According to the report, Imran Khan was “extremely insecure” and acted in “dictatorial fashion” simply because he met with the American officials privately. The reporter compares Imran Khan’s behaviour to former dictator Gen Musharraf saying that “there is no record anywhere about his various meetings with the world leaders as he kept everyone out, including the note taker” without considering the statement of PTI Information Secretary Shafqat Mehmood that even though he was unaware of the meeting maybe it was the case that Imran Khan did not have time to gather a team. Instead, the reporter quotes Shireen Mazari saying that she asked to attend but was told by Imran Khan that it was a private meeting between himself and the Americans, but the reporter did not note that Shireen Mazari has been unhappy with PTI for some time.

Baabar goes on to ask “will Pakistanis now have to rely on WikiLeaks to know what transpired at the PTI central secretariat on Thursday?” Why should anyone rely on WikiLeaks to know what transpired? Why doesn’t the reporter simply call Imran Khan and his spokesman and ask for a briefing. Or is the reporter, without even trying to learn the facts, already assuming that Imran Khan is a liar?

Whether Imran Khan chooses to take his senior advisors to a meeting or whether he chooses to go alone is a party matter. It may be newsworthy that the PTI chief is holding secret meetings with American officials, but the responsibility of a journalist covering such a story is to carry out careful fact checking and investigative work to get to the bottom of a story, not attack the politician and create an aura of conspiracy.

As the programme opens, Luqman begins with the story of Rabbani’s assassination. And continuing his quest to be PTI media advisor, who else does Luqman turn to for analysis but PTI Foreign Affairs Advisor Shireen Mazari. Unfortunately, Shireen Mazari once again proves that she has nothing to offer but vague accusations against the involvement of unnamed ‘foreigners’, but she can’t really say who it was or what should be done. The implication was obvious, however, that this was another conspiracy by the Americans, even though American Secretary Hillary Clinton stated that US will continue peace outreach to the Taliban even after Rabbani’s assassination.

But that wasn’t the only allegation of ‘foreign hands’ to appear on Conspiracy Theories Luqman Kay Saath. Next up was the violence in Balochistan, which Luqman again claims is the due to the involvement of foreign elements. This time, though, Luqman leaves little question of who these ‘foreign elements’ are when he drags out the rotting carcass of the Visa Conspiracy to flog it’s crumbling limbs yet again.

When his guest notes that there is already an inquiry into this, Luqman responds in true form, “Who needs inquiry? I telling you he issued visas!” and asks the guests to agree that the Ambassador to America is an agent. When another guest reminds that the Embassy in Washington has opened all the books for review and showed that there were no discrepancies or inconsistencies, Luqman changes the topic.

Once again, Mubashir Luqman does not act in the role of a neutral moderator facilitating a discussion between varying points of view. Rather, he comes to the programme with a specific agenda to promote, and bullies his own guests by telling them inquiries and facts are not important because Mubashir Luqman has already decided!

This attitude would be bad enough if Mubashir Luqman was insisting that his guests and viewers accept his opinion based on facts and evidence. But instead Luqman fails to deliver even the slightest bit of proofs for his claims. Rather he resorts to blaming invisible foreign bogeys and discredited conspiracy theories. The result is viewers of Conspiracy Theories Luqman Kay Saath listen to talk about serious issues like peace process in Afghanistan and sectarian killing in Balochistan, but after one hour they are more confused and misinformed than before. That’s not journalism.

“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.

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.

“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.

If 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.

The conspiracy theory about ‘suspicious foreigners’ being issued visas by the Embassy in Washington is a horse long dead. Nevertheless, journalists continue to drag it into the street for a public flogging whenever possible. With the arrest of the American Raymond Davis for shooting two men in Lahore in what he claims was self defense, this conspiracy theory was dusted off and dragged back into the streets for one more beating.

We noted yesterday that Raymond Davis’s visa was not issued by the Washington Embassy after Shireen Mazari dragged this old conspiracy theory out on Kamran Khan’s show of Monday night. As a reminder, this what Dawn reported on the issue:

Diplomatic sources in Islamabad said that Raymond Davis had first received a three-month diplomatic visa on a diplomatic passport on request of the US State Department in September 2009. That is the only visa issued to him by the Pakistan embassy in Washington.

