Pakistan in Media

The New York Times
Thursday, May 14, 2009

By Robert Mackey
The Web site Pakistan Daily is an Islamabad-based hub for Pakistani citizen journalism, promising Pakistani readers: “Your News. Powered by You.” It is also an excellent place to turn if you want to read in on the latest conspiracy theories making the rounds in that country. Or just get very scared.

Somewhat disturbingly, the source for the “top story” on Pakistan Daily today is Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari. As an anonymous article on the site reports accurately, in an interview with NBC News which aired on Sunday, Mr. Zardari claimed that he “knew” that Osama bin Laden was an American “operator” during the 1980s.

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While most of the conspiracy theories posted on Pakistan Daily seem easy to debunk — like allegations that “Osama bin Laden may be Jewish” or that Islamist militants in Pakistan’s Swat Valley are Indian intelligence agents — it is not hard to understand why some Pakistanis are so willing to believe that unseen forces are behind their current troubles. After all, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the United States did in fact work closely, and secretly, with Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to destabilize that country’s government by supporting Islamic extremists like Mr. bin Laden.

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But one of the most interesting conspiracy theories posted recently on Pakistan Daily is the grand, unified theory in a signed essay by a Pakistani blogger and journalist named Ahmed Quraishi, headlined “Barack Obama Is Lying About Pakistan.” In his essay Mr. Quraishi, who has worked as a television journalist for PTV, Pakistan’s state broadcaster, outlines a supposed plot against Pakistan by the American government and media.

According to Mr. Quraishi, the entire battle against militants in Pakistan is nothing less than a huge “American psy-ops” campaign to distract from the failures of the United States in Afghanistan. Mr. Quraishi writes:

In less than two years, the United States has successfully managed to drop from news headlines its failure to pacify Afghanistan. The focus of the Anglo-American media – American and British – has been locked on Pakistan. In order to justify this shift, multiple insurgencies and endless supply of money and weapons has trickled from U.S.-occupied Afghanistan into Pakistan to sustain a number of warlords inside Pakistan whom the American media calls ‘Taliban’ but they are actually nothing but hired mercenaries with sophisticated weapons who mostly did not even exist as recently as the year 2005