for not loudly correcting him. But then, a few paragraphs later, Ahmed Quraishi states that actually we are maintaining contacts with Afghan Taliban who are killing American troops, just as Admiral Mullen said.

We should tell Washington that we will maintain ties to legitimate Afghan parties, including the Afghan government and Afghan Taliban. American demands to cut off ties to any one of them are misplaced. If an Afghan group that Pakistan maintains links with is killing US soldiers in Afghanistan, this is not necessarily Pakistan’s design or responsibility.

Which is it? First Ahmed terms Admiral Mullen’s statement ‘factually incorrect’ and then he says the same thing that Admiral Mullen says also.

In addition to such contradictions, Ahmed Quraishi finished his column with a repeat of the conspiracy theory that we read in Shahzad Chaudhry’s columns – the claim that the US is trying to destabilize Pakistan.

The US military and CIA inflate these assessments to justify prolonging the Afghan war and, more importantly, to justify meddling in Pakistan.

Actually, the US has announced that it will start removing troops from Afghanistan this year and will be out of the country by 2014. If the US plans to prolong the war, it has a funny plan to do so.

It should also be noted that Ahmed Quraishi’s claim that “The strength and ability of terror groups such as TTP and BLA to resupply will end when CIA ends its grand strategic project in Afghanistan” does not make sense as BLA first launched attacks prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11 attacks. If BLA could resupply and pose attacks before US involvement in Afghanistan, why would it be affected once the US leaves? This makes no sense.

Ironically, Ahmed Quraishi concludes his column with the sentence, “This is political propaganda.” Perhaps here he is correct. Both Shahzad Chaudhry and Ahmed Quraishi writing in two different newspapers are parroting the same conspiracy theories based in anti-Americanism and not solid evidence. As high level talks continue between the military and their counterparts in the US, media should inform the people of developments so that they are aware. But media should not invent developments and spread conspiracy theories that are absent of supporting facts.

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Posted in Daily Times, Jang, The News | 8 Comments »

Visas, Conspiracy Theories, and Propaganda Rings

Friday, March 4th, 2011

When the US under President George Bush decided to invade Iraq, a well documented propaganda campaign was undertaken in which the American people were convinced that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 attacks – a piece of misinformation that was necessary to justify the invasion of Iraq. The propaganda tactic used was a simple one – repeat the misinformation enough, even after it is disproven – and enough people will either believe the lie or be confused about the issue that space will be available to promote a political agenda.

Ahmed Quraishi’s latest column for The News uses this same neocon propaganda tactic of repeating a claim even after it has been disproven.

A third issue is the role of President Zardari, his interior minister and his Washington envoy in facilitating the entry of hundreds of US operatives into Pakistan over the past months. It is clear that the US government and CIA rely on proxies to further its agenda in Pakistan. This must come to an end. The personal interests of individuals in the Pakistani government must never trump national interest. The Oman meeting indicates the goal now is to sweep all these urgent issues under the carpet in the name of saving Pak-US relationship.

This is a continuation of visa conspiracy that was disproven a few weeks ago when Ambassador to USA Husain Haqqani opened the books and revealed to legitimate journalists that there was no conspiracy and that all visas were issued following the proper protocols.

But Ahmed Quraishi does not stop with simply repeating disproven conspiracy theories, he goes a step further by making unfounded smears against unnamed government officials. Suggesting that “individuals in the Pakistani government” are putting personal interests above national interest is a straw man type of argument. If Ahmed Quraishi has some evidence of a government official putting personal interest above national interest, why does he not name the individual and the instance so that it can be investigated? Actually, this appears to be nothing but an attempt to smear the names of individuals while side-stepping liability for defamation lawsuits.

Ahmed Quraishi is not the only person repeating this misinformation. The claim is also repeated by Dr Raja Muhammad Khan in a piece that was published in both Pak Observer and Daily Mail on the same day. But this “Dr Khan” does not even get his facts right from the first two sentences. According to Dr Khan’s column, Raymond Davis, “now works for Xe, commonly known as the Blackwater”. This is false. It has been reported that Raymond Davis was once a special forces soldier who then worked for Xe and left some time ago. He now works for Hyperion Protective Consultants.

But this is not the only error in Dr Khan’s column. He raises the common talking point that the Embassy in Washington issued 400 visas to US nationals in two days, but he does not explain that the majority of these visas were issued for a state visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staff and security before a July 2010 visit. According to the Embassy, these American officials were only in Pakistan for 2-3 days.