On that occasion, the State Department had said Davis would be visiting Pakistan for a short term as a technical adviser. Subsequently, Davis received extensions to his visa in Islamabad or elsewhere.

His presence in Pakistan after the expiry of his first visa in December 2009 was neither known to nor authorised by the Pakistan embassy in Washington or the Foreign Office.

Obviously, it did not make any sense for Shireen Mazari to keep flogging the horse long after it is declared dead, and it makes even less for Ansar Abbasi to take the stick from Shireen’s hand to continue the flogging. In fact, this horse has been dead for quite some time. But since when have Shireen Mazari or Ansar Abbasi let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy?

Ansar Abbasi blatantly ignores all the facts in his latest column for The News, replacing facts instead with innuendo. He begins by suggesting that the fault of the shooting is partially with President Zardari for expanding visa requests by Americans and in the Washington Embassy issuing Raymond Davis’s visa.

This situation has built up in the backdrop of last year’s extraordinary laxity allowed in the visa policy for American officials following President Asif Ali Zardari’s personal intervention without the approval of the federal cabinet.

The policy, which has already started pinching many in the Foreign Office and security agencies, has resulted in visas issued by the Pakistani Embassy in Washington without any security clearance.

However, as we have already shown the Washington Embassy was not the issuing office. Abbasi even noticed another hole in his conspiracy and tries to patch it up without anyone noticing.

Details show that Davis, who is suspected to be either a CIA agent or member of a private agency like Blackwater, had been issued visa before the introduction of the new but extremely vulnerable system under which Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington is free to issue visa to anyone without any security clearance from Pakistani security agencies.

Did you catch what Ansar Abbasi just admitted? Raymond Davis’s visa was issued BEFORE President Zardari could have requested any changes to visa policy. So Raymond Davis’s visa was not issued by the Washington Embassy and was not issued after Zardari requested any changes to visa policy. If this is the case, it must be asked why does Ansar Abbasi try to make these connections in the minds of his readers? It is reasonable to conclude that part of the reason must be a political agenda. But there is possibly something more going on.

The answer comes as the reader continues. Ansar Abbasi claims that “from January 1, 2010 to 14 July 2010, a total of 1,895 officials and diplomats were issued visas by the Pakistan Embassy in Washington”. Whether or not these figures are accurate is unknown. What is known is that Raymond Davis was not one of those people. Again the question must be asked why Ansar Abbasi continues to point out irrelevant and unrelated facts.

What Ansar Abbasi is doing is making all Americans in Pakistan ‘guilty by association’. His argument is that Raymond Davis is an American with a visa and he shot someone, so maybe every other American with a visa will also shoot someone. This is the same argument that American right-wing zealots make about Muslims. They say that Faisal Shazad tried to kill Americans, and Faisal Shahzad is Muslim, therefore Americans should fear all Muslims. Ansar Abbasi’s anti-American rhetoric is cut from the same cloth as his Islamophobic counterparts on the American right-wing.

The truth is that most Muslims in America (or anywhere on Earth) are not terrorist bombers. Also most Americans in Pakistan (or anywhere on Earth) are not shooting people in the streets. Claims to the contrary are fictions invented as a strategy of ‘fear-based politics’.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the Senate today that Raymond Davis was carrying a diplomatic passport and a valid visa that was issued after a security clearance. He also noted that Raymond Davis’s name has been placed on the Exit Control List. Earlier this week, President Zardari told a delegation of US Congressmen that Raymond Davis’s case is before the courts and the legal course must be allowed to complete.

Ansar Abbasi does not bother to dispute the facts. What he does is try to put fear in the minds of the people based on innuendo and ‘guilt by association’. Raymond Davis is being held by the police and the law is taking its course. As if they are disappointed that the government is not acting as a lap dog to the US, Shireen Mazari and Ansar Abbasi create scandal where there is none. There has already been one tragedy suffered. Let’s stop trying to make it worse, please.

