Free doom

Last Friday’s brutal and brazen attack on The News reporter Ahmad Noorani has engendered deep fears about the future of free media in Pakistan. The assault was methodical. It was a day when Islamabad was teeming with police presence on account of a religious outfit’s extended protest and the whole administration (supposedly) was on high alert.

But Noorani wasn’t a beneficiary of these extra layers of security. Nor did the fact help him that the city was alive and abuzz with activity when he was trying to dodge death. As six men chased him on motorbikes and then laid into him with iron rods, knives and steel-knuckles, targeting his head with a clear intent to kill or paralyse him, Noorani came close to witnessing his own murder.

He was fortunate to survive. The attack plan was elaborate. It must have taken time to put all its elements in place. He must have been tailed for long: all his movements were so carefully monitored that the attackers knew exactly where to nail him down and how to be minimally exposed to the Safe-city Project Cameras installed all over Islamabad. The method chosen to end Noorani’s life and career was also made to look painful and fear-provoking, and had messages of audacity and impunity.

No bullets were fired. No bomb was detonated. No grenade was thrown. Yet he was made a horrible example for everyone to see. His attackers – whoever they were – were either too foolish and careless or too carefree and brazen to bother about the consequences of their actions. They had a bull’s-eye on their radar and they drilled holes in it (literally, since Noorani has serious head-injuries) with immaculate precision. Ten out of ten for a lethal job well done.

The Noorani episode isn’t the only example illustrating the deleterious state of the media in Pakistan. The day Noorani was attacked was also the day when in Quetta (another safe city, we say) practically no newspapers were delivered to homes because militant groups had threatened to kill and attack newspaper distributors, insisting that by not publishing their point of view newspapers had become their enemies. Only in Pakhtun-dominated areas did newspapers land at homes; elsewhere there was zero delivery. Some news reports suggest that almost 90 percent of the printed copies stayed at distribution centres.    

In Balochistan, this threat of killing the messenger dates back a few years when sectarian outfits, the Taliban and other militant groups warned media outlets clearly that they should either publish their version of events or perish. Then the Balochistan High Court had passed an order banning all projection of terrorists and militant groups in all forms of media – a verdict that later on inspired National Action Plan’s zero-space policy for groups fighting state institutions.

Caught between militant groups’ threats and the judicial verdict, most journalists faced immense hardships surviving on a day-to-day basis. I personally know at least half a dozen really good reporters in Balochistan who have left the profession because they did not want to become minced meat in the fight. The actual number of drop-outs in Balochistan is much larger. The state is unable to provide journalists and their families safety but expects them to deliver goody bags of ‘positive news’ from the province. This leaves journalists with no option except to either leave the profession or make ‘local adjustments’ merely to get through another day. These adjustments come at the cost of journalism’s core principles and their product is fluff and garbled reality.

These two events, one in Islamabad and the other in Quetta, together form the most formidable and existential threat to the media industry as a whole and to journalists in particular. It will not a be stretch to say that even ordinary citizens who are not associated with the profession and are at a safe distance from its murderous turns, will also be thinking of how safe life is for them when the (supposedly) well connected and pen-empowered media persons are being targeted on the roads.

And an important question: how do you survive in an environment like this? How do you get protection when government ministers themselves are calling you and saying ‘make your own arrangements’ because we can’t – the state can’t – do anything for you?

We can prepare a cynical, non-emotional and very unfortunate guide to living safely in an extremely volatile environment where vendors of violence are hawking and hunting in every second street of the city.

The options are limited and all very un-savoury. For instance, you can join any religious group that has the capacity to bring mobs on the streets and paralyse state machinery. You can become an undeclared member of a sectarian outfit and get under the umbrella of their strong-arm tactics against the opponents and thus get guarantees of life-security. Or join any of the real-estate mafias. They will make sure that no harm comes to you because they can buy (literally) freedom for you. Just praise them enough and the heavens of favours will open up for you and your family. Become a sugar tycoon and produce so much of the stuff on leased lands (tax free, of course) that everything you touch becomes candy. Buy properties, own planes, fly the high and mighty across the land, entertain them and no question will be asked.

Or become an informal civilian member of any of the arms-bearing services in the country. Or spy on others. Or join the legal fraternity (have a degree at least and some perfunctory legal practice of sorts). No harm shall come to you. All systems shall bow in obedience. Or join any of the political parties whose present status is privileged and whose star is in the ascendant. For instance, join Shaikh Rashid, Imran Khan, Tahirul Qadri, PSP, Pervez Musharraf etc and see the magic. You will have the licence to say and do anything – and nothing will happen to you.

There is also another way: do nothing in life. Because if you do nothing, nothing will happen to you. You can retire in peace, play golf, become a weekend arm-chair warrior for any or all the great causes you may choose to espouse in your oral jihad as your next generation carves a great life abroad.

There is another choice: emigrate. Go away, far, far away. Have another nationality and then from there sit and pass judgments on how bad the situation is in the country. You can occasionally come to Pakistan, taste its air, spout short lectures on patriotism to the unfortunate relatives who can’t join you and then fly back to the place where you are raising your children and planning their future.

You can also do something truly spectacular: start working for the CIA – yes, the Central Intelligence Agency. They have a special way of protecting their assets in Pakistan and they will make sure that your back is covered even when the chips are really down for you. Of course, while you work for the CIA, you can pretend to be a spurious, overzealous patriot at the same time because this is a good shell to operate from.

However, if you are a regular, ordinary, tax-paying, job-loving journalist who may err occasionally (all journalists do), but passionately, believe in the cardinal principles of democracy, one who takes his constitutional freedoms seriously and expresses himself at times with brutal honesty – then, man, you are in dire jeopardy. You skate on the thin ice of life without protection. You and your family shall pay for it. Through your nose, and in case of Noorani, through your head. Even your own industry will not support you.

Except for journalist representatives’ bodies and press club protests, news of the attack on Noorani was played down by almost every one. Of 11 channels monitored, including Geo, six main channels did not even run a single news ticker of the attack. Later on, eight did not consider it news worthy of being retained in any bulletin. The next day, other than The News and Jang (obviously), no other newspaper put it out prominently. Most blacked it out. The same was done to the state of media affairs in Quetta. This is the sum total of freedom of speech in Pakistan today. This is the reality. This is the main point about the attack on Noorani and the precarious state journalists in Balochistan are facing. Here is the choice list: Bow or be gone. Relent or repent. Suck-up and be rewarded. Stand-up and be ramrodded.

The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.

Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com

Twitter: @TalatHussain12