Dr Khan quotes the number per the Embassy that “approximately 3,555 U.S. diplomats, military officials and employees of allied agencies were issued visas in 2010”, but as it was explained last month, most of the US officials and contractors were only in the country for three months each, so the total number of US nationals in Pakistan would be 1/4 to 1/3 of the total number of visas issues during the year. This means that at any given moment there are probably 1,000 or fewer US officials in Pakistan.

This number should also be viewed in context. Since the 1980s the number of US diplomatic visas has been roughly the same. During the Cold War when the CIA and ISI were working together to support the Afghan mujahideen, the largest CIA station in the world was in Pakistan. During this time under Gen. Zia, as many as 780 US diplomats were listed in the Islamabad Diplomatic List. Dr Khan claims that “there have been no worthwhile voices on these expansionist designs of US in Pakistan from various circles”, but the truth is that there are no signs of expansionist designs.

In addition to the factual errors of Dr Khan, it is also curious that he concludes his article with the same smear that Ahmed Quraishi uses. Dr Khan says, “The broad criterion should be that, our personal relations and personal gains should not govern the national interests of Pakistan.” Was this some mere coincidence that both Ahmed Quraishi and Dr Khan are writing the same smears, or is this a case of talking points being provided to guide the writers?

It seems there is even more to the story. After some additional searching based on phrases used by Dr Khan, some very curious facts came to light.

On 28 February 2011 at 1:10PM the following comment was posted to an article on the website of Express Tribune by someone named ‘Abdul Rauf Hashmi’:

Who is Spying on Whom?
Let there be end to the era of special protocol for US spying network in Pakistan. The Government of Pakistan must investigate all those responsible for the flaws in the visa issuance process and reprimand them on their act. The broad criterion should be that, our personal relations and personal gains should not govern the national interests of Pakistan. The sovereignty, integrity and national pride of Pakistan should be kept in the forefront, while developing our relationship across the national frontiers.

The exact same paragraph appears in the column by Dr Khan today.

Let there be end to the era of special protocol for US spying network in Pakistan. The Government of Pakistan must investigate all those responsible for the flaws in the visa issuance process and reprimand them on their act. The broad criterion should be that, our personal relations and personal gains should not govern the national interests of Pakistan. The sovereignty, integrity and national pride of Pakistan should be kept in the forefront, while developing our relationship across the national frontiers.

Further searching reveals that this same article by ‘Dr Raja Muhammad Khan’ first appeared on the website Opinion-Maker.org, the website of “virtual Think Tank” named ‘O.M. Center for Policy Studies’ which chaired by Major Raja Ghulam Mujtaba.

Major Raja MujtadaMajor Mujtaba also serves as Islamabad Editor for VeteransToday.com, which is the website of one Mr “Gordon Duff”. Mr. Duff describes Major Mujtaba’s relations with the ISI in an interview of September 2010.

Well, I only knew one group in the world that I could con into reading (chuckling) 90,000 pages of documents. So, I called our editor in Islamabad, Major Raja Mujtaba and had him forward my request to Brigadier General Asif Haroon Raja who forwarded it to the head of Pakistan’s ISI, and the ISI assigned a group of analysts who, going through the 69,000 pages of documents — I would almost rather have Brigadier Raja on the phone with us here — and that can be arranged and probably should.

Another connection to propaganda and intelligence agencies is the fact that former ISI chief Gen. Hamid Gul is on the Editorial Board of Directors of this website VeteransToday.com which Major Mujtaba is also an editor.

But one does not even have to go that far. Just look at the Board of Advisors for Major Mujtaba’s own ‘Think Tank’ called “Opinion Maker Center for Policy Studies.”

  • Dr Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema of National Defense University who founded Defense & Strategic Studies department in Quaid-i-Azam University
  • Mr Tarik Jan author of books including Universalizing the Abrahamic Tradition, Towards the Universal Islamic State, and the editor of Pakistan’s Security and the Nuclear Option
  • Dr Tahir Amin of Quaid-i-Azam University
  • Brig Asif Haroon Raja
  • Maj Gen Parvez Akmal (Retd)
  • Maj General Muhammad Tahir (Retd)
  • Dr S. M. Rahman is Secretary General FRIENDS founded by General Mirza Aslam Beg
  • Mansoor Malik who worked on F-16 Aircraft Weapons System for PAF
  • Col Bakhtiar Hakeem
  • Air Commodore Khalid Iqbal

Also, who else should show up on the ‘About Us’ page of Opinion-Maker.org but Ahmed Quraishi himself. Perhaps there is no coincidence that he and Dr Khan have reached the same conclusion?