There is nothing positive about a tragedy such as occurred last week when an American Consulate employee shot two men and a third died in a vehicular accident involving another American Consulate employee. Unfortunately, some in the media have taken the opportunity of this tragedy to promote confusion, conspiracy theories, and political agendas instead of presenting the facts. In some instances, there are even suggestions that the media is covering up some facts that are deemed inconvenient to a specific political agenda.

Kamran Shafi succinctly describes the various and contradictory ways the Raymond Davis case has been presented in the media:

He is alleged to be, variously, a spy, a Blackwater operative, a security guard and a US diplomat. There are as many stories about the man in our press as there are reporters in the newspapers, not one of them leading the reader to any conclusion.

In just one day we are regaled by differing accounts in different newspapers: one saying David had overstayed his visa by two years, another telling us his visa was valid until 2012; one saying he was not a diplomat, yet another telling us that he was an ‘official’, and so on and so forth. I have been following this case since the day of the shooting, have read every word written about it, and have to say that I am most confused. Nothing makes sense at all — a lot of which has to do with the conspiracy theorists and the and their spin quacks putting a spin on any aspect they can get their hands on.

In what is already a case filled with questions, media coverage is actually adding to the confusion rather than cutting through it. What is worst, Kamran notes that one eye witness account from the scene has disappeared from reporting.

What I myself saw on the very day of the shooting, about two hours after the event, was the interview of a young man off the street, conducted by a loud and vociferous channel. When asked what he had seen the man said: “pistol” (“The two motorcyclists drew their pistols to rob the foreigner [using the near-pejorative term , or Whitey] who shot them dead”). This was repeated twice in a period of 30 or so minutes and then taken off air. This is what I saw and heard myself. It is pertinent to note that that young man has not been seen, nor heard from, again. Neither has any newspaper quoted what he said on record.

Could it be that media is self-censoring this eye witness account because it is inconvenient to a specific political agenda?

Thankfully, one journalist is standing out in the crowd – Najam Sethi. As Cafe Pyala notes, Sethi “began his new programme Aapas Ki Baat with the warning that he wanted to put emotionalism aside and analyse the incident only in terms of the facts“. This was indeed a breath of fresh air.

Not only did Sethi cite the actual clauses of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity (which Pakistan has ratified) that have been furiously talked about but never actually specifically referenced, but also put into context the whole issue in light of contemporary history and geopolitical realities. Now, others may question his interpretations of the Vienna Convention or the heretofore unknown ‘facts’ he presented as definite realities (we have no way of determining their veracity but he did stake his reputation on their authenticity), but I hope such challenges, if they do come, will be based on proof rather than vague emotionalism.

Cafe Pyala provides as comparison the way the issue was handled by Kamran Khan and his guest Shireen Mazari who trots out the old conspiracy theory that Ambassador Husain Haqqani is issuing visas to ‘suspicious foreigners’ in effort to somehow connect him to the Raymond Davis case. But as Dawn reports today, Raymond Davis’s visa was not issued by the Washington Embassy.

Diplomatic sources in Islamabad said that Raymond Davis had first received a three-month diplomatic visa on a diplomatic passport on request of the US State Department in September 2009. That is the only visa issued to him by the Pakistan embassy in Washington.

On that occasion, the State Department had said Davis would be visiting Pakistan for a short term as a technical adviser. Subsequently, Davis received extensions to his visa in Islamabad or elsewhere.

His presence in Pakistan after the expiry of his first visa in December 2009 was neither known to nor authorised by the Pakistan embassy in Washington or the Foreign Office.

Why Shireen Mazari brings up Husain Haqqani in a discussion of the Raymond Davis case is a question that should be asked. It is already established that the Embassy in Washington did not issue the visas, so why is it entering the debate? It appears that this is another example of media personalities using tragic events to promote a particular political agenda rather than simply providing and commenting on the facts.

