Musharraf’s
War on Nationalists Through Religious Means
By
Tarique Niazi
MR.
MUNAWAR MOHSIN, an editor of the Pakhtunkhaw-based broadsheet
newspaper, The Frontier Post, was sentenced to life in
prison on July 8, 2003. His guilt? He published a letter to editor,
“Why Muslims Hate Jews,” in the January 29, 2001 edition
of his newspaper, which Gen. Musharraf publicly judged blasphemous,
triggering a day of violence and arson against the Post’s
journalists and offices in Peshawar (Pakistan).
Not
a peep was heard then in Pakistani media against Gen. Musharraf’s
audacity to lead the charge against a liberal-left-leaning newspaper
and incite the public to violence. Nor a peep was heard now against
the criminal justice system that robbed a journalist (of the Post)
of his right to live free on a charge whose authenticity is as
“credible” as Gen. Musharraf’s claim to power!
This
sentencing is not about blasphemy, however. This is about robbing
the “nationalists” of their alternative voice in the
Post. A case in point is the planned construction of a $10 billion
water reservoir, a.k.a., Kalabagh Dam. Baluchistan, Pakhtunkhaw,
and Sindh legislative assemblies have rejected its construction.
But Gen. Musharraf and three major newsgroups – Dawn,
Nawa-e-Waqt, and Jang – stand shoulder to
shoulder to see this construction through. There is no mainstream
media outlet in Pakistan for the nationalists to be heard. Gen.
Musharraf has long silenced even their only alternative voice
in the Post by treading underfoot its editorial independence,
and keeping its leadership incarcerated.
The
Post’s defiance has a long history that no newspaper in
Pakistan can dare repeat. It had been an equal opportunity needler
to those who overdosed on power. Since its launching in the 1980s,
the Post had quickly grown into a thorn in the side of the Generals.
In the long night of dictatorship that overcast the country for
more than a decade, the Post sweat and toiled to generate democratic
space for those who were pushed on to the margins of society.
Prominent among the marginalized were liberals, left-of-center
politicians, national democrats, ethnic minorities, religious
minorities, and the most oppressed of all, female gender.
The
Post opened its pages to all these social categories. It wowed
the world by speaking the truth to power on behalf of the powerless.
Its courage of convictions, however, earned it the rage of its
powerful enemies, who never passed up an opportunity to hit it
hardest where it hurt most – its credibility. Two of its
editors –late Aziz Siddiqui and Farhatullah Babar (now Press
Secretary to Prime Minister Bhutto) -- were fired for treating
“dictatorship” as “dictatorship.”
Since
their firing, the owner-manager of the newspaper had assumed the
mantle of its editor as well. Although this merger of roles might
well have caused a clash of interest, it was welcome by the Post’s
journalists in the hope that it would provide them an even stronger
insulation against the ever-intrusive government. The Post’s
subsequent editorial policies proved their point.
Its
journalists went all the way up to grab the high and the mighty
by their shirt fronts to have them account for their financial
scams. Its investigative reports on corruption in government weighed
heavier in truthfulness than the made-up cases of the National
Accountability Bureau. To punish the Post for “sinning against
the sinner,” its proprietor-editor was arrested in 1999
on charges of “drug trafficking.” It was the third
incident of a forced removal of the Post’s editor. Drug
charges came in handy to attack the Post’s credibility again.
Even after the arrest of its editor, the Post did not stop cracking
the whip over its powerful enemies.
Around
that time, to be precise in April 1999, I began writing for the
Post. I had written the harshest commentaries and most radical
opinions against the magisterial ways of wayward rulers in Islamabad.
When I read now what I wrote then, I cannot believe a Pakistani
newspaper could dare print such work and still stay in business.
The
Post’s defiance of the rulers had a price tag nevertheless,
and that was its editor’s continued incarceration, denial
of a fair trial, and above all a slow death from an untreated
heart. The Post carried my last op-ed piece on October 12, 1999,
which predicted that Mr Sharif was on his way out, no matter what.
That was the day when Mr Sharif and his government fell. His fall
was not on the Post’s agenda, though. Its criticism was
solely directed at humanizing the way Islamabad was making a Dracula
of itself for Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), its leader
Prime Minister Bhutto, and all those who dared dissent. Mr Sharif’s
forced departure, however, left the nation with the worst of alternatives.
It
again goes to the Post’s credit that it defied its emotions
and continued to demand a fair trial for Mr Sharif and his colleagues.
This was one of the rarest examples of editorial independence
to which the Post lived up, despite its jailed owner-editor’s
crusade for exposing the underside of the Sharif government.
With
the passage of time, the military government went on subverting
the law to find a best fit between the noose and the Sharif neck.
Gen. Musharraf padded the Anti-terrorism Act with one amendment
after another to extend its retroactive reach to all the alleged
crimes, of which Mr Sharif was accused, such as “skyjacking”
that was not covered in the original version of the Anti-terrorism
Act. Despite the public promise of a fair and open trial, General
Musharraf shamelessly backed out of his word. The Press reporting
of Mr Sharif’s statement in the Anti Terrorism Court-1 was
denied. So much so that Mr Sharif was stopped from speaking in
his own behalf. Instead, he was forced to make a written statement.
It was, indeed, a case of mugging justice in public to punish
a foe who as a “fallen man” had become an even larger
threat to Gen. Musharraf and his government that had, and still
has, no basis in law or the constitution.