According to his bio on this website, Mr Quraishi “has been commissioned for public policy outreach projects as a consultant, serving mostly government clients in the larger Middle East region”.

UNKNOWNBut all of this information only raises further questions. Who is this “Dr Raja Muhammad Khan”? His bio on the Opinion-Maker.org website says he is Associate Professor with National Defence University Islamanad. Now he is also writing for websites with links to military and intelligence officers. Was this investigated by Jang Group when they published over 20 stories by him since 2009? The same question must be asked of The Nation which has published columns by him as well. Why did these newspapers not inform their readers of the author’s associations?

It also raises the question whether journalism has become the favourite retirement hobby for our military and intelligence officers. It seems that there is virtually no end to the number of “Think Tanks” that are paying retired officers to write ‘analysis’ that ends up spread in newspapers and websites. Also, who is funding all of these websites and newspapers that are proliferating throughout the country? Surely all of these Generals are not donating their time for free.

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions must wait until another day. But one thing is clear, Pakistani media is infested not only with conspiracy theories, but with propaganda rings that seek not to inform but to manipulate. As long as this is the case, media freedom is only an illusion.

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Posted in Blogs, Conspiracy Theories, Daily Mail, Pak Observer | 14 Comments »

Americans Not Invading After All

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

Grave of the Visa ConspiracyIt was said by Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trials,

“The people don’t want war, but” they “can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

The Germans told that Jews were invading, the American right-wing tells the story about Muslims, and the British even used to tell their children that Napoleon Bonaparte was stalking the streets. Here, certain elements here have been telling the story that the Embassy in Washington has been granting countless visas to Americans with no security checks. It’s all part of the same strategy to create fear and suspicion in the minds of the masses which makes them easier to control. The actual evidence, however, tells a different story. It turns out that the Americans are not invading after all. As for the rotting corpse of the Visa Conspiracy, let us finally bury it once and for all.

The Visa Conspiracy states that the Embassy in Washington has been giving out visas like sweetmeats to every American Rambo who comes calling. Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani who has been at the center of these conspiracies held a press conference providing Embassy data on issuance of visas to journalists so that they will be armed with the facts and not the talking points of political operatives.

An APP report in Daily Times on Friday quoted the Ambassador as directly challenging claims in the media that the Embassy in Washington had issued visas without following proper authorisation.

“The embassy has not issued any visa without proper authorisation,” he stated, rebutting media accounts. The critics, he added, have not been able to bring to light even a single instance in which a visa was issued without following authorisation.

But the Ambassador did not stop with simply making denials which of course the conspiracy wallahs would simply ignore. Rather he opened the books and provided the data which proves beyond any doubt that the scare tactics being used are simply ghost stories and nothing more.

The following charts have been made available which show the data of visa issuance since 2007.

Comparative analysis of visas issued to US nationals between 2007-2010 (diplomatic, army and allied agencies)Month-by-month comparative analysis of visas issued to US nationalsAnnual comparative analysis of visas issued to US nationals since 2007-2010If this is an invasion, it’s going to take a thousand years. Actually according to the US Embassy in Islamabad, there are 700,000 Pakistanis in the US. And let’s not forget the terror that was struck into the hearts of our media when it was threatened to take away their own visas to the US!

This data finally puts to rest the Conspiracy Theory that has been beaten to death by Abdul Zahoor Khan Marwat, Shireen Mazari, Ansar Abbasi, and Ahmed Quaishi. These so-called journalists should be quite relieved as they can finally rest their arms which must be exhausted from beating this dead horse for so long. Obviously they never had any actual data to back up their claims, but simply relied on ‘reports’ from unnamed sources, if these sources even actually exist. Real reporting is not inventing stories to scare people, it’s doing careful research to identify facts and then presenting those facts to the reader so that he can understand the world around him. Now that we have buried this conspiracy, let’s have more real reporting, please.