Stories like the Raymond Davis case are delicate diplomatic matters between states, and it is imperative that the people have the facts straight so that they understand why government officials take whatever actions they deem necessary. It is also important that the facts are presented objectively so that the officials responsible for making decisions at such a highly diplomatic level are not confused or misled in their own right.

The Raymond Davis case is more than simply a diplomatic mess, though – it is a question of specific facts and laws. In other words, it is a legal case. There has been much complaining in the media about US officials trying to influence the government one way or the other. These journalists should take their own advice. Presently the matter is sub judice and not sub media.

Shireen Mazari claims that drone attacks have killed more civilians than militants. According to Shireen Mazari’s column,

…we are unable to deal with our terrorism threat internally because we are following US diktat and using a military-centric policy which is simply creating more space for militants within the country. The drone attacks, killing more civilians than militants, are one glaring case in point.

Mazari provides no research to back up her claim, so it is not known why she says this. But Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann’s drones database at the New America Foundation (NAF) shows that more militants have been killed by drone attacks than civilians. Furthermore, the NAF research is transparent as to its sources and analysis:

The research on these pages, which we have created in a good faith effort to be as transparent as possible with our sources and analysis and will be updated regularly, draws only on accounts from reliable media organizations with deep reporting capabilities in Pakistan, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, accounts by major news services and networks—the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, CNN, and the BBC—and reports in the leading English-language newspapers in Pakistan—the Daily Times, Dawn, and the News—as well as those from Geo TV, the largest independent Pakistani television network.

Here are the estimated death counts:

Estimated Total Deaths from U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2010

*Through October 4, 2010

Estimated Militant Deaths from U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan 2004 – 2010

*Through October 4, 2010

Estimated Militant Leader Deaths from US Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004-2010

*Through October 4, 2010. Included in estimated militants and estimated totals, above.

Later, in the same paragraph, Mazari claims that “there are the NATO incursions into our territory and targeting of even our military personnel”. While there was the well-reported NATO incursion into our territory, the claim of “targeting” is misleading.

An investigation of the incident has found that Pakistani soldiers fired warning shots at the helicopters, which returned fire. The US and NATO have apologized for the incident and pledged to work more closely with the Pakistani military and government to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Shireen Mazari’s account could lead readers to believe that the US was intentionally and aggressively attacking Pakistani soldiers, which would be an act of war. This doesn’t make any sense. If the US military wanted to go to war with Pakistan, why would it provide so much support and supplies to the Pakistani military? And why would the US apologize and pledge to work more closely in coordination with the Pakistani military?

Mazari goes on to repeat the discredited conspiracy theory that the US is planning to steal our nuclear arsenal. Her evidence is a statement by an American conservative historian Arthur Herman. But Arthur Herman is not a member of the US government or military and would have no access to such sensitive information. He is simply describing a hypothetical ‘worst-case scenario’ based on no evidence.

Actually, the article that Mazari is referring to is an opinion column in an American newspaper New York Post which has been criticised by the Columbia Journalism Review who said, “The New York Post is no longer merely a journalistic problem. It is a social problem.” According to a survey conducted by Pace University in 2004, the New York Post was rated the least-credible news outlet in New York. The Wikipedia entry on New York Post includes a long list of controversies surrounding the newspaper.

Shireen Mazari then goes on to repeat another discredited conspiracy theory saying that Visas are being granted “with no proper scrutiny and with all normal procedures being abandoned”. Mazari provides no evidence for this claim, which would be a quite serious breach of protocol. Notably, Shireen Mazari does not accuse anyone by name of committing this act, possibly because she knows that it would be defamatory for her to do so. Instead, she merely states that it is being done which could possibly result in readers mistakenly believing that she has some evidence to back her claim.

Shireen Mazari has every right to believe that the US is the root of all of the country’s problems, but she must make this claim with facts and not inventions and conspiracy theories. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but facts are facts. Making statements to support a particular political agenda even when the facts are the opposite is not journalism, it is merely propaganda. Please, Shireen Mazari, stick to the facts.

