This is a deadly dangerous game being played by Ansar Abbasi, and the height of irresponsibility by The News (Jang Group) reminiscent of the foolish act of The Nation in 2009 which accused an American journalist of spying based on no evidence.

Like Kaswar Klasra The Nation in 2009 which resulted in international condemnation, Ansar Abbasi only references unnamed ‘sources’ in his accusation and provides no actual evidence that any of the individuals named has committed any crimes or engaged in any shadowy or spying activities.

Nevertheless, with the public enraged over the shootings by American Raymond Davis and the whipping up of emotions by religious parties in street protests, the accusations and naming of these individuals creates a dangerous atmosphere for vigilante violence against any and all Americans regardless of the facts.

Imagine that after 9/11 The New York Times were to publish the names of Pakistanis in the USA and accuse them of being terrorists. This is the same thing that Ansar Abbasi and The News have done today.

If the law enforcement or intelligence agencies believe that an individual is engaged in illegal activities, it is the responsibility of those agencies to detain the individual and present the evidence to a court or in the case of diplomats the government can declare the individual a ‘persona non grata’ and expel them from the country.

It is the height of irresponsibility for someone who claims to be a journalist and a media group that claims to be an objective messenger of news to engage in such deadly games by leveling accusations against individuals that can result in vigilante violence and even cold-blooded murder.

Conspiracy Spiders Weaving Their Tangled Web

Ayesha Siddiqa’s column in Dawn today is an excellent review of the silliness that continues to waste time and energy – not to mention providing a distraction from important issues. Of course I am referring to the conspiracy theory industry. That’s what it is, really, an industry. These are people who have figured out how to make a lot of money by hawking ridiculous fantasies and dramatic stories. Obviously, they don’t need the same evidence or facts that a real journalist would provide. Just a juicy story about a secret enemy is all that’s needed.

I COULDN’T believe my ears when responsible quarters informed me of an American-Blackwater conspiracy to isolate Pakistan.

According to this heinous plan the objective will be achieved by infiltrating the media, specifically through placing people in responsible positions in the print and electronic media. These plants will then be made responsible for freaking out ordinary people.

While some Blackwater agents are said to be responsible for making people paranoid about a secret plan to destroy Pakistan and take away its ‘crown jewels’ — its nuclear weapons — others have been given the task of exciting the populace with the idea of fighting some kind of holy war against neighbouring states and more.

This is called psy-ops, the art of instilling fear in the hearts of citizens and making them lose touch with reality and faith in their own capabilities. The biggest tool of course is the rumour mill, which is constantly in action churning out half-lies and half-truths. Anyone who cannot be bought off by the company is immediately termed a foreign agent. Such tricks are also useful in hiding the fact that it is in reality these people, who are working to isolate Pakistan, that are on Blackwater’s payroll.

There is evidence of using psy-ops in the past against ordinary folks and making them believe in some outside force conspiring to destroy them. The Germans before the Second World War are a prime example. The entire nation had lost touch with reality to a point that they stopped using rational thinking to assess the behaviour of their own leaders and held a certain kind of people responsible for the malaise they suffered from.

Resultantly, there was the famous witch-hunt through which the Jews, the ‘gypsies’, the physically disabled, homosexuals and non-conformist intellectuals were killed or forced to leave. Very soon, the Nazi military machine managed to get rid of people who would have proved to be an asset for the Third Reich.

Apparently, one of the secondary objectives of the conspirators is to create an environment which kills creative minds and pushes them to leave, hence the brain drain. It didn’t occur to ordinary Germans that their leaders, who were responsible for the First World War as well, were caught ‘with their pants down’ in the process of using military power against the rest of the world, and as such were equally responsible for the tragic state of affairs. In fact, the real conspiracy was to take away the rational faculty of the ordinary citizen.

In Pakistan today ordinary persons are being fed fear and paranoia so that they cannot think about the mistakes made by their own leadership. This is not to suggest that other nations do not make questionable plans but the fact is that painting the world in shades of black and white is in itself a conspiracy against the people.