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Posted in Conspiracy Theories | 9 Comments »

Funhouse Mirrors

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Media is ofter termed a ‘watch dog’ and indeed this is one important role of the media. Personally, I think this is a poor metaphor. For one thing, ‘watch dog’ assumes that there is an outside threat and that its master must be protected and never questioned. In the case of media it is too often the government which is seen as a threat only and the civil society never questioned. But government is not inherently a threat, and civil society is not without its own faults also.

Funhouse mirrorAnother view is that media’s role is a mirror held up to society reflecting what is good and bad both so that people can see the good and know where there are some improvements needed. In this case, media would show both the problems in government that need to be fixed and the good things that government does also. Media would do the same for civil society, showing the good of the people but also reflecting the blemishes in popular beliefs so that they can be mended and society improved.

But what happens when the mirror becomes warped?

In an interview with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News on Sunday night, American President Barack Obama described the American media as a ‘funhouse mirror’ that gives people a mistaken impression.

While questioning Mr Obama on domestic issues; Mr O’Reilly, a strong opponent, abruptly asked him: “Does it disturb you that so many people hate you?” Mr Obama laughed a little and then responded. “You know, the truth is that the people — and I’m sure previous Presidents would say the same thing, whether it was Bush or Clinton or Reagan or anybody — the people who dislike you don’t know you. “But they hate you,” Mr O’Reilly stressed.

“The folks who hate you, they don’t know you,” said Mr Obama. “What they hate is whatever funhouse mirror image of you that’s out there and they don’t know you. And so, you don’t take it personally.” “You don’t ever?” prodded Mr O’Reilly one final time. “Doesn’t it annoy you sometimes? “I think that by the time you get here you have to have had a pretty thick skin. If you didn’t, then you wouldn’t have got here,” said Mr Obama.

For a variety of reasons, the media mirror has become warped not only in America but in Pakistan also. Mosharraf Zaidi brilliantly describes the state of things in his column, Drowning in our delusions:

The starkest revelation in the post-Taseer scenario is that the quality of journalism in Pakistan is in grave danger of becoming entirely hostage to ratings, profits and fear. For staunch defenders of the Pakistani media, this is not a pleasant reality to come face to face with. There is very little, however, to mitigate the cold hard facts.

Taseer’s position was pretty simple. He believed and stated that the Pakistan Penal Code provisions on blasphemy cause procedural lapses that endanger the lives of innocent Pakistanis. He believed and stated that there are skewed incentives, built into the provisions, for people to misuse them. Finally, he believed and stated that procedural change is required to give greater functional fidelity to the legal regime dealing with blasphemy.

This is not a particularly sophisticated position. It has long been shared by reasonable Pakistanis on all sides of the faux ideological divides we create in this country. It is a position that human rights advocates, political leaders and others have long taken.

Yet not only was this position rarely represented in the news media, it was repeatedly misrepresented. Watching young talk show hosts in their twenties make careers out of aggression is not unique. But when that aggression helps fuel paranoia and lies about someone that can then threaten their safety, we must draw a line. One such talk show host recently won the equivalent of the TV talk-show host lottery – a new job after a bidding war broke out for the host’s services. The new job is a reward for having repeatedly insinuating Salmaan Taseer’s blasphemous intent on a talk show. While one channel fired the host, it hardly matters. The new show will be even more bombastic. It will not fear facts, because facts often get in the way of ratings.

It is not only the facts that become distorted in the media funhouse mirror, though. It also makes it distorts the conversations about the problems the country is facing. And when we can’t see clearly what is wrong, how are we supposed to fix it?

Hyper-nationalist propagandists might believe that it’s better for us to lie to ourselves about the nation’s problems, but this is actually keeping us from making progress. That is also the conclusion reached by Mosharraf Zaidi.

Pakistan is being poisoned by false pride, self-pity and moral asymmetry. If we want Raymond Davis to burn, we should demand the same for Mumtaz Qadri. If the murder of three Lahori boys is unacceptable, we should be even more outraged by the untold death and destruction in Tirah Valley, in Bajaaur, in Orakzai, and across FATA that has been showered upon it by the Pakistani military. If we don’t like drones (and we shouldn’t), we must ask questions about what our helicopters and F-16s are doing in the north. If we don’t like targeted killings in Karachi, we should raise our voice against them in Balochistan too.

Pakistanis are too resilient, too beautiful and too good to drown in a sea of delusions. Now more than ever is a time for Pakistanis to be optimistic. The degree of responsibility in our optimism will make all the difference between perpetuating fantasies, or stemming the rot by promoting facts and reason.