I
wrote in the Post that General Musharraf, viewed by the constitution,
is more of a “robber than a ruler.” The Post did not
flinch at the frightening echo of this judgment; nor did its editors
tremble in their hearts to scratch the robber-ruler phrase off
my commentary.
But
that was in April 2000, and, as the later events showed, the “robber-ruler”
commentary turned out to be my “parting shot” at a
dictator who is still unsure of his constitutional legitimacy.
For a week since, the Post’s Web site began to send out
erratic signals. It behaved one day, and went haywire the next.
Over time, it ceased to publish creative comments from overseas
readers. Its editorials became less biting, and it began to read
more like a Pravda under the KGB. In short, the Post still was
an interesting read, but it was no longer challenging for the
government.
Was
it a voluntary change? Or was it a change forced upon it? You
don’t have to be press-smart to see through the crude ways
of power and its high-handed operation in Pakistan to figure this
out. Gen. Musharraf had the Post’s owner-editor by the neck,
whom his buddy Shujaat Hussein did the honors of caging. So, Gen.
Musharraf can dictate the Post any terms it wants.
Within
almost a year since I stopped writing for it in April 2000, the
Post was on fire again on Jan. 29, 2001. This time literally,
not figuratively. The reason was its alleged “editorial
misjudgment” that led to the publication of a controversial
letter, “Why Muslims Hate Jews?” in the letters-to-editor
column. Four members of its editorial board, each of whom honored
nation-wide for writing outstanding journalism, had been carted
away to stand trial under the blasphemy law.
General
Musharraf once announced that the blasphemy law, as we know it,
was an encroachment upon basic human freedoms –freedom of
religion including -- and pledged to reform it, only to rescind
this announcement later. Instead, he found the same law handy
enough to use it against a daring newspaper and its journalists.
This was the fourth attempt to attack the Post’s credibility.
Have the Post and its journalists blasphemed? Are they authors
of the blaspheming letter? Should they burn because they were
guilty of publishing a letter to the editor?
Publication
of this letter was an error in judgment, which is part of the
occupational hazards that are grounded in the operative order
of Pakistani journalism. While looking at this incident, however,
we should not lose sight of a dividing line between a “mistake
of the head” and a “mistake of the heart.” Publication
of this letter “certainly” falls in the former category
of a mistaken head. I say it “certainly” because I
have had the first-hand experience of the “precautionary
principle” by which the editors at the Post lived. Two examples
will illuminate how this principle worked at the Post.
The
first one has to do with the Taliban and their interpretations
of Islam. Beginning with the mob-trial and mob-lynching of Dr.
Najeebullah, former President of Afghanistan, and his sibling
in Kabul, Taliban had gone on misrepresenting Islam. Muslim scholars
all over the world had been breathless over their treatment of
women, minorities, and the youth. Even their Saudi sponsors pulled
their support, after Saudi Ulema ruled that “Taliban’s
Islam is regressive.” So did Egyptian, Iranian, and Central
Asian Ulema. Even Malaysian Prime Minister and Indonesian President
questioned the Islamic wrapping of the “goings-on”
in Kabul.
Viewed
in these lights, I referred in one of my op-ed pieces to the Taliban’
version of Islam as “decadent.” The Post’s editors
dropped the adjective –“decadent” -- and kept
the “Taliban’s version of Islam.” This speaks
volumes for their sensitivity to their conservative community
and its perceived “heroes.”
Similarly,
when Samia Imran, a young woman from Peshawar, was slain in April,
1999 in the Lahore office of her attorney, Hina Jilani, I wrote
an analytic piece –“Class and Spousal Abuse,”
which compared tradition with modernity. Its language was authentically
conservative. To make a point, I referred to the practice of “nose
piercing” among women in the East, which was once thought
in the West as “women’s enslavement to their male
masters.” Today, I argued, women in the West go through
“all manners of body piercing –tongues, cheeks, navels,
noses, and nipples – in order to make a political statement
of their liberation.” Editors at the Post dropped the word
“nipples.” They found the reference to the tactile
anatomy of female gender “offensive” enough for the
conservative sensibilities of their community to let it break
into print.
From
this experience, I cannot possibly imagine that the Post’s
editors would knowingly cross the threshold of religious tolerance
(which indeed operates at a “sub-zero level” in Pakistan)
to offend the Muslim community, of which they all are respectable
members.
They
were, however, scapegoated to appease the lunatic fringe of religious
militants on the one hand, and crush the country’s most
potent voice of dissent –The Frontier Post –
on the other. The ultimate losers, in this most unfortunate incident
were and are the people of Pakhtunkhaw.
Ironically,
they themselves were in the lead to burn down the Post’s
offices, which was the most important symbol of their “cultural
capital,” after of course the works of Khushal Khan Khattak
and Rehman Baba.
In
the gutting of the Post, they also lost their only voice, in the
mainstream media, on issues of provincial autonomy, water distribution,
power tariffs, royalty on resource production, and, above all,
due place in the federation of Pakistan.
On
the other hand, the ultimate beneficiary of this event is Gen.
Musharraf, who now has one fewer feisty newspaper to kick him
around. So, the arrest of the Post’s journalists, their
trial for blasphemy, and continued incarceration of its editor,
Mr Rehmat Shah Afridi, whom Amnesty International has declared
a prisoner of conscience, is no more than the continuation of
Gen. Musharraf’s “war on the nationalist forces by
religious means.”