For instance, the story about the historic American let-down does not mention that our own leadership was equally responsible for serving the interests of foreign states in return for both ‘cash and kind’. Publicly asking Hillary Clinton questions regarding the control of the ISI, for example, is nothing but superimposing the idea of the Pakistani nation’s EQ (emotional quotient). So Washington — rather than Islamabad — decides everything in Pakistan.

I haven’t been informed as yet but I suspect that there is even a larger conspiracy afoot to impair the minds of Muslims all over the world. This is done through instilling the fear of some ‘foreign hand’ behind everything that happens in their countries. Spreading such rumours gradually weakens and ultimately deadens their capacity to think of themselves as people who can control their destinies.

According to this plan, the answer for everything bad or unpleasant lies outside. The bulk of the mentally de-capacitated citizenry then gradually looks up to a certain set of leaders as ‘knights in shining armour’ who will protect them and the state.

The absence of systems in what is called the Muslim world is an eye-opener. The conspiracy deepens since people are also made to believe that their lives will only improve through installing a certain kind of programme on their national hard drive.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

The Peshawar Urdu daily Mashriq has run a notice by the father of the Peshawar/Islamabad based reporter, Syed Fawad Ali Shah, who has recently become prominent as a reporter for The Nation and is also known for  writing blogs about journalists and NWFP government officials and their alleged relations with Blackwater.

The notice by the father describes the reporter son as “a blackmailer”, making one wonder why editor Ms Shireen Mazari allows him to use the columns of her newspaper to pretend to be a reporter.  Shah’s attitude is no different from that of Ahmed Quraishi who has a long history of trying to similarly target and blackmail foreign diplomats in Pakistan.

Following is the translation of the notice appearing in The Mashriq:

“My son Syed Fawad Ali Shah S/O Syed Jamat Ali Shah who lists himself as the Bureau Chief of Daily The Nation, is basically not a journalist. Rather he is a blackmailer.  He has published self-created news stories, based on allegations and unauthentic information against civil, government and the officials of other organizations in different newspapers to mentally torture them and blackmail them for his own interests.  This has now become his occupation.  In addition to this, few years back, he obtained a fake degree of Higher Secondary School and managed to get enrolled in the NWFP Police Department as a constable.  Later, based on charges of stealing official files, harassment of lady police workers, blackmailing officers and on a fake degree, a case was lodged against him in the court.  Consequently, he was sacked and was sent behind bars.  Not only he has stolen important files from the NWFP police department but has also been involved in the misuse of files of other departments in NWFP.  I therefore, announce, while addressing the entire journalist fraternity, owners of newspapers, government and semi-government officials, including police department, FATA Secretariat and other government departments with whom my son Fawad Ali Shah is in contact, that my son is a blackmailer, who is using media as a blackmailing tool and those who are in contact with him or are involved in any kind of dealings with him will be responsible for their own losses.  I also announce that I disown my son and expel him from the ownership all of my transferable and non-transferable property.  I also disown and disinherit my other son Syed Abid Ali Shah for collaborating with Fawad Ali Shah in blackmailing people.  Moreover, they won’t be entitled to own my property even after my death.”

This is not the first time Mr. Syed Fawad Ali Shah has been accused of such deeds, though it is by far the most damning coming from his own father. Last fall, Musarrat Ullah Jan, a journalist for Dunya News TV wrote that Syed Fawad Ali Shah had threatened him for comments he had made in a journalist forum.  Mr. Musarrat Ullah Jan gave application against Syed Fawad Ali Shah to Peshawar Police, Khyber Union of Journalist, and Peshawar Press Club. It is further alleged that Mr. Syed Fawad Ali Shah was expelled from Peshawar police for making the same sorts of attempts at blackmail.

The question for The Nation is why, with all of this evidence against Mr. Ali Shah, they chose to publish his claims of being threatened by Blackwater and American diplomats including the US Ambassador to Pakistan – claims that were presented with no evidence other than his word, and which are immediately suspect given allegation by other journalists and even his own father of his manufacturing stories for attention and personal gain.

The report, published in the Politics section, simply parrots the words of the JUI-F leader without any comment as to the reliability of the claims, easily leading some readers to accept that they are true. But despite their 7 seats in the National Assembly, JUI-F is not an intelligence organization and has not, as far as I know, actually determined the number of Black Water personnel (if any) in Islamabad.

