Posts Tagged ‘Ahmed Quraishi’

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Ahmed Quraishi’s Web Continues to Unravel

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

Ahmed Quraishi is back in the news again, but not for the reason he might like. Rather the prolific consipiracy theorist has caught the attention of actual journalists and commentators who are exposing his antics.

This is not the first time that Quraishi has been criticised by real journalists. One year ago he received a black eye when a prominent American foreign policy journal wrote that he misrepresented their reporting in order to make a political attack against a government official.

Shortly after he was embarrassed by magazine Foreign Policy, we showed that Ahmed Quraishi is registered as an American political consultant. Earlier this year we reported that Ahmed Quraishi admitted on his Facebook that he was not a real journalist but actually a propagandist – he even called himself “clean shaven Taliban”. We have even shown that Ahmed Quraishi is willing to contradict himself when it is necessary to promote his political message.

With the exposure of the fake Wikileaks story, however, Ahmed Quraishi’s web of propaganda has continued to unravel. It was only a few short weeks ago that Cafe Pyala exposed the Internet propaganda ring that was responsible for the fake story. And to no one’s surprise, Ahmed Quraishi’s name was all over these propaganda websites.

Following the exposure of the fake Wikileaks story, Ahmed Quraishi responded in a most extraordinary way. Rather than admit a mistake, Ahmed Quraishi wrote a bizarre defense of the practise of using the media to mislead the people in efforts to promote a political agenda. This has been the final nail in the coffin of his credibility.

Ahmed Quraishi’s crude justification for misleading his own countrymen raised the blood pressure of freelance journalist George Fulton, who wrote for The Express Tribune earlier this week terming Quraishi a ‘purveyor of fiction’.

For those who don’t know Ahmad Quraishi, according to his website — ahmedquraishi.com — he is “a public policy writer, commentator and broadcaster”. In reality, he is widely known to be a crude propagandist for the army/intelligence nexus. At least Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda films had artistic value. Noxious, yes, but art nonetheless. Sadly, no such claim can be made of Quraishi’s leaden prosaic prose.

He is also “one of the founders of PakNationalists, a supposed forum focusing on shaping Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policy options”. Actually it’s an anti-India bile-spewing machine that spreads untruths, smears and uncorroborated stories. His most recent article on his website, entitled “Guardian uses WikliLeaks for Propaganda, Pakistani Media Can’t?” is an astonishing convoluted defence of the fake cable that was exposed by Cafe Pyala and subsequently picked up by the Guardian correspondent, Declan Walsh and this newspaper’s blog section. The phrase ‘twisting in the wind’ comes to mind.

Quraishi begins by attempting to undermine the original story of the fake cable: “(The) Guardian’s Islamabad correspondent Declan Walsh claimed the stories were ‘credited to the Online Agency, an Islamabad-based news service that has frequently run pro-army stories in the past. No journalist is bylined’. Fabulous, only that it is not accurate. The story was published by the ‘Daily Mail of Pakistan’, a newspaper launched recently and staffed by journalists coming from the newsrooms of Pakistan’s frontrow newspapers.”

He goes on to say: “A large part of the original Pakistani report is credible. It was published by a prominent news organisation and the story has four names in the byline. The Guardian unethically tried to link the story to Pakistani intelligence agencies by suggesting the story comes with ‘no byline’ and can’t be sourced. The Guardian’s Mr Walsh compensated his lack of investigation by offering his own conspiracy theory that the report was planted by Pakistani intelligence agencies.”

Let’s state some facts. All the newspapers that ran the story did credit it to the Online news agency. No byline was given by any newspaper. It cannot be sourced. Ah, but what about this ‘Daily Mail of Pakistan’ that he quotes. Unfortunately, this is not an authentic newspaper but one that peddles propaganda. (It was ‘The Daily Mail of Pakistan’ that planted the bogus story that the Pakistan spot-fixing scandal was orchestrated by the Indian intelligence agency RAW.)

What about the bylines Mr Quraishi mentions on the ‘Daily Mail of Pakistan’ website? It’s true that the fake cable story is bylined “From Suzie Wang in Washington, Christina Palmer in New Delhi, John Nelson in Kabul and Ahmad-Almurad in Cairo”. The only problem is that these people don’t exist. They are figments of his imagination. I would love to meet Suzie Wang from Washington and Christina Palmer who apparently works in New Delhi.

Yes, it’s highly likely that the ‘Daily Mail of Pakistan’ — and all these other bogus websites (again Cafe Pyala has done a brilliant expose of these bogus sites) — are probably paid for by a budget that we, as taxpayers, and our elected officials do not have permission to scrutinise. Good to know, isn’t it.

So the question that comes to mind is: what is the point of Ahmed Quraishi’s article? He has been proven to peddle half-truths and misinformation on some rather shady websites. As a self-described nationalist, I am sure he would defend what he was doing as being for the greater good of Pakistan and its people. But I subscribe to Charles De Gaulle’s view of nationalists and nationalism: “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.” Mr Quraishi is a hate-monger. One must also wonder how much Mr Quraishi really loves the people of this country since he seems to make a living peddling half-truths to them.

As revealed by Cafe Pyala’s expose of the Internet propaganda ring responsible for the fake Wikileaks story, Pakistan’s media is infested with political operatives who are engaged in influencing, not informing the public. A free media in a democratic society airs the views of differing sides in order to fully inform the public and let the people come to their own conclusions. But media is not free if it is manipulated by political operatives who treat the newspaper editors and talk show hosts as puppets on a string. These would-be puppet masters must hide behind the scene in order to fool the public, therefore the best way to resolve this problem is to shine the spot light on those who would be puppet masters so the public can see them for who they really are.