There is certainly a time and a place for criticism of the US and its foreign policy. Whatever one’s particular opinion of American policy towards Pakistan, certainly intelligent people can disagree and have an honest debate about particular facts of that issue. But the murder of over 90 innocent people whose only crime was praying in a way the Taliban did not approve of has nothing to with the Americans, RAW, or economics. It has to do with our own problems that we must face and overcome. To try to make it appear otherwise only distracts from the real issues that created such a monster in our society.

And this is exactly what The Nation does – try to distract from the real issues by blaming someone else.

The incident should rouse the nation to seriously reflect upon the causes of such unfortunate events that keep recurring with frightening frequency. The massive inroads of intelligence agencies of enemy powers out to destabilise the country; the worsening economic conditions that make it possible for them to lure away the poor, hopeless youth to work for them and even resort to suicide for meeting the needs of survival of the remaining family members; the high rate of illiteracy that proves a fertile ground for breeding a mindset of militant fanaticism and readily accepts the logic of throwing away the gift of life; and, above all, a weak, inefficient and corrupt government that lets the above ugly scenario build up as a result of its policies, which promote foreign powers’ agendas to the detriment of national interests – these are some of the glaring factors that lie at the root of such bloody happenings.

I do not doubt the sincerity of the The Nation’s disgust at this murderous event, but like their employee Shireen Mazari, they simply cannot be bothered to face the facts. Are we honestly to believe that severing ties with the Americans would make the TTP less murderous? That it would solve the problem of anti-minority prejudice?  That the terrorists would stop recruiting, stop killing, stop their war on Pakistan? That all of the religious extremists would suddenly throw down their weapons and become democrats?

The Nation obviously blames RAW, USA, Zardari – everyone but the actual extremists. This was no drone attack; it was no conspiracy of the fabled Indian-Isreali nexus. It was the result of violent extremist teachings that are widely available across the country, and the brainwashing of our youth. Why does The Nation not speak out about this? Why does The Nation not condemn the people here in Pakistan who mislead our youth by infecting their minds with a virus of hate and violence?

Newspapers play a vital role in our country. They present information to people who are not present at the scene of a major event so that all citizens can better understand what happens in their country and make informed judgments about how to proceed. By exploiting the Lahore massacre to promote their specific political ideology at the expense of actually informing the citizens of the facts, The Nation has failed in its job.

Her column, “Our collective shame and some troubling questions,” actually begins quite well. She sees the slaughter of innocent Ahmadis in the middle of prayer as a wicked act that speaks to the degredation of our society acted out by religious imposters.

Islam which teaches brotherhood and tolerance has all but disappeared in spirit and essence from within us and, instead, we are filled with hatred, intolerance and a desire to simply kill all those who may differ from us. As for the Pakistani nation, how far we have sunk from the ideal of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah should be shamefully visible to every sane Pakistani.

In fact, Shireen Mazari goes on to call on us to stop looking to blame others for our own problems, and to take responsibility for the extremist ideologies that have infected our society.

 There can be no shying away from this horrendous act in Lahore and it is time that the Pakistani nation took stock of itself and its leadership and made a determined effort to restore the spirit of tolerance and accommodation that is the essence of Islam and that must be the essence of our nationhood since Pakistan comprises a rich diversity of people – all of whom are equally dedicated and loyal to this land.

This is all quite good! I must admit, when I read it my heart began to lighten. Shireen Mazari is an excellent writer, though her hatred of America has blinded her too often to the realities under her own roof. It has led her to concoct the most ridiculous conspiriacy theories, so poorly constructed a school child could disprove them quite easily. She has aligned herself with the Ahmed Quraishi and Zaid Hamid school that teaches that facts and reason are to be avoided, leaving her isolated from former colleagues who lament her fall into paranoia. So for Shireen Mazari to finally write a column like this was a breakthrough to be applauded.

Or so I thought.

It wasn’t until I reached the end of the column that that familiar voice began to seep through the page. There had to be some mention of the Americans. There had to be some conspiracy. Nothing could simply be a horrible, wicked act perpetrated by sick minds under the influence of religious imposters. And there it was.