The sensational claims of the JUI-F leader do fit with the general tone and political stance of The Nation, but they are not a subjective opinion open for debate. If The Nation would like to only be a political propaganda paper, then it should advertise truthfully as such.

Individuals can have an open and honest debate about whether or not foreign security contractors should be allowed to operate in Pakistan. This is a good topic for opinion pages and editorials. What is not open to debate, however, is the number – if any – of foreign security contractors actually in the country. This is an objective fact that is verifiable with proper research. The Nation failed to do their jounralistic duty and conduct any investigative research to verify the politician’s claims. Instead, they simply repeated what the politician said with no question.

If our media is going to serve the public and be a service to our democracy, they are going to have to do more than repeat the unverified claims of politicians and conspiracy theorists. Investigative research and fact checking is hard work, but it is a vital part of a healthy news media. This is a lesson The Nation still needs to learn.

IN LATE AUGUST, a couple of weeks after a U.S. drone strike incinerated Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, the country’s most popular televised chat show, “Capital Talk,” hosted a panel to discuss national security. Among the guests was a squat, middle-aged woman with short black hair, streaked with silver dye, named Shireen Mazari. A defense analyst and public intellectual, Mazari is known for her hawkish nationalism–and deep suspicions of India and the United States. Her presence in the studio suggested that, despite the enormous threat her country faced from homegrown terrorists, the conversation that night wouldn’t center around Mehsud or the Pakistani Taliban.

Instead, over the course of the next half hour, the panel discussed reports that Blackwater, the North Carolina-based defense contractor that recently changed its name to Xe Services, was operating in Pakistan. Hamid Mir, the host of “Capital Talk,” showed video footage of Islamabad’s most expensive neighborhoods, featuring multi-story villas with high walls and satellite dishes. The homes looked like any other on the street. But red arrows, superimposed on the screen, pointed to allegedly incriminating electrical generators and surveillance cameras perched atop the walls. “American undercover people are coming,” Mazari said. “They are renting homes, and Blackwater is providing security, running death squads and assassination squads … It is an occupation, by default.”

Mazari’s hunt for American spies and undercover defense contractors was only getting started. In September, she was named editor of The Nation, an English-language daily often described as “Fox News in Pakistan.” (Earlier this year, one columnist dubbed Mazari the “Ann Coulter of Pakistan.”) Throughout the fall, The Nation has published multiple front-page stories on the location of new ”Blackwater dens” around Islamabad. It featured a news story last month titled “MYSTERIOUS US NATIONALS,” which described “two suspicious foreigners wandering in the guise of journalists … [who] seemingly belonged to the US spy agency CIA.” The proof? That they “were driven towards the US Consulate.” (The “mysterious US nationals” turned out to be an English freelance photographer and an Australian photographer who works for Getty.)

The low point, however, came a couple of weeks earlier, when The Nation fronted a story titled “JOURNALISTS AS SPIES IN FATA?”–a reference to Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas–that cited anonymous law enforcement sources accusing Matthew Rosenberg, an American correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, of working as a “chief operative” for the CIA, Blackwater, and the Mossad. “We put in a question mark,” said Mazari, referring to the punctuation at the end of the headline, when I asked her whether she realized she was endangering Rosenberg’s life. (Daniel Pearl, also a Journal reporter, was kidnapped in Karachi in early 2002, accused of being a CIA agent, and beheaded.)

In the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the United States and Pakistan are ostensibly on the same side. But, as the Obama administration prepares to pour tens of thousands of new troops into Afghanistan, it faces a daunting array of challenges from its allies in Islamabad. Perhaps none is as disturbing as the anti-Americanism that is being fueled by Pakistan’s mainstream media. In a twisted development, most Pakistanis now view the United States as their greatest threat and enemy, usurping a place that India seemed primed to occupy eternally. And Mazari, who holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, may represent the vanguard of a well-educated, English-speaking, secular elite increasingly charged with hypernationalism and antipathy toward the United States. Mixing fact with demagoguery, and sometimes outright fiction, she represents yet another obstacle to Washington’s war on the Taliban.

