|
Pakistan Kicked Me Out. Others Were Less Lucky.
By Nicholas Schmidle, Sunday, February 3, 2008; B01
The police came for me on a cold, rainy Tuesday night last month. I asked, somewhat obtusely, what this meant. "I am here to take you to the airport," the officer shrugged. "Tonight." The document he'd given me provided no explanation for my expulsion, but I immediately felt that there was some connection to the travels and reporting I had done for a story published two days earlier in the New York Times, about a dangerous new generation of Taliban in Pakistan. I had spent several months traveling throughout the troubled areas along the border with Afghanistan, including Quetta (in Baluchistan province) and Dera Ismail Khan, Peshawar and Swat (all in the North-West Frontier Province). My visa listed no travel restrictions, and less than a week earlier, Musharraf had sat before a roomful of foreign journalists in Islamabad and told them that they could go anywhere they wanted in Pakistan.
The truth, however, is that foreign journalists are barred from almost half the country; in most cases, their visas are restricted to three cities -- Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. In Baluchistan province, which covers 44 percent of Pakistan and where ethnic nationalists are fighting a low-level insurgency, the government requires prior notification and approval if you want to travel anywhere outside the capital of Quetta. Such permission is rarely given. And the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where the pro-Taliban militants are strong, are completely off-limits. Musharraf's government says that journalists are kept out for their own security. But meanwhile, two conflicts go unreported in one of the world's most vital -- and misunderstood -- countries.
Also in October, in the Kyrgyz city of Osh, a gunman using a silencer murdered Voice of America reporter Alisher Saipov, a good friend of mine and a fearless opponent of the regime in neighboring Uzbekistan.
It's no secret that stifled societies often produce frustrated, angry youth. Pakistan, for example, is an amazing and fascinating country, filled with amazing and fascinating people, but every day, small numbers of young men and women there are brainwashed into thinking that the only answer to Musharraf's U.S.-backed regime is terrorism.
I moved to Pakistan in February 2006 on a research and writing fellowship. My wife left her job and joined me soon after. We had been married just three months; I convinced her that two years in Pakistan would be like a honeymoon that just wouldn't stop. We both learned to speak Urdu and embraced local customs and clothes. She enrolled at the International Islamic University (the only non-Muslim American ever to do so), and I traveled extensively throughout the country. Pakistan became our home. Unhindered by deadlines and with a grasp of the language, I uncovered a side of Pakistan that few other foreign writers have been fortunate enough to experience.
My desire to explore regions and themes rarely addressed in mainstream media coverage took me to a number of areas often considered dangerous or hostile to Westerners. And yet I found the people there overwhelmingly hospitable -- and not at all scary. I soon learned how to assess -- and, to some extent, manage -- any potential hazards. I almost always traveled with a local journalist or two who knew the people, languages and customs far better than I ever could. Besides understanding which roads were safe to travel at night, they would also be aware that interviewing particular people might attract the unwanted attention of Pakistan's intelligence services, including the notorious ISI. When they advised, I listened.
Following my last visit to Baluchistan, in October 2006, intelligence goons stopped by my house on a regular basis for weeks, demanding to speak with me and asking my guard probing questions about my wife and me. The guard quietly shared these conversations with me out of earshot of my wife. I laughed about it with fellow writers and reporters, figuring that such visits were just the price of researching and reporting in Baluchistan.
In December 2005, Hayatullah Khan, a journalist from North-Waziristan, filed a story with photographs that gave evidence -- a piece of a U.S.-made Hellfire missile -- that the United States was conducting strikes against Taliban- and al-Qaeda-linked targets inside Pakistani territory. The photos were undoubtedly an embarrassment to the Musharraf government, which had publicly insisted that U.S. military forays would not be allowed inside Pakistan.
Just a few weeks earlier, Khan had written a will in which he stated, "If I am kidnapped or get killed, the government agencies will be responsible." The day after his story and the photos were published, gunmen ran his car off the road and kidnapped him. Six months later, his body was dumped in the bazaar in Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan.