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Posted in Blogs, Express Tribune | 6 Comments »

Conspiracies, Media and a Willing Public

Saturday, December 11th, 2010

I’m glad that the discussion of these fake Wikileaks cables has not ended with the apology of some newspapers. I’m truly disappointed – no, I am truly depressed – that even after the story is admitted to be fake, some newspapers and TV networks continue to peddle the story. If it is unknown to be a forgery, the story is a mistake. Once it is known, it is simply lies. So, why do these lies continue? Unfortunately, the answer is too complex for some simple conspiracy theory. But reading several writers today, you can begin to piece together the answer.

Nadeem F. Paracha calls them ‘The liars collective’, a media that is used by agency men to protect the vested interests of an establishment whose irrelevance threatens its very existence.

Each time any of these institutions is rocked by a scandal or an exposé, certain newspapers and TV channels suddenly start teeming with loud deniers who would go to absurd lengths to divert the public’s attention towards something more ‘substantial’, such as of course, the ‘record-breaking corruption’ of this government, the fantastic job the free judiciary is doing, or how India remains the greatest threat to Pakistan. Or some feel-good lectures by a crank or two, usually crammed with airy myths presented as historical facts, are unleashed.

This has happened so many times that one wonders whether what many journalists and politicians on the other side of the ideological fence say, is true. Whether most of the media personnel we see on our TV screens or read about in the newspaper, who are always so passionately waving the flag of Pakistan and spouting contempt against corruption (especially when a narrative by the establishment comes under stress), may very well be the proverbial ‘agency men?’

NFP, as usual, is on to something. In fact, his thesis is at least partially confirmed by one of these ‘agency men’ himself, Ahmed Quraishi, who admits using media to spread propaganda, even when it is not true.

Just like the Guardian and NYT, the Pakistani media retains the right to manipulate and highlight WikiLeaks documents that serve our interest. This could involve some exaggeration in some parts of the media. But not everything is ‘incorrect’, as the Guardian claimed.

The Pakistani story shifts the focus to India, and shows we too can use WikiLeaks for propaganda like everyone else. The Guardian and the other two journals have been doing the same for the past two weeks. I am not saying Pakistan did use WikiLeaks for propaganda but it certainly can, like everyone else.

This is not journalism, but psychological warfare by manipulating an unsuspecting public. It is not right for the CIA, and it is not right for RAW…and regardless of Ahmed Quraishi’s perverted justification – it is not right for him and the ISI to do either.

But even this is only part of the story. Unfortunately, things are not so simple. There is also the news agencies who have a perverse incentive to publish the craziest headlines without checking their facts. Cafe Pyala describes this situation in their post today:

The defence that “if anyone goes on Goggle [sic] and writes: Wikileaks Leaks About India, Israel and Afghanisan” one would be able to get the same news we got” would be uproariously funny were it not simultaneously so appalling. That’s your defence Online??? So tomorrow, if you go on the net and search for “Conspiracy Theories About Moon Landing Being Fake”, you would pass that along to news organizations as valid news? Second point: why exactly then do news organizations need you? I mean all they need to do to get their ‘news’ is Google (or Goggle, if that’s your thing), right?

Of course none of this takes away from the news organizations’ own responsibilities to verify stories they take on. Are we to gather from this that the news sense of the staff at these papers and channels has deteriorated to such an extent that NONE of them saw anything remotely strange about the story?

There are a lot of news researchers, producers, and editors out there who are not on the payroll of any intelligence agency. But they have their own vested interest, which is the public which consumes the news – us. As Nadir Hassan makes quite clear today, we also share responsibility for all this mess.

The media was only the vehicle for delivering the WikiLeaks-that-weren’t. The ultimate responsibility lies with us, the consumers. That the news stories based on the falsified cables were believed by so many people shows that they only told us what we so desperately want to be true. For a story to pass muster, it must ring true. And a heady brew of inflammatory textbooks, government sabre-rattling, media sensationalism and, it must be admitted, our own prejudice, have convinced a large percentage of the population that a hidden Hindu hand must be behind every local problem. Any media organisation which claimed, for example, that the slippery Swiss were behind the Baloch separatists, would be laughed into bankruptcy. Since we have so successfully demonised India, for many its involvement doesn’t so much as merit an arched eyebrow.

Since self-congratulation is easier than reflection, there will also be a lot of chatter in the coming days about the burgeoning photosphere. True, the fraudulent cables were first exposed as such by blogs and Twitter users. Inevitably, this will be used as proof that the Pakistani population is too sophisticated to fall for such hoaxes. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking a few liberal journalists are representative of a country that is all too willing to believe the worst about its neighbour.

Fake stories are not published because of one sinister villain sitting in some hideout like in the movies. If it were so simple, we could simply find him and throw him behind bars. Problem solved. Unfortunately, there are complex reasons and complex motives behind media propaganda and lies. The good news is, there is a solution – it just takes a little bit of work. Just as word-of-mouth and ‘word-of-Twitter’ can be used to spread misinformation, it can also be used to expose it. It is said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Therefore, let the sun shine on these cockroaches and we will watch them scurry away.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Web of Deceit: Cafe Pyala's Expose of Internet Propaganda

Monday, November 29th, 2010

The blog Cafe Pyala recently published an incredible expose of the tangled web of deceit an Internet propaganda ring being run by a group of supposed journalists (original in full below the jump). Far from the conspiracy theories that are relentlessly promoted on several of the blogs that have been exposed, the work of the bloggers at Cafe Pyala shows what investigative journalism is all about – looking at the facts and connecting the dots. It also serves as an important reminder that readers must always consider the source of news, and whether the journalists or publication are reporting facts or simply political talking points.