FOR MOST OF the past decade, Shireen Mazari wrote a regular column in The News, a popular English-language newspaper owned by the largest private media conglomerate in Pakistan. The country does not exactly have a free press–this fall, Reporters Without Borders ranked Pakistan in the bottom 10 percent of its Press Freedom Index, squeezed between Uzbekistan and Equatorial Guinea–but there is no shortage of dissenting opinions aired on any of the country’s myriad private TV channels. Over the past couple of years, much of the commentariat’s energy has gone into denouncing President Asif Ali Zardari and U.S. foreign policy. It’s an effort that Mazari, whose articles often criticize the country’s civilian leadership and breathlessly recount CIA plots to dismember Pakistan and seize its nuclear weapons, has played a large part in leading.

I first met Mazari in 2006, when I was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad (ISSI), a foreign ministry-funded think tank. She was the head of the institute, and I was in the country as a freelance journalist, but, at dinner parties, Mazari often introduced me as her “resident CIA agent”–a joke that’s never really funny and grew awfully uncomfortable over time. Eventually, in January 2008, I was expelled from Pakistan following months of reporting in Taliban-affected parts of the country. Last month, in a TV interview, Mazari said, “There is a history of American journalists misbehaving in Pakistan,” after which she mentioned my travels to supposedly off-limits regions and added, “Eventually, he had to be deported.”

Far from being on the fringes of Pakistani society, Mazari is something of an establishment figure. She was appointed director general of the institute by Pervez Musharraf’s government not long after the general seized power in an October 1999 coup. In subsequent years, Mazari says she enjoyed considerable influence within Musharraf’s circles, and those ties, combined with her writing, have led to charges that she is merely a pawn for Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies, which remain critical of U.S. power and are critical of Zardari’s floundering attempts at governance. “It’s quite obvious that her views are in consonance with people in the agencies,” explained Arif Nizami, the former editor of The Nation, who led the paper from 1986 until this September, when Mazari took over. “She’s let loose by certain people in the agencies who would like to see the pot burning,” said an acquaintance of Mazari’s in Islamabad. “She’s just a mouthpiece.”

That doesn’t mean that Mazari’s charges are all without merit. There is, of course, a U.S. military and intelligence presence in Pakistan, and, two weeks ago, the New York-based liberal magazine The Nation–no relation to its Pakistani namesake–published a lengthy article alleging the activities of Xe/Blackwater in Pakistan on behalf of the U.S. military. Xe and the U.S. government deny the charges, but, when I spoke with Mazari soon after, she said, “I certainly feel vindicated.” She later added, “Our interests and the Americans’ interests don’t coincide.”

During Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to Pakistan, the secretary of state spent much time arguing that U.S. and Pakistani interests did, in fact, coincide. To a cynical questioner who believed that Pakistan was fighting America’s war, Clinton replied, “We have a common enemy.” Indeed, in the past six months alone, the Pakistani Taliban has exploded bombs in Islamabad; attacked police and military sites in Punjab; overrun the Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi; and bombed sites throughout Peshawar. More than 400 people have been killed in terrorist attacks since October. Behind closed doors, senior Pakistani leaders seem to realize the threat, which is why Islamabad accepts U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, silently condoning the drone strikes, for example, while condemning them for public effect. Mazari’s objections–like those of many other Pakistanis–are certainly understandable, but the reckless, oftentimes unsubstantiated way in which Mazari presents them only deepens the so-called “trust deficit” between the two countries.

In August, for example, Mazari wrote that an American citizen named Craig Davis had been arrested in Peshawar and deported because of his alleged ties to Creative Associates, a government contractor that she dubbed the “central organization” for U.S.-funded “suspicious, covert operations” in Pakistan. “Clearly there is a threatening US agenda seeking out our nuclear sites and assassinating people, thereby adding to our chaos and violence,” she continued. Weeks later, she wrote that Davis was back in the country. The U.S. Embassy objected to the story, and The News’s editorial-page editor went back and fact-checked the column. Some of Mazari’s assertions–Davis had not, in fact, been deported–didn’t check out. So, before her next column ran, the editor opted to hold the piece an extra day and show it to a lawyer. In the interim, Mazari announced that she was taking the job as editor of The Nation, though not before accusing the U.S. ambassador, Anne Patterson, of interfering with Pakistan’s free press. (It wasn’t the first time Mazari had accused the Americans of disrupting her career. When the Pakistan People’s Party won elections in 2008, they promptly removed her from her position at the ISSI, a development for which she also blamed Patterson.)