Pakistan has the intellect and the resources to solve its own problems and clean up its own messes. We don’t need ‘patriotic generals’ or anyone else to do it for us. But before we can begin to improve things, we have to know what we’re looking at. For this, we rely on the media to be a mirror that reflects our nation clearly and accurately.

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Ahmed Quraishi and Hamid Mir and the Imaginary ‘Extremist Liberal’

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Ahmed QuraishiI must admit that I was surprised to see Ahmed Quraishi eulogizing Salmaan Taseer this morning. He eloquently praises the late Governor for his principled stand and laments his killing. But I also found his column somewhat crass – a political operative exploiting a national tragedy to promote his political agenda. Ahmed Quraishi’s eulogy for Salmaan Taseer is peculiar not for his sympathy with the slain PPP leader, but for the enemy that he invents to take the blame.

Ahmed Quraishi’s column pushes the idea that the nation is under threat from ‘liberal extremists’, a group that we heard about last week from Hamid Mir also. Quraishi describes this new right-wing bogey man as a threat as serious as religious militants:

The real problem over the law is between an extremist westernised minority of Pakistanis, who ridicule religion, and between another extremist religious minority, that takes religion to extreme. The extremist westernised minority wants no religion at all and keeps talking about European secularism, which is misplaced in Pakistan. This provokes the religious extremist minority into paranoia and pushes them to extremes, as in the case of the 26-year-old bodyguard who murdered Governor Taseer. Caught between the two extremes are the majority of moderate, peaceful Pakistanis.

We know the religious militants pose a real threat to Pakistan, and we know this because they announce their threats themselves on loudspeakers and with the unmistakable message of bomb blasts and other acts of murder. But who are these extremist westernised liberals that are threatening Pakistan?

Hamid MirI kept reading to find out the answer, but Ahmed Quraishi couldn’t tell me. The only person Hamid Mir could come up with was Aatish Taseer who he terms ‘a liberal extremist’ for “wrongly [accusing] his father for having a religious hatred against the Jews and Hindus”.

But even if Aatish Taseer wrote some unkind things about this father, who has Aatish killed? Who has he threatened? Where is his band of ‘extremist liberal’ thugs toting AK-47s into mosques ordering that religion be removed from the country? Does Hamid Mir really want to equate an inter-family disagreement with the jihadi killers that are slaughtering people in the streets as part of an effort to bring back some sort of caliphate?

Consider one of the final paragraphs in Quraishi’s column:

Our overriding concern in this debate is to unite Pakistanis and stop a situation where Pakistanis go to war with each other because of two extremist minorities. We must stop anyone fanning this divide and try to bridge it with reason. Incitement to kill or to ridicule religion from either side must be sternly dealt with.

Again I ask: Who are these ‘extremist liberals’ that are inciting to kill or ridiculing religion? The truth is that they are merely figments of Ahmed Quraishi’s and Hamid Mir’s overactive and slightly paranoid imaginations. They don’t exist. If they do, prove it.

Partly this is paranoid delusion, partly this is probably political gamesmanship. The right-wing has created a convenient ‘straw man’ of ‘extremist liberals’ to convince moderates that they have a choice between extremists and the right-wing. This is a false choice. Ahmed Quraishi and Hamid Mir think they’re quite clever, but like all straw men theirs falls apart quite easily.

It should be noted that both Hamid Mir and Ahmed Quraishi’s attempts to blame ‘extremist liberals’ for the death of Salmaan Taseer appear in a newspaper that continually publishes political propaganda. Just today, the newspaper featured a column by Ansar Abbasi that accuses “The Zardari-Gilani duo has wasted the first three years of its rule, marred by corruption, inefficiency and bad governance” and then praises that PML-N “would seek an early implementation of institutional and structural reforms to check corruption and bad governance, and to improve economic and social conditions of the state as well as the masses.” The political gamesmanship is so haphazardly obvious that it is almost laughable.

What isn’t laughable is that both Ahmed Quraishi and Hamid Mir, whether intentionally or unintentionally, are making excuses for the jihadi mindset and further dividing the people against each other. Salmaan Taseer was murdered, as they both admit, not for blasphemy but for simply speaking his mind. But then Ahmed Quraishi and Hamid Mir go on to warn these imaginary ‘extremist liberals’ against speaking their minds also. Like the jihadis who cannot tolerate anyone whose religion is different from theirs, right-wing apologists like Ahmed Quraishi and Hamid Mir cannot tolerate anyone whose politics is different from theirs.