According to the independent research of the bloggers at Cafe Pyala and their readers, there is a long list of blogs and Internet news sites that appear to have been set up by at least two individuals – Moin Ansari and Ahmed Quraishi – under false addresses and company names for the purpose of spreading a particular political message and attacking those with whom they disagree. Many of these websites appear to have been taken down following their exposure, more evidence that Cafe Pyala’s findings were correct. The list includes:

Ahmed Quraishi is relatively well known to Pakistan Media Watch readers, as he has been exposed several times by this blog for his pseudo-journalistic work as a political consultant – a fact that Quraishi himself does not dispute. And while some of the other pseudo-journalists exposed by Cafe Pyala like Moin Ansari are less well-known outside of conspiracy blog circles, the practice of using journalism as a cover for political operations extends well beyond these exposed websites. Connections with intelligence agencies run deep in parts of the media, and it is often difficult to decipher what is true and what is merely propaganda.

The lesson here is one that applies not only to Internet journalism, but to all forms of media. As readers of Pakistan Media Watch have commented previously, there are times when sources should be anonymous or can justifiably use a pseudonym to protect their security – especially when criticising authority. This works because the facts should be able to speak for themselves. Individuals are entitled to their own opinions, but no one is invited to his own facts.

(more…)

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Posted in Blogs, Conspiracy Theories | 2 Comments »

Ahmed Quraishi v. Ahmed Quraishi on Geo

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Ahmed QuraishiAhmed Quraishi has weighed in on the media debate. In his typical style, Quraishi ignores the more thoughtful discussion of his more intellectual colleagues in journalism and jumps straight to accusations of some American conspiracy against Geo for being “critical of Mr. Zardari”. But upon careful reading, Quraishi’s critique quickly falls apart.

Quraishi’s entire claim of conspiracy is based on two newspaper articles published by The Washington Post: One titled, “Pakistan’s press piles on president” and the other titled, “Pakistan’s Emboldened Judiciary Threatens Government Stability“. Quraishi does not deny that the press is “piling on” the president as, presumably, he knows that such a claim is too much even for his own readers.

Rather, Quraishi says that “such one-sided and biased reporting can appear in Washington Post shows there are power centers in Washington that take any attack against the incumbent Pakistani government very personally”. Of course, using Ahmed Quraishi’s same logic, one-sided and biased reporting in The News shows that are power centers in Islamabad that take any attack against the incumbent Pakistani government very personally. And that, let me tell you, is simply silliness.

Quraishi’s logical problems don’t stop there. He claims that this is not simply one article, but “underscores a trend in the US media over the past one year”. His evidence? One other article published by the same newspaper one week earlier. Again, using Ahmed Quraishi’s same logic, if it rains in Sialkot for two days in one week, therefore there is a one year trend of constant rain for the whole country. It simply makes no sense.

Most interesting, though, is what this new column reveals about how Ahmed Quraishi changes his conspiracy theories to fit his political objectives. In his latest article, Quraishi defends Geo as a voice of Pakistan. But in 2007, Quraishi himself accused Geo of being a tool of American interests!

This is why most Pakistanis have never seen American diplomats in Pakistan active like this before. And it’s not just the current U.S. ambassador, who has added one more address to her other most-frequently-visited address in Karachi, Mrs. Bhutto’s house. The new address is the office of GEO, one of two news channels shut down by Islamabad for not signing the mandatory code-of-conduct. Thirty-eight other channels are operating and no one has censored the newspapers. But never mind this. The Americans have developed a ‘thing’ for GEO.

Of course, in 2007 Ahmed Quraishi’s worries were somewhat similar. At that time he was worried that the Americans were supporting democratic reforms in Pakistan by not propping up Musharraf. In 2010, he is worried that the Americans are supporting democracy by not standing aside for another coup. Ahmed Quraishi perhaps gives away his ideology a bit later in his 2007 article, though, when he writes:

Musharraf has also told Washington publicly that “Pakistan is more important than democracy or the constitution.” This is a bold position. This kind of boldness would have served Musharraf a lot had it come a little earlier. But even now, his media management team is unable to make the most out of it.

For Quraishi, the nation is not democracy – which is the will of the people – it is only the will of Ahmed Quraishi, a “media manager” or propagandist, and his patrons.

It’s a bit cheeky of Ahmed Quraishi to criticise an American newspaper for commenting on Pakistani politics and media when Ahmed Quraishi himself has made a career out of creating conspiracy theories about American politics and media.

At least the American newspaper had the professionalism and decency to seek out comments from Rana Jawad, Fekhar Rehman, and Cyril Almeida. Of course, the article that so offended Ahmed Quraishi was written by real journalists, not “media managers”. Perhaps instead of criticising the Washington Post, Quraishi could take a moment to learn a thing or two about real reporting.

