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
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?
