Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Hamid Mir is by all accounts Pakistan’s best known T.V. journalist, a forceful anchor, analyst with an across-the-board credibility in Pakistan and, therefore, a pain in the neck for the Pakistani establishment, civil and military. You may or may not agree with him, not always, but to the Pakistanis he is the poorman’s Walter Cronkite, trusted by most viewers in the country and, I dare say, by many on this side of the border as well.
That he should be on the hit list of whoever feels threatened by him among the Pakistani ruling elite, be it the military set-up or the terrorist outfits such as the Pakistani Taliban. And it frankly did not surprise me as news came across from the Pakistani side of the border that Hamid Mir had been critically shot at by unknown killers on his way from the Karachi Airport to his office in the heart of the Pakistani megapolis, the country’s commercial capital.
If Hamid has survived the attack, with bullet injuries in his legs and the “pelvic area” (he is still confined to his hospital as I write) he must thank his stars. He survived in spite of the gunmen having tried their very best to get him. Again, if he has survived he must be thankful to his driver for having driven his bullet-ridden car and his bleeding boss straight to a nearby hospital. And, lo and behold, the first thing you learn after the abortive attempt on his life is that he had confined in his brother, also a journalist, much earlier, that in case an attempt is made on his life and he gets killed he must quote him accusing the Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency for it.
Amir, Hamid’s brother, has said that elements in the ISI had orchestrated the attack. Predictably, the Army and its Intelligence agency were prompt enough to deny any form of involvement in the attack. Amir, on the other hand, maintained that his brother had told him two weeks back that if anything happens to him then “elements in the ISI and its Chief, Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam should be blamed”.
Nawaz Sharif’s ordering the appointment of a three-member judicial commission to inquire into the shooting doesn’t really sound very convincing, given that the Pakistani judiciary in recent past hasn’t covered itself with glory, busy as it was, at the highest level, settling personal scores with the ousted former President, Gen. Parvez Musharraf and his elected successor PPP regime. Nawaz Sharif, soon after his election, as successor to the PPP, has abetted with the judiciary in sorting out Musharraf against whom he has his own bundle of grouses.
Musharraf is currently facing a treason trial (overthrowing Sharif a decade ago) with no hope of escaping a minimum life term, if not death. The military may still try to help the first Army Chief ever to be tried in a Pakistani court but has so far been resisted by Sharif. His last hope rests with the Saudis who, incidentally, hosted Sharif when he was sent into exile by Musharraf. Sharif stayed there for 10 years.
Back to Hamid Mir. Sharif may have announced a Rs. 10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the gunmen but such offers do not wash in a situation where you find a Hafeez Saeed, proclaimed a high risk terrorist, chief of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and its parent organization, Jammat-ud-Dawa, carrying a ten million dollar bounty in his head, offered by a then friendlier US, and also wanted by India for the Mumbai strikes, continuing to walk the streets of Pakistan as a free man and purveyor of terror and receiving only recently, a very large cash donation from Nawaz Sharif’s brother, the Punjab Chief Minister, Shabaz Sharif.
Nor does, for that matter, the Pak Insaaf party Chief, Imran Khan’s condemnation of Hamid Mir’s assailants, carry much credibility. The Imran Tehreek-e-Insaaf is in power in the Pakhtunkhwah-Khyber province, which continues to play host to the Tehreek-e-Taliban, Pakistan, the terrorist force that strikes the whole of Pakistan at will, even as the Federal Government maintains the charade of “ongoing” peace talks between the Taliban and the Sharif Government.
The attack on Hamid Mir offers searing evidence of the turmoil within the country, a deeply divided society, plagued by the presence of several militant outfits, terror training factories, the festering Sunni-Shia factionalism, raging bloodshed in the North West, in Balcohistan and in Karachi in the South and the Punjab heartland, equally prone to Taliban and bombings.
Add to it the simmering tension in the civil-military equation. Match all of this with an over arching desire to be counted among the major regional powers, an urge which makes it very dependent on a China continuing to smile Physically even otherwise China is already right there in Pakistan, a road link cutting across the Hindukush range through parts of Pak-occupied Kashmir to Chinese-built and operated Gawadar port in Balochistan; it must simultaneously cope with the strains in its relations with long-time friend Saudi Arabia and even Iran.
The Chinese, it appears, may be harbouring suspicious on the role Pakistani terror outfits play in the Uiguir terrorist activities in Sinkiang province of that country. Many of the Uiguirs have been trained in Pakistani terror factories (the Haqqanis etc.) and unknown to outsiders the Uigurs have stretched their reach as far as Beijing itself.
To top it all is the country’s serious involvement in gaining the upper hand in Afghanistan even as the Americans withdraw from the war there, and surprisingly so when the Afghans, despite Mullah Umar’s Taliban flexing their muscles now and again, are about to elect a successor to Hamid Karzai; the decisive second round (run-off) between the two candidates, who survived a very peaceful first round, is due to take off in a couple of days (at the time of writing).
The very thought of a stable, independent Afghanistan is anathema to Pakistan, its Army and the ISI. Islamabad’s rationale for supporting Afghan insurgents, Mullah Umar-led Taliban almost with them, is straight forward and in many ways understandable. Hemmed in by India to the east, Pakistan wants an ally to the west; it doesn’t have one at the moment. New Delhi, whatever its other failings, has stuck to a close relationship with the Afghan government. Feeling strategically encircled by India, Islamabad is persevering with its proxy warfare to replace the current Afghan government with a friendlier one. The Pakistani Taliban, poised on the border, has played a major role in the pursuit of the Pakistani quest in Afghanistan. And it is just the beginning.
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