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Posted in Conspiracy Theories, Geo TV, Jang | 4 Comments »

Ahmed Quraishi, Most 'Weird' Pakistani Journalist, Takes Propaganda to New Lows – Turns Computer Glitch at WH into Conspiracy Theory

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Ahmed QuraishiAhmed Quraishi seems to have an unnatural obsession with Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani. It seems that Quraishi pays attention to little except following the Ambassador’s every move and trying to invent some conspiracy of one form or another. In his latest attempt, Quraishi distorts a computer error at the White House by suggesting that Haqqani was “denied entry” and “abandoned at the gate”. Legitimate news reports about the incident, however, tell a different story.

According to reports on CNN, the incident was caused by a data processing error that was sorted that evening.

The White House has another party protocol problem on its hands after as many as 30 diplomats were stopped at the White House gate and not allowed into a Tuesday evening party being held in the diplomats’ honor.

As many as 30 senior diplomats were denied entry initially, CNN was told.

Several ambassadors who spoke to CNN after the reception said they were barred from entering the reception for Chiefs of Mission and Charges d’Affaires because the information on their identification didn’t match the names and dates of birth on the check-in list. The ambassadors asked not to be named to preserve relations between their countries and the White House.

The party, an annual White House diplomatic reception, is a “must-attend” on the Washington diplomatic social calendar.

White House spokesman Ben Chang acknowledged that “a few” guests were delayed at the entrance to the White House due to “an error in processing their personal data.”

Ahmed Quraishi claims in his article that Haqqani was “denied entry to the White House” because he is not well connected in Washington. This is simply not supported by the facts of this story.

First, one must recognize that Haqqani was not denied entry. Actually, there were 30 Ambassadors who were asked to wait while the data error was sorted. Are we to believe that all of these diplomats are not well connected – including the Ambassadors from Russia and Saudi Arabia? It defies common sense to believe such a thing.

Also, according to the influential newspaper Foreign Policy, while the complete list of nations is not known, the error appears to have been related to the alphabetical order of the countries affected.

Ambassadors from Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, and several other countries were held at the door, while European diplomats from France and Finland were allowed in. This led several ambassadors to speculate that it was an alphabetical problem — countries with names in the latter half of the alphabet were somehow affected by a registration error. Neither the administration nor the State Department would provide a full list of the countries affected by the SNAFU.

One should also consider that having his entry to the event delayed, Husain Haqqani left. I fully expected someone like Ahmed Quraishi to praise the Ambassador for standing up for the nation’s honor? Surely if the Ambassador had stayed put like many of the other diplomats, Quraishi would have condemned him for allowing Pakistan to be insulted?

Furthermore, this latest conspiracy theory is actually a direct contradiction of one of Ahmed Quraishi’s usual themes which is that Haqqani is a US agent. Surely if Husain Haqqani was US agent, he would have been able to skip the usual protocols and avoid the problem altogether.

It seems that this is another situation in which an official is ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t', and political opportunists posing as journalists are standing in the wings ready to make whatever argument serves their agenda, facts be damned.

What makes the story even more weird is Quraishi’s apparent obsession with the Ambassador. In the past, Ahmed Quraishi tried to peddle the ridiculous idea that Haqqani gave a visa to American bin Laden hunter Gary Faulkner because he believed the man was an agent of CIA. He also accused Haqqani of providing lavish accomodations for the Foreign Minister on a trip to New York City, only to be shamed when it was discovered that the poor man was in Pakistan attending to his own mother’s funeral.

In fact, Ahmed Quraishi has been publicly embarrassed before when the influential newspaper Foreign Policy reported that Quraishi’s article of 2009 that claimed Haqqani was to be fired was a misrepresentation of the facts.

In the Nation article, however, writer Ahmed Quraishi, shown at right, states without evidence that the Pakistani source was “close to Ambassador Haqqani,” and states without evidence that Haqqani is “contemplating going public with embarrassing Pakistani official documents.” Neither allegation was part of the article in The Cable.

The title of Quraishi’s article goes even further in misrepresenting the reporting in The Cable, and reads, “If fired, Haqqani threatens to unveil ‘reams’ of Pakistan’s secrets.”

(Quraishi also mislabeled the author of The Cable as “Bill” Rogin; not sure where he got that one.)

Ahmed Quraishi’s obsession with creating conspiracy theories around Husain Haqqani is even more bizarre when one realizes that in the past Quraishi has called Haqqani “one of the best” Ambassadors in the world.

It’s time for political operatives to stop pretending to be journalists in order to hawk their insults, rumours, and conspiracy theories. It is especially ironic that these people who are always itching to humiliate Pakistan’s leaders are the same who claim to be self-appointed nationalists. One might ask that if they really love their country so much, would they please stick to the facts and stop peddling conspiracies invented only to insult the nation’s officials. That is not journalism, it is only political propaganda.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Conspiristan

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

“Conspiristaan” is the name that journalist Syed Abidi invokes in an article for ILIM TV’s website yesterday. Though Mr Abidi is discussing the reaction to the murder of Dr Imran Farooq, his assessment is also apt when one considers the past week of reporting.

As pointed out by Mr Abidi, the nation’s numerous conspiracy theorists got to work quickly once news of Dr Farooq’s death was reported.

Instead of mourning the loss of a political worker and taking the society for correction they got busy working hard on table-stories by inciting more hatred by writing personal and biased opinions and calling them ’sources’ which have no way to be verified or proved.