The assassination of Salmaan Taseer should have taught us that media created bogey men are a dangerous thing. Mosharraf Zaidi recently told Al Jazeera that partly to blame for Salmaan Taseer’s murder was the “24/7 media in Pakistan…and the build up to the assassination: the criticism of the law and the resulting overreaction – gross overreaction – by the radical right in Pakistan.”

Rather than inventing new bogey men for people to fear and blame for all of society’s ills, the media should be providing the people with sober analysis and facts so that we can make sense of the world around us and develop real solutions for real problems. We don’t need any fake enemies, we have enough real ones to deal with at the moment.

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Posted in Jang, The News | 5 Comments »

Dear Propagandists, Keep Digging

Monday, December 20th, 2010

The Daily MailThe propagandists behind the fake Wikileaks story that was exposed by The Guardian continue trying to dig their way out of the hole they have found themselves in. What is curious is that faced with inarguable proof that they have finally been caught manufacturing stories, they only continue to protest their innocence and refuse to admit their mistakes. The more they try to justify their actions, though, the deeper the hole they are digging for themselves.

As we wrote a couple of days ago, Ahmed Quraishi’s web of propaganda has begun to unravel as more and more journalists are calling him what he really is. That has not stopped Mr Quraishi, however, and today we find him in The News actually asking with a straight face for the state “to intervene as the interim and enforce discipline” in the media. Like any would-be dictator, Ahmed Quraishi believes the media should be free to spread propaganda, but not to expose the puppeteer.

But this network of propagandists is larger than Ahmed Quraishi, and he is not the only one of the lot writing frenzied defenses of their shady practices. Today, the website of the fake newspaper “Daily Mail” features a column by one “Mohammad Jamil” that continues to offer sad excuses for their phoney reporting.

This group had carried the same news in its daily English and Urdu newspapers; later described them fake and apologized for not checking its veracity and the source before publishing. They are now trying to create ‘awareness’ among media men that they should not release news without checking its authenticity. But the problem is that there is competition in print and electronic media, especially the latter for their passion for breaking news; and they do not have the time to check the veracity of the news. However, one of its anchors in his remarks on Indian TV assured that he would investigate those behind fake WikiLeaks, which is despicable.

It should be noted here that this “Daily Mail” is the same newspaper that had planted the story that RAW was behind the spot-fixing scandal and other conspiracies that turned out to be false. Of course, as always these conspiracies are justified as defending the national honour, even though it is the culture of conspiracies that is doing more harm to the national honour than any cheating cricketer.

In fact, the last sentence of Md. Jamil’s argument appears to make up the foundation of his argument – that media should not report the facts, but should simply be a mouthpiece for the right-wing.

Secondly, one would not come across any Indian condemning Indian intelligence agency RAW. On the other hand, Pakistani media men just flaunt to prove how independent they are, they criticize military and ISI, day in and day out. There are indeed patriotic elements in Pakistani print and electronic media who are aware of their national responsibility. But others also abound who have become chivalrous and obstreperous as a result of the newfound media freedom.

The only thing that Md. Jamil writes correctly is that, “it is moral obligation of the right thinking and responsible media men to react strongly to irresponsible behavior, no matter who commits the act”. This is reason to praise journalists like Fasi Zaka, Nadeem F Paracha, George Fulton, Farrukh Khan Pitafi, and the countless others who expose the propagandists who treat media as a chess game and the common people as their pawns.

Md. Jamil closes his column by saying,

At this point in time when Pakistan is confronting challenges to its internal and external security, Pakistani media men should rise to the occasion and play its role to counter hostile Indian propaganda and protect national interests.

The best way to counter propaganda and protect national interests, of course, being to report the facts without bias or opinion so that the people can be trusted to decide for themselves.

It is a telling point indeed that these phoney reporters who have created a business misleading Pakistanis would term any honest journalist as Mir Jafar. That this occurs while Ahmed Quraishi is writing in The News that freedom and honesty should be sacrificed for ‘discipline’ shows just what contempt With each of these arguments, these petty propagandists may believe that they are digging their way out of the hole that they fell into thanks to their fake Wikileaks documents. But what they’re really doing is digging the grave of their own propaganda.

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Posted in Daily Mail | 2 Comments »

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