Talat Hussain owes a favour to Nawa-i-Waqt. Following his stunningly poor report that laid the blame for violence in Karachi at the convenient scapegoat of President Zardari, Nawa-i-Waqt followed by placing the blame at an even more remote bogey – the Hindu-Zionist conspiracy!

According to an editorial in The Nation, recent statements by Interior Minister Rehman Malik prove that a Hindu-Zionist conspiracy is responsible for Karachi’s violent gangs – a statement that was subsequently rubbished by Sindh Home Minister Manzoor Wassan.

Unfortunately, there are some foreign elements in Karachi, but they’re not Israeli. When an accidental explosion rocked Baldia last year, it wasn’t a pile of Hindu suicide vests and grenades that detonated. But these were not the foreigners The Nation was looking for.

According to The Nation, “it is well documented, that no less than 67 percent of the illegal business of arms smuggling is in the hands of the Israelis”. Despite an extensive search, we have been unable to discover any documentation that supports this claim. This is surprising since The Nation claims “it is well documented”. We were able to find a 1997 report from the United Nations that includes the following section on illegal arms in South Asia:

South Asia

70. The problem of excessive and destabilizing accumulations of small arms and light weapons in South Asia was significantly shaped by the war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988. During that conflict, both sides in the cold war exported large quantities of both major conventional weapons and small arms and light weapons into the region. Today, Afghanistan is a leading source of unaccounted weapons. The conflict continues and much of the current inflow of weapons is due to illicit deals involving a circuitous network of manufacturers, buyers, suppliers and distributors which are able to operate because of a lack of State authority. There is a lack of cooperation among several States in the region that also contributes to the problems of covert supply and poor controls over small arms and light weapons.

71. Insurgents and terrorist groups, as well as drug traffickers, in the region are also supplied with small arms and light weapons by illicit or covert networks. This region is particularly plagued by illicit trafficking in explosives, especially improvised explosive devices which have been frequently used in armed attacks. Most armed groups are based overseas and conduct fund-raising abroad for the illicit procurement of arms and for violent acts in the region.

72. In this region, the production of and trafficking in drugs are directly linked to the proliferation and acquisition of small arms and light weapons. This problem, and illicit trafficking in weapons in general, is exacerbated by a lack of either local or international controls of land and maritime borders in certain States of the region.

It is possible that the editors at Nawa-i-Waqt have simply woven a false statistic from thin air?

Let us explore further the reality of illegal weapons markets that deal in the violent deaths of innocent Pakistanis. Below is a video that looks at the source of much of the illegal weapons that rain death on Pakistan.

Certainly illegal arms are available from Israel, USA, Russia, China, Germany, Italy…Everywhere in the world that makes weapons those are available in Pakistan. Also, sadly, guns handmade by Pakistani children are available.

But while the English language article in The Nation is misleading, the Udru language piece in Daily Nawa-i-Waqt adds a little mirch masala for the awam.

The Urdu article says that the trio consisting of India, Israel and USA mutually and individually conspires against Pakistan and the agenda of this “shaitani ittehad salasa” is to damage Pakistan sovereignty and malign the reputation of Pakistan. The piece also mentions that after 9-11 this “American” war has given a great opportunity to our enemies to conspire against us, especially India, a country that hasn’t accepted the creation of Pakistan since 1947.

The Nawa-i-waqt piece also comes to this extremely “logical” conclusion that since our security agencies have found involvement of RAW in PNS Mehran attack, Indian terrorists surely must have sponsored these Israeli weapons found in Karachi. But Nawa-i-waqt ignores the fact that it was not RAW but Taliban who confessed to the attack on PNS Mehran. Of course, in the bizarre world of such conspiracy theories, Taliban is also part of the Hindu-Zionist conspiracy.

Then the piece says that this devilish trio is behind the current unstable conditions of Karachi are directly or indirectly responsible for target killings.

The most interestingly bizarre (read chatpatti) news that Nawa-i-Waqt breaks to its readers is that it claims that Indians themselves created the Mumbai attacks and they placed blame for them on Pakistan to malign Pakistan’s image in the world:

The piece further asks the audience why our leaders use restraint against India even after presence of proof that points in their direction and tells us that our country’s sovereignty and security depends on whether or not we choose to point fingers at India. Could it be because these ‘proofs’ are as elusive as Nawa-i-Waqt‘s statistical claims?

The repetition of misleading conspiracy theories by irresponsible media do nothing to inform the people or progress the nation towards a solution for serious issues like the bitter violence that cause the people to suffer daily. Though this latest conspiracy began by a statement of Interior Minister Rehman Malik, The Nation and Nawa-i-Waqt had the opportunity to provide an important correction to the Minister’s statement by giving readers the facts. Instead, The Nation decided that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and rather than correct the politician they take his conspiracy theory and make it even more sensational with fabricated statistics and accusations against a Hindu-Zionist bogey.

The Nation is correct in its conclusion that “it is essential to probe the matter to the finish and try to find out the sources of the funding of this vicious project of widespread destabilisation”. But this cannot happen so long as media groups like Nawa-i-Waqt are exploiting tragedies to promote conspiracy theories instead of honestly investigating and exposing the truth.