After this, there is a follow up of SMS campaigns by the same maniacs sending links to log on or full texts declaring the deceased’s own party as his killer. There are always some who would like to learn about negative before the positive and blindly believe in it, being a huge society of illiterates but aware of politics it works very well with them on a massive level. News about MQM is more interestingly read in up country than in Karachi itself, the difference is that in the 90’s it was national media, and now its blog sites and websites only. If these propaganda sites were so true, then our mainstream free media would have been the first to discuss about these conspiracies publically and put these questions to the party.

But the murder of Dr Farooq is not the only story that has become the target of conspiracy theories. Earlier this week, The Nation published an opinion column that claims that the US military has developed a machine to create global warming and control the weather that is being used by a secret group called “New World Order” to dominate the world.

The article, by A. R. Jerral, is essentially a paranoid rant that combines old conspiracy theories of secretive groups trying to control the world with a new spin of science fiction to add a spicy twist. This is a story that has been circulated in emails and websites of paranoid and discredited conspiracy theories, but that it has now been published in a newspaper should give all serious people concern for how low the standards of journalism have fallen.

Some of these conspiracy theories, however, are not simply paranoid rants but are actually political attacks meant to target specific people for personal or political vendettas.

Discredited conspiracy theorist Ahmed Quraishi has seemed to have a long and strange obsession with the Ambassador the the USA, Husain Haqqani. A few weeks ago on his Facebook page he accused Mr Haqqani of arranging luxurious accommodations for the Foreign Minister’s visit to New York City, only Mr Ahmed Quraishi was then shamed when it was reported that actually Husain Haqqani was in Pakistan for his mother’s funeral.

But shame does not appear to bother Quraishi, who is at it again accusing the Ambassador of interfering in the Dr Aafia case. According to an article this week, Ahmed quotes extensively an article by Yvonne Ridley, who he calls “investigative journalist”. Actually, Miss Ridley is a propagandist who does not do very well with facts.

For example, according to Miss Ridley’s article, Husain Haqqani holds US citizenship. This is an old accusation that Ahmed Quraishi has tried to peddle before only to be disproven as it was revealed that a diplomat cannot hold another citizenship. Mr Haqqani has Pakistan citizenship only, though he has worked in the US like thousands of other Pakistanis.

Yvonne Ridley and Ahmed Quraishi accuse the Ambassador of secretly telling journalists that Dr Aafia was “a bad woman”, though they naturally provide no evidence for who was told this or where it was published.

But the Ahmed Quraishi and Yvonne Ridley conspiracy falls apart once they claim that their case is proved because an American politician Cynthia McKinney was refused a visa to visit Pakistan to lobby the government on Dr Aafia’s case.

This simply makes no sense. Dr Aafia is not held by the Pakistani government but has been held by the American government. Why would an American politician fly to Islamabad to lobby the government on a case that is actually taking place in her own country? It simply makes no sense.

But even more ridiculous is the claim that Husain Haqqani has been working against Dr Aafia’s case. Actually, news reports have been filled with public statements by the Ambassador urging the American government to turn over Dr Aafia to Pakistani authorities and let her return home.

Actually, the facts are that the government including its representatives in the Embassy at Washington have been doing extensive work in support of Dr Aafia which has been widely reported.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, has also taken a keen interest in the Afia Siddiqui case given its political importance at home, sources say. He had two meetings with the Bush administration’s Attorney General and has made President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder at least four times to discuss the case. The US government has been unusually considerate in allowing these meetings, American officials point out, as it is not usually US policy to let foreign ambassadors get involved in cases pending before its courts.

Senior diplomats from the Pakistani embassy in Washington have been following Aafia Siddiquis case since the beginning. On the insistence of her brother Mohammed Ali Siddiqui, an expensive team of lawyers was hired to defend her in court with special approval from Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. It was unusual for the Pakistan government to pay top human rights lawyers, who had successfully defended other Al-Qaeda linked prisoners in the past, to defend a single Pakistani citizen who was not arrested while in service.

Whether it is the murder of a political worker like Dr Imran Farooq, science experiments by American universities, or complicated legal cases like Dr Aafia, there are facts and there are fantasies. Proper journalists investigate the facts and report them so that the citizenry may be well informed and make good decisions. Unfortunately, we are seeing an enormous amount of misinformation and wild conspiracy theories being published in all forms of media. These conspiracy theories distort our perceptions, cloud our minds, distract us from important issues and put us off the path of progress.

When you think about it clearly, Syed Abidi’s conclusion is correct.

Information that is verifiable is what we should believe in and develop on. It is our responsibility to be mature and not fall for such theorists, which blocks your positive imagination and creativity. They are getting paid to do it, but you are made a victim for free.

Let us be victims of these conspiracy theorists no longer.

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Posted in Conspiracy Theories | 12 Comments »

Ahmed Quraishi and Flood Contributions

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Ahmed QuraishiAhmed Quraishi’s latest blog post for Express Tribune (why are they giving this discredited conspiracy theorist a platform?) is either a c-grade comedy routine or further evidence that Ahmed Quraishi is willing to ignore facts when they are inconvenient to his political agenda.

Ahmed Quraishi, by his own admission, is a political consultant who is “not a journalist anymore” and supports the jihadis. In short, he is a propagandist. So perhaps it should be no surprise that his blog post today accuses Pakistan’s “rich political elite” of “refusing to budge” and donate to flood relief, except that this claim is so easily demonstrated to be false, we wonder why he even bothered to write it.

According to Ahmed Quraishi,

The Pakistan Army donated one day’s salary of its soldiers, who mostly come from poor backfgrounds, for the relief effort. No politician is yet to take a similar step.