A couple of weeks ago, a spokesman from the Information Ministry said that "the media in Pakistan is the freest ever in the history of the country." In many ways, he was correct; drawing-room columnists can be as critical as they wish to be. But opinion-writing shouldn't be confused with reporting. And every journalist working in Pakistan knows that crossing certain undefined lines can become a risky, often life-threatening endeavor. Pearl and Khan were both doing serious investigative work when they were kidnapped and killed.
Hamid mir, one of Pakistan's most respected TV and print journalists, watched as his TV channel, Geo TV, and his talk show were pulled off the air after Musharraf imposed a state of emergency on Nov. 3. (On Jan. 21, Geo resumed broadcasting, albeit without Mir's show.) Mir recently e-mailed me: "Musharraf believes in removing people from the scene. . . . He cannot remove us from history."
Journalism, as the cliche goes, is the "first rough draft of history." If that's the case, then Pakistan's history is suffering.
Nicholas Schmidle, a Pakistan-based fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs from 2006 to 2008, is writing a book about Pakistan today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/AR2008013003012.html
For complete story of Nicholas Schmidle click above link
Time is running out of hands, scholars predicted to current situation and it is in front of everyone, all so called enlightened moderates, foreign funded NGO's and owners of prostitution dens have disappeared from the scene after pushing Pakistan army in civil war.
Story of Nicholas Schmidle "“ Recently deported from Pakistan (My comments)
This is follow-up of a story published by some websites "ISI mole jumped in "“ It proves that many strategic institutes are double agents".
I would like you may see complete story of Nicholas Schmidle on the link given below, however some important parts are reproduced below.
I have no intention to doubt integrity of author or sow seeds of suspicions about his role in journalism against Pakistan. My point of view is simple enough that nothing is happening in Pakistan which could be measured by the standards of a sovereign state and follow strategic policy based on defence and protection of its citizens, unfortunately all policies are moving to boast the image of one person and all strategic policies are made to safe guard his tyrant grip on power.
Majority of public have firm belief that jumping in "War of terror" without doing any home work, building confidence among those who still feel that those are target, continuous propaganda against particular groups and state terrorism etc. support their claims.
Moreover some Lilliputian groups who supported Mush's war on terror were practically corrupt, immoral and joined him with vested interests.
It was not possible for people of the region to accept theories of neo-cons, as Russia, China and India as super powers of the region practically belief on socialists doctrine. Moreover all other countries in Central Asia still have or had communist puppet autocratic governments including Afghanistan. Fear that Pakistan government will finally act as stripper in the club of westerners proved to be true and it later made room for many others to oppose so called war on terror, it was great mistake that some westerner thought that by putting a few dollars in the costume of dancing stripper (Mush), those will buy whole nation.
Factors which pushed Pakistan toward anarchy and civil war are mainly based on ruination of all state institutions. Peoples who are familiar with history of the region knows that peoples of entire northern, central and western parts of Pakistan joins army with the religious fervor, as such trust and belief on armed forces is very strong. This is the first time that army part it ways from fundamental belief of the nation. The areas which are air marked by NATO are strong recruitment bases of army. There are millions of retired army men in each town and village. Flow of dollars made corrupt to some of serving and retired generals, visible greediness exploited public and decade's long trust is converted in hate and mistrust.
There must be a standard national policy to tackle strategic challenges, on one side FBI and CIA is operating at Islamabad, so called intelligence sharing is only meant to spy on peoples of Pakistan and cross border missiles are killing civilians, President of Pakistan is complaining against own citizens and begging for power, Pakistani visitors on western air ports are facing humiliation. In all above circumstances plus anarchy and civil war, interests of Pakistan as a nation have drowned so each visiting journalist is pressurized to boast image of Mush only.
Earthman
International Professor
For further reading see:
Who is behind the murder of widow of Hayatullah khan http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2763&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
ISI mole jumped in "“ It proves that many strategic institutes are double agents: http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3582
|