There are also some troubling questions about the Lahore targeting of the two Ahmadi places of worship:

First: The timing comes at the peak of US pressure for the Pakistan Army to begin its operations in North Waziristan Agency. Mere coincidence or not, every time the US has wanted the Pakistan military to commence an operation in FATA, there have been such acts of terror prior to the commencement.

Second: The incidents happened when Pakistanis were celebrating Youm-i-Takbeer, the anniversary of our going overtly nuclear – something that still is not acceptable to the West and Israel.

Third: What is equally relevant is that our Government and our national security managers need to seriously look into how friendly spy agencies from West Asia and the US-UK were allowed to establish direct links to Kashmiri freedom groups based in Pakistan, especially central and south Punjab, during the Bosnia war.

It’s sad, really, to so clearly see the sickness that is a paranoid obsession. Shireen Mazari is not a stupid person, by any means. She knows that the Americans had nothing to do with this. She knows that these murders had nothing to do with nuclear assets. Sometimes an apple is only an apple. But her mind is like a warped glass that reflects a distorted view of the world. It is as if she cannot help herself, no matter how hard she tries.

Shireen Mazari begins with a noble call to shed the hatred and intolerance that can cause some terrible event like we suffered this week. But then she ends overcome by her own hatred and intolerance. Someday, perhaps she will be cured of this sickness and finally know some peace.

Certainly all people have opinions about important issues, and journalists – by the nature of their work – talk to people involved in all sorts of political activity both good and bad. But Pakistan has a set of groups within the journalist community that have either intentionally or unwittingly been part of political activity.

Ayesha Siddiqa made this point a few days ago, and today Nadeem Paracha continues the examination of the problem on Dawn Blog in a must-read post:

The emergence of a taped conversation, allegedly between famous TV anchor and journalist, Hamid Mir, and a member of what is called the ‘Punjabi Taliban,’ has created great furor – especially within the journalistic community in Pakistan.

In the the conversation, a man recognised by some as Mir, makes derogatory remarks against the Ahmadiyya sect and insistently alludes that Khalid Khawaja – the controversial former ISI man who was kidnapped and murdered by an group that is believed to have ties to the Punjabi Taliban – was a CIA agent and close to the Ahmadiyya sect.

He blames Khawaja for the death of Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) cleric, Ghazi Rashid, who was killed in the military action against armed men holed up in the volatile mosque in 2007. He tells the Punjabi Taliban that it was on Khawaja’s insistence that Ghazi continued to fight from within the besieged mosque, but was then abandoned by him.

Khawaja, who was supposedly in the custody of the Punjabi Taliban at the time of the conversation, was later found murdered by his captors who accused him of being a CIA agent and responsible for Ghazi’s death. These are the two main points that the conversing journalist makes while talking to the Punjabi Taliban member in the leaked tape.

Leading members of the liberal intelligentsia have frequently been raising concern and alarms against certain prominent figures in the local print and electronic media, blaming them of overtly sympathising and at times glorifying the violent antics of assorted sectarian and Islamist organisations.

People like Hamid Mir, Dr. Shahid Masood, Aamir Liaqat and Ansar Abbasi (all belonging to a large media group in Pakistan), have come under intense scrutiny by their detractors for not only ‘angling’ their stories and rhetoric in favour of extremist organisations, but also constantly undermining the current democratic set-up in Islamabad.

Ironically though, whereas the liberal sections of the media have not gone beyond labeling these men as Taliban sympathisers, it is their opponents within the large net of pro-Taliban actors in the media and the intelligence agencies who are said to be behind leakages such as the taped conversation mentioned above.

According to well-known columnist and author, Ayesha Siddiqa, “the conversation should not surprise people as Hamid Mir has old links with the Islamists and the intelligence agencies.” In an article she adds that there is not a single journalist, especially on the electronic media, who comments on national security and is not fed by the military or one of its many intelligence agencies.