Mazari and The Nation, though smaller than The News, were a perfect fit; The Nation’s publisher has advocated nuking India and is also noted for his conspiracy-mongering. Since taking over, Mazari claims that the paper has been “seeing a big revival,” with circulation having “jumped up tremendously.” According to both Pakistanis and Pakistan-watchers, The Nation has become a right-wing outlet like Fox News. But Hamid Mir, the host of “Capital Talk,” cautioned against making the comparison–for fear of it becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. “The Nation is not very big and not very influential,” he said. “If The Nation becomes Fox News, then Pakistan will burn.”

Already, the Taliban have seized on the propaganda opportunity that Mazari has opened. When a bomb ripped through a Peshawar market in late October, killing more than 100 people, the Taliban, increasingly concerned about alienating the Pakistani public, refused to take credit for the blast. Instead, Mehsud’s successor, the Fu Manchu-styled Hakimullah Mehsud, blamed Blackwater. If that line becomes accepted, then not only will Pakistan continue to burn, but the U.S.-Pakistan relationship may burn along with it.

By Nicholas Schmidle, Nicholas Schmidle, a fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of TO LIVE OR TO PERISH FOREVER: TWO TUMULTUOUS YEARS IN PAKISTAN.

Here’s a sneak peek:

IN LATE AUGUST, a couple of weeks after a U.S. drone strike incinerated Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, the country’s most popular televised chat show, “Capital Talk,” hosted a panel to discuss national security. Among the guests was a squat, middle-aged woman with short black hair, streaked with silver dye, named Shireen Mazari. A defense analyst and public intellectual, Mazari is known for her hawkish nationalism–and deep suspicions of India and the United States. Her presence in the studio suggested that, despite the enormous threat her country faced from homegrown terrorists, the conversation that night wouldn’t center around Mehsud or the Pakistani Taliban.

Instead, over the course of the next half hour, the panel discussed reports that Blackwater, the North Carolina-based defense contractor that recently changed its name to Xe Services, was operating in Pakistan. Hamid Mir, the host of “Capital Talk,” showed video footage of Islamabad’s most expensive neighborhoods, featuring multi-story villas with high walls and satellite dishes. The homes looked like any other on the street. But red arrows, superimposed on the screen, pointed to allegedly incriminating electrical generators and surveillance cameras perched atop the walls. “American undercover people are coming,” Mazari said. “They are renting homes, and Blackwater is providing security, running death squads and assassination squads … It is an occupation, by default.”

Mazari’s hunt for American spies and undercover defense contractors was only getting started. In September, she was named editor of The Nation, an English-language daily often described as “Fox News in Pakistan.” (Earlier this year, one columnist dubbed Mazari the “Ann Coulter of Pakistan.”) Throughout the fall, The Nation has published multiple front-page stories on the location of new “Blackwater dens” around Islamabad. It featured a news story last month titled “MYSTERIOUS US NATIONALS,” which described “two suspicious foreigners wandering in the guise of journalists … [who] seemingly belonged to the US spy agency CIA.” The proof? That they “were driven towards the US Consulate.” (The “mysterious US nationals” turned out to be an English freelance photographer and an Australian photographer who works for Getty.)

Later in the article, even Mazari’s fellow journalists say that she had gone over the edge and that since she has become editor of The Nation, the reporting in that newspaper has gone crazy. How crazy? So much that Taliban is using it as propaganda.

In the end, this article is really quite sad. Mazari is exposed as a pathetic figure. A paranoid woman filled with delusional fantasies that just never quite seem to work out when people check the facts. All Americans are spies. Anyone who disagrees with her is working for the spies. In fact, it is easy to come away from this article an imagine Shireen Mazari locked in her own kitchen with the lights off, having thrown out the cook for being a spy. Perhaps the rice was overcooked a bit too much. Is it a secret plot against her?

Stay tuned, dear readers, as this story unfolds. It promises to be quite juicy!