Only problem – that is false. Actually, it was widely reported earlier this month that parliamentarians and cabinet members have donated one-month salary to relief efforts, and 17-Grade government officials will donate one-day salary. Is it too much to ask that Ahmed Qurashi at least read the newspaper before he writes for one?

Ahmed admits in his post that President Zardari has personally donated Rs.6 Millions and the Sharif family has donated Rs.10 Millions to relief funds. His complaint there is both the old “do more” line with the added insult of insinuating corruption by saying that “no one knows how this amount will be spent”.

Ahmed then goes on to condemn MNAs and MPAs both because they have not “been seen in the affected areas helping people or distributing aid”, and for being “shameless politicians …quick to jump in front of visiting TV crews”. Typical Ahmed Quraishi – you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t also!

Ahmed Quraishi’s column is embarrassing for the author as well as the Express Tribune that agreed to publish it. It is based on easily disproven misinformation and scandalous insults backed by no evidence whatsoever.

This leaves only one question. How much, pray tell, has Ahmed Quraishi done to help?

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Posted in Express Tribune | No Comments »

Express Tribune Joining Conspiracy Brigade?

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

The Express Tribune logoA disappointing move by Express Tribune which has been a relatively good source of unbiased information since its recent launch. Today the new blog on the news website includes a conspiracy column by discredited conspiracy theorist Ahmed Quraishi.

Quraishi’s post is a perfect example of his style of disinformation and sleight-of-hand propaganda. He begins with a claim that America has orchestrated attacks against Pakistan since 2006. Really? What attacks has America orchestrated against Pakistan in last five years? Where are his proofs? This is quite a revelation, so shouldn’t he spend the article talking about his evidence for such? Actually, he has none, so he quickly changes the subject to Wikileaks.

But even about Wikileaks, which is the subject of the remainder of the column, Ahmed Quraishi is not honest with his readers.

According to Ahmed Quraishi, the information about ISI in the Wikileaks documents is proof of a secret US government and military operation to smear Pakistan.

But according to British reporter Declan Welsh – who Ahmed Quraishi himself refers to as a trustworthy authority on the issue – this information about ISI came not from USA and its CIA intelligence service, but from Afghanistan’s own spy agency, NDS, and that American officials consider the reports to be “useless”.

But despite the startling allegations the files yield little convincing evidence behind Afghan accusations that the ISI is the hidden hand behind the Taliban.

Much of the intelligence is unverifiable, inconsistent or obviously fabricated, and the most shocking allegations, such as the Karzai plot, are sourced to the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s premier spy agency, which has a history of hostility towards the ISI.

“The vast majority of this is useless,” a retired US officer with long experience in the region told the Guardian.”There’s an Afghan prejudice that wants to see an ISI agent under every rock.”

When Ahmed Quraishi quotes Delcan Walsh’s article, he does not mention this important section because it completely undermines Quraishi’s claim that everything is a secret conspiracy by the Americans.

In fact, even when Ahmed Quraishi does quote from Declan Walsh’s article, he does not include the full paragraph and misrepresents the author’s statement.

Ahmed Quraishi quotes Declan Walsh in this paragraph:

British journalist, Declan Walsh, noticed the anti-Pakistan streak in way the Obama administration handled the leaks. “In issuing such a strongly worded statement with implicit criticism of the ISI,” Mr. Walsh wrote in The Guardian, “the White House may be trying to keep ahead of a tide of US opinion that is hostile towards Pakistan.”

But let us look at the full statement from Mr Walsh’s article:

The ISI has rejected suggestions that it is playing a “double game”, pointing to the arrest of the deputy Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi last February as proof of its good intent. In issuing such a strongly worded statement with implicit criticism of the ISI, the White House may be trying to keep ahead of a tide of US opinion that is hostile towards Pakistan. But the Obama administration has little choice but to stick with its Pakistani allies, whose co-operation they need in hunting al-Qaida fugitives along the Afghan border. The ISI and the CIA are co-operating closely on drone strikes that have hit 47 targets and killed up to 440 people this year.

The war logs are likely to stoke passions in Pakistan where the rightwing press has long accused the US of seeking an excuse to invade and seize the country’s nuclear weapons.

Not only does Mr Walsh state that America is sticking by Pakistan as an ally, but he even predicts that media types like Ahmed Quraishi will exploit the Wikileaks to fuel their conspiracy theories.

Ahmed Quraishi ends his post complaining about the poor quality of information in the leaked documents, but what he fails to inform his readers of is that this has been explained to anyone who has paid attention to the issue from the very beginning – the documents that were leaked are field reports or “raw intelligence” that has not been accepted by the American government or military. According to New York Times newspaper,

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

At the end, Ahmed Quraishi’s “two important questions” are easily dismissed: The only propaganda campaign and faulty intelligence appears in Ahmed Quraishi’s conspiracy theory.

That a discredited propagandist like Ahmed Quraishi would try to pull the wool over the eyes of readers with such a column is not surprising. Actually, it is even expected by the very journalist that Quraishi quotes. What is disappointing is that a respectable publication like Express Tribune would give a platform for such nonsense to be spread. We expect better.

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Ahmed Quraishi's Visa Conspiracy…Debunked

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Ahmed Quraishi’s latest column is a laughable conspiracy theory that is a natural follow up to his foolish (and quickly disproven) claim that an American city government had posted anti-Pakistan signs. It seems he is willing to believe anything, no matter how ridiculous. This latest story claims that Husain Haqqani and Rehman Malik were part of a conspiracy to get the ailing Gary Faulkner into the country to hunt Osama bin Laden because they mistakenly thought he was CIA.