Author of the acclaimed book, Military Inc., Siddiqa says that at present there are three opposing groups within the military and its agencies. One is pro-West, one is pro-Taliban, and the third is pro-China. All three are always at loggerheads. This also means that while each one of these groups has journalists planted in newspapers and TV channels, they use their plants to cancel out the reputation and influence of those belonging to the opposing groups.

But there is nothing new about this. The agencies have always had personnel on their payrolls operating as reporters, anchors, and ‘analysts’ ever since the Ayub Khan dictatorship in the 1960s. Respected journalist and author, late Zamir Niazi, in his book, The Web of Censorship, suggests that the agencies recruited a number of ‘journalists’ during the Ayub dictatorship, specifically to check leftist sentiments that were all the rage among journalists at the time.

Then during the Z.A. Bhutto regime, Niazi hints that the populist government and the conservative ‘establishment’ fought a battle of ideas through paid journalists. But the phenomenon of agency-backed journalists upholding the military establishment’s agenda and ideology in the press  really came to the fore during the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in the 1980s.

As left-leaning journalists were forced to exit newspapers during the Zia dictatorship, the corridors of these newspaper offices were suddenly stormed by large groups of pro-establishment personnel, mainly consisting of anti-Bhutto journalists and pro-Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) men.

With the role of the ISI and other intelligence agencies expanding due to Pakistan’s direct involvement in the so-called ‘anti-Soviet Afghan jihad,’ many of these journalists were brought under the wings of various agencies, triggering a trend that still disfigures prominent sections of mainstream Pakistani media. What’s more, between early and late 1980s, the agencies were also able to plant men in the administration and finance departments of various mainstream media groups.

I got first-hand experience of this in 1993 when I joined a newspaper of a large media group; my appointment letter was constantly delayed, in spite of the editor asking the head of finance to release it. The head then bypassed the editor and went straight to the publisher, claiming that I should not be hired because I was a ‘communist’ who’d had links with the KGB (as a student) in the 1980s! As it turned out, this man was an active member of the JI, and also said to be close to a pro-jihad agency.

Crowded at the top

By the 1990s, most media groups had become a startling reflection of the tense sectarian, ethnic and ideologically fractured society that Zia’s disastrous regime and policies had left behind.

The media group I was a part of (for 10 years), was teeming with various lobbies, fighting out a cold war against one another. There were the usual high-profile agency-backed journalists who (as Siddiqa rightly suggests) were/are the ones who always manage to get the best scoops; then there was a large pro-JI lobby (whose mission, it seemed, revolved entirely around getting those they deemed to be ‘leftist’ or ‘liberal’ chucked out from the organisation); there was also a pro-MQM lobby who made sure that MQM received as much positive press as possible; and a ‘liberal’ lobby made up of assorted progressives. But more worryingly, the 1990s also saw the entry of ‘journalists’ planted or having sympathies with radical Sunni sectarian organisations such as the Sipah Sahaba.

As the agencies again became active, this time to sideline any democratically elected government that they saw as a danger to their on-going post-Zia maneuvers in the field of jihad (in Pakistan, Kashmir, and Afghanistan), a number of fresh recruits were instilled in newspapers, so much so, that opposing agencies (all with right-wing Islamist agendas, but differing on sectarian and policy grounds), now began drafting ‘journalists’ to put forward their particular version of pro-jihad ideology and interests. The result was infighting in the country’s intelligence gathering and security apparatus as one agency tried to undermine the other in their quest for more funds and political influence.

An attack in 1992 on a prominent journalist (famous for scoring a number of scoops and presently a famous TV anchor) was a stark reflection of this. The journalist, whom many believed was being fed stories by an agency, was claimed to have been attacked by the supporters of an opposing agency.

Such was the talk at the time, heralding the laying down of a whole new ball game in the intrigue-filled world of mainstream journalism in Pakistan. And this new ball game really got going when (during the Musharraf dictatorship) private TV channels were allowed to mushroom. This is the phenomenon that many within the media blame for triggering the on-going ‘anti-democracy’ and ‘pro-Taliban’ narrative one comes across on almost all major TV news channels. Opposing agency men were said to have come together during the Musharraf dictatorship to counter (through their ‘media contacts’) agency people who were supporting Musharraf’s (albeit half-baked) operation against extremist organisations.

