| War on Terror | |
| 09 Jul 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com |
| US-Pakistan: Allies Drifting Apart? | ||
 Those familiar with the smash-and-kill tactics of the ISI insisted that the agency’s thugs alone could have committed the crime. Others, including Shahzad’s professional colleagues in Pakistan, said he had paid with his life for daring to take on the Government, the Army, the ISI, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, all part of that country’s military-jihadi complex, and write withering reports about the evil nexus that tied them together. The horrific murder was both a punishment and a chilling message: Journalists in Pakistan should not cross the line which stops short of the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Establishment; everything else is fair game. -- Editorial in The Daily Pioneer, New Delhi (Photo:Syed Saleem Shahzad) | ||
| US-Pakistan: Allies Drifting Apart? | |
Mullen’s comments come as a surprise
Editorial in The Daily Pioneer, New Delhi
July 08, 2011
Mullen’s comments come as a surprise The day the body of missing journalist Saleem Shahzad was found floating in a canal — his ribs were broken, he had been beaten black-and-blue with rods — the buzz went around that he had been abducted, brutally tortured and killed by the Pakistani Army’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, infamously known as the ISI. Those familiar with the smash-and-kill tactics of the ISI insisted that the agency’s thugs alone could have committed the crime. Others, including Shahzad’s professional colleagues in Pakistan, said he had paid with his life for daring to take on the Government, the Army, the ISI, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, all part of that country’s military-jihadi complex, and write withering reports about the evil nexus that tied them together. The horrific murder was both a punishment and a chilling message: Journalists in Pakistan should not cross the line which stops short of the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Establishment; everything else is fair game. Apparently, Shahzad crossed that line with his explosive report on how jihadis who had infiltrated the Pakistani Navy were behind the stunning terrorist strike on the PNS Mehran naval base in Karachi. The ISI, predictably, has repeatedly denied any role in Shahzad’s abduction (from a high security zone of Islamabad), torture and murder. Equally predictably, outraged Pakistani journalists have failed to produce any evidence linking the Army or the ISI to their colleague’s slaying. Or, as has been suggested in certain quarters, they have taken the ‘message’ seriously and do not wish to end up floating in a canal or dumped in a field. That would be understandable; fear can dampen the strongest of spirits.
But the allegation of the Islamabad-Rawalpindi Establishment having had a hand in Shahzad’s gruesome death has persisted, and now with US Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen publicly stating that the Pakistani Government had “sanctioned" the killing, it is bound to gain traction. According to Admiral Mullen, he has not “seen anything to disabuse the report that the Government knew about this”. He believes officials were complicit in the death of the journalist who was abducted two days after he wrote that Al Qaeda had infiltrated the Pakistani Navy. The Government of Pakistan has rubbished Admiral Mullen’s comments; in any event, he has nothing to prove that his assessment is not wrong, so it really means nothing unless what he has disclosed is a teaser and more is to follow. At another level, by seeking to lend credibility to popular belief, Admiral Mullen has indicated that the breach between the US security forces and intelligence agencies and those of Pakistan is increasingly becoming irreparable. Indeed, even as the US State Department is desperately trying to paper over differences between Washington, DC and Islamabad that have been accentuated by the American raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad and the elimination of the world’s most wanted terrorist, Pentagon and the CIA appear to be pushing for a tough line. This could be part of a strategy adopted by the Obama Administration so as not to be seen pandering to Pakistan as Republicans on the Hill call for a reversal of policy. Whatever the reasons, the fracturing of US-Pakistan relations is now obvious to all. Whether the fracture can be healed in the coming days remains to be seen.
Source: The Daily Pioneer, New Delhi
|
9:12 PM
Moderate Islamist here
0 comments:
Post a Comment