According to Ahmed Quraishi, Haqqani and Malik let this old man with poor health and a criminal record into the country because they mistakenly thought he was a top-secret CIA agent. Here is an interview with this man that supposedly Husain Haqqani and Rehman Malik mistakenly believed was a spy:

The man is clearly mentally disturbed. It is sad really. But how are we supposed to believe that anyone mistook him for a CIA agent?

Ahmed further claims that “only a few months ago Ambassador Haqqani faced accusations he issued visas to tens and possibly hundreds of US citizens without verifying who these visa applicants represented.”

Where is the evidence for this? This is a very serious claim for Ahmed Quraishi to make. If he has some evidence that this is a fact, he should present this to the government. If he has no evidence, is this anything but slander?

Despite what Ahmed Quraishi might want to believe, an Ambassador does not usually issue travel visas personally. Actually, there is an entire Embassy staff to review visa applications and grant a stamp of approval.

Second, the deportation of an individual instead of prosecution is not unusual, even from US to Pakistan. In May, a US judge ordered a Pakistani man suspected of helping Faisal Shazad to be deported back to Pakistan, not to to “rot in US jails” like Ahmed tries to say. Even Ahmed’s claim that Haqqani has been “forcing these kids to accept the false charges against them” does not follow reality. A Boston Globe article from May reported that Haqqani was working to protect Pakistanis accused by American law enforcement.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States said yesterday that three Pakistani men arrested in New England last week as part of the investigation into the attempted Times Square bombing do not appear to have any involvement in terrorism.

Husain Haqqani, who has been briefed by Pakistani officials, said that law enforcement cast a wide net during the investigation and that the three men were only taken into custody because alleged immigration violations were discovered while they were being questioned.

“For all we know, there will be no connection at the end of it,” Haqqani said during a telephone interview. “I’m a little critical of law enforcement who ran to the press first, because you can actually destroy people’s lives. So far, there is nothing that implies anything of a terrorist nature.”

When Ahmed sums up his argument, it is laughable.

Moral of the story is that Pakistanis can rot in US jails but a US citizen who is in clear violation of Pakistani laws will always be promptly released by a pro-US government in Islamabad.

Except that this is not even close to true. Does Ahmed not read the news? Is he so disconnected from reality that he is living on another planet? Let me provide a news clipping from the USA today: “Americans Get 10 Years in Pakistan in Terror Case”.

A Pakistan court sentenced five young Americans from the Washington, D.C., area to 10 years in jail for plotting terrorist acts in the country after they connected with an al Qaeda-linked jihadi via the Internet.

…

A State Department spokesman said embassy representatives have followed the case closely and ensured the defendants’ rights were protected.

“We have met periodically with each individual and have not seen any evidence of mistreatment,” said the spokesman, P.J. Crowley. “We will continue to…support them during the appeals process.”

It turns out that Ahmed Quraishi is once again incorrect. Americans can rot in Pakistani jails just the same. He won’t admit this, though, because he is not a real journalist but a propagandist only.

Let’s be realistic, please. If Ahmed Quraishi really believes that a “50-year-old ex-con and construction worker with ailing kidneys” could be mistaken for a CIA agent, he needs to have his head examined. More than likely, though, Ahmed Quraishi thought this would be a clever way to plant a new conspiracy theory. Problem is, his theories have gotten so silly that they don’t even make sense to people who want to believe them.

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Who is Thomas Houlahan?

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Last week The News published a column titled, “US asked to stand by forces of law in Pakistan” that calls on the US to oppose the present government. Aside from the obvious problem of publishing an obvious opinion piece as “news,” the article raises several questions about whether The News is acting as a political propaganda machine.

The article is based primarily on another article written in an American newspaper called, The Hill. This appears to be a political newspaper for the US Congress. The article, published originally on 28 May, was written by one Mr Thomas Houlahan who says he is,

a former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. He served as an election monitor during the 2008 elections in Pakistan

After looking into Mr Houlahan a little bit, though, it seems that perhaps there is more to this story than is being reported.

In a 2007 article, Mr Houlahan writes that Pakistan cannot have a democracy but rather required Pervez Musharraf and Army to rule.

Many commentators seem to believe that the only reason Pakistan has not developed into a smoothly running democracy is that the Pakistani army is constantly involving itself in politics.

I think those commentators have gotten it pretty much backward. It is clear to me that the Pakistani army ends up involved in politics because Pakistan lacks some of the key prerequisites for the smooth functioning of a democracy.

He went on to say that Musharraf was ‘clearly entitled to run’ and that, by sacking the judges, he saved Pakistan:

The recent state of emergency stemmed from an attempt by the Supreme Court to expand its power.

There was already tension with the judiciary over what the government felt was excessive use of its right to take up issues on its own initiative, known as “suo-motu jurisdiction.” Issues like road traffic, prices, environmental problems, and appointment and transfers of senior officials were increasingly becoming court matters. In addition, government and civil service officials were being called to court with increasing regularity and dressed down by judges.

Musharraf felt that the judiciary’s activity rose to the level of interference with the conduct of government.

It has also been reported that two Supreme Court justices warned Musharraf that the court was preparing to rule him ineligible for election as president.