Some political commentators point at the electronic media’s role during the Lal Masjid operation and the Lawyers’ Movement as examples in this respect. They believe whereas some TV anchors and reporters blindly lapped up ‘exaggerated figures’ and scenarios that they were fed to them by agency men opposing the pro-Musharraf organs, the game got even bigger when the same anti-Musharraf agencies ‘facilitated’ some political parties to invest heavily in the Lawyers’ Movement.

Though almost all mainstream parties took part in the landmark movement, however, the PPP and some small leftist parties blamed the PMLN and JI of mutating the movement’s orientation towards the rightist sides of the ideological divide, especially when pictures of activists carrying pro-Taliban and pro-Osama placards at the lawyers’ rallies started appearing in (mainly English) newspapers.

Observers believe that if the journalists belonging to the so-called pro-Musharraf factions of the agencies felt themselves being bogged down by those with alleged links to the more pro-jihad factions, the pro-Musharraf strains in the agencies put men like Zaid Hamid on TV – a manufactured pro-Musharraf demagogue originally placed to distract the people from events such as the Lawyers Movement.

Whose line is it, anyway?

Whereas today when the agencies (with the pragmatic support of bosses of some large media outlets) have successfully sidelined whatever there is left of any liberal, secular or leftist thought in the mainstream electronic media, it seems the channels are now overflowing with right-wing media men, many with clear links in the agencies.

But it’s not been a unanimous takeover. Simply because of the mentioned infighting between various groups within the agencies. For example, on surface, it should sound strange and contradictory if one right-wing media personality attacks another, as was the case when Zaid Hamid publicly accused Hamid Mir of being a CIA agent.

But this can easily be explained if one dwells deeper into the increasingly overlapping and complex maneuvers of the agencies. As a fellow columnist recently noted, in a matter of merely a month, two leading media personalities have been exposed in the most dramatic manner. He claimed that Zaid Hamid had dubious relations with a particular faction of the agencies, but was brought down when another faction decided to strike by bringing into play Zaid’s controversial past with a cult-like Islamic group which some puritanical Islamic organisations consider was blasphemous in its beliefs.

Another fellow journalist thinks that the ‘Mir tapes’ were leaked by a different faction of the ISI or IB. A faction perhaps opposed to the faction that Mir is alleged to have had links with.

The most interesting thing is that whereas attempts by the liberal media personnel to castigate right-wing and contentious TV personalities have not gone beyond protest columns and editorials, it has been such personalities’ fellow rightist journeymen who have been out to orchestrate their downfall.

Zaid Hamid called Hamid Mir a CIA agent, but it was Zaid who got his animated TV slots canceled when a sectarian Sunni organisation threatened to attack the channels that so enthusiastically ran the hate-monger’s much watched shows. On the other hand, Mir laughed off Zaid’s accusations but not before (unwittingly or otherwise) providing a platform on his own show for some politicians to make a meal out of another rightist TV anchor, Shahid Masood, only to supposedly have his own conversation with the Punjabi Taliban ‘leaked.’

Much more is being ‘leaked’ (more frequently than ever) to various websites. Recently, a website also put up a list of the outstanding dues that major media groups still owe in taxes to the government. Also under scrutiny are the ideological orientations and ‘links’ of journalists such as Ansar Abbasi, Shaheen Sehbai, and Amer Mateen.

Hamid Mir has denounced the taped conversation as fake. So has the media group he works for. But surprisingly, instead of investigating the level of involvement some journalists clearly have with extremist groups and intelligence agencies, all the organs of the said media organisation have gone into overdrive in attacking some of their contemporary media outlets, the government, and ‘liberal journalists’ of instigating a ‘conspiracy against free media.’

It is true that many of this media group’s ‘attackers’ have no respect for a free media. But by suggesting that the free-for-all mudslinging and dangerous angling that some of its anchors openly exhibit is akin to the group’s love of democracy and freedom of the media is really a self-defeating delusion, if not a big black joke.