Such a ruling would have gone against not only any reasonable interpretation of the constitution, but an April 13, 2005 ruling by the Supreme Court on the very same issues.

It may not look good for a serving army general to run for president of a country, but under the constitution of Pakistan, Musharraf was clearly entitled to run.

…

Musharraf’s declaration of emergency may have served his own interests, but it may have also forestalled what would have been a dictionary-definition constitutional crisis.

In fact, while issuing praise for Pervez Musharraf and military rule, Mr Houlahan has some very bitter words to say about Pakistan’s political parties.

The PPP is essentially the fiefdom of Benazir Bhutto, its self-described “chairperson for life.” Before her, it was the fiefdom of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was executed after having been convicted of authorizing the murder of a political opponent.

The PML(N) is the fiefdom of Nawaz Sharif. In fact, the parenthetical “N” in the organization’s name stands for Nawaz.

Because these parties stress loyalty to the leader over honesty and competence, all four administrations of Bhutto and Sharif ended early due to corruption and mismanagement on a massive scale.

So it seems that Mr Houlahan is far from an independent analyst, but actually has very strong political prejudices. This was also evident to Farrukh Khan Pitafi who received an email from Mr Thomas Houlahan in 2008 that supported Musharraf’s decision to sack Supreme Court judges.

On March 11, I received an e-mail from a Thomas Houlahan who, apart from mentioning that he was the Director of the Military Assessment Program, Center for Security and Science, Washington DC, also drew my attention to his report on the judicial crisis in Pakistan.While my detailed assessment of his report (along with the download link and the tricky quotes from the author) will be shortly available on my website (www.pitafi.com), I must submit that upon reading its 47 pages I was seriously dismayed. Despite the fact that the author displayed considerable knowledge of the Pakistani history, he was quite consciously distorting facts and making some glaring omissions that suited his thesis perfectly. They say an analyst should never start researching with preconceived notions in mind. In this case, however, the analyst had entered the fray with a clear view to vindicating President Musharraf’s stance on the judiciary.

In 2008, the same Mr Thomas Houlahan was on PTV talking with Ahmed Quraishi and saying that the justices removed by Pervez Musharraf should not be reinstated. See the video below:

Thomas Houlahan and Ahmed Quraishi

Thomas Houlahan and Ahmed Quraishi

Actually, Mr Thomas Houlahan is a regular guest of Ahmed Quraishi and has appeared on his shows more than once.

Mr Thomas Houlahan also works for the American Think Tank “Center for Security and Science” which is directed by Mr Stephen R Bowers who is a professor of government at Liberty University – a school that claims to be “the largest and fastest growing Christian Evangelical university in the world.” This school’s website says that:

Everything we do is designed to develop Christ-centered men and women with the values, knowledge and skills essential to impact tomorrow’s world.

As for his claim of being an election observer in 2008, there are some reports from his colleagues that paint an interesting picture of Mr Houlahan:

Just as invitees were jelling in Islamabad, an American appeared unannounced on the scene as “group leader.” Short, fat, bald and given to un-ironic remarks like “listen, I’m from New Hampshire, we invented democracy,” Thomas Houlahan presented himself as almost a parody of the obnoxious American abroad. He’d show up at group meetings dressed in college sweats with his gut hanging out while loudly pronouncing on the Pakistani constitution.“Ya know Fox, CNN, the networks….I’m their go-to guy on Pakistan, there’s nothing I don’t know about what happens here.” Describing himself as a ‘distinguished constitutional scholar,’ he claimed to represent a Washington think-tank, the Center for Science and Security. That he was also ex-US military deeply concerned about the Dutch delegates, representing a peace group. He liked to name-drop, notably General Rashid Qureshi, Musharraf’s senior aide and a man much hated by Pakistanis. When we made a courtesy call on the president, Houlahan took with him his copy of Musharraf’s autobiography while nodding sagely at the strongman’s every remark. I told my colleagues of suspicions I’d picked up from diplomats that CMD was close to Mohammed Ali Durrani, a former information minister and a tight palace ally.

Two days out from the poll, we ousted a very agitated Houlahan in a coup. Munir apologized to the rest of us, claiming he had no idea what this guy was like. Then we tore up the CMD observer procedures and made our own, following EU guidelines. The group would have no official leader. But that didn’t stop Houlahan from spouting his pro-government line to the local press as our ‘leader.’ The rest of us were compelled to make our own media statements stressing our strict neutrality, dissociating ourselves from him and from CMD’s affiliations. Then we headed to the provinces to observe voting.

Obviously this all points to a political operation and not some independent analysis by Mr Houlahan. So why did The News take his words and republish them without doing any independent research? It took me only a few moments using Google to find all of this information. Surely with all their resources, the people at Jang could find even more.

It seems that nobody at The News bothered to check out this Mr Thomas Houlahan or investigate why he would be writing such things. Instead, they saw an opportunity to make a political hit. But that’s not reporting. That’s a political campaign.

Of course, all of this raises again the ridiculousness of a conspiracy theory being peddled by Ansar Abbasi and The News a few weeks ago. If you remember, at the the time Ansar Abbasi was trying to tell that the US media is being controlled by some secret forces in Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington. So again, I ask, was this article by Mr Thomas Houlahan a plant by the Embassy? Or does The News only believe conspiracies about stories that it doesn’t like? Why is one article a plant, and another worthy of front page publication?

Of course, when a newspaper will publish obviously fake stories without doing even a minute’s basic fact-checking, what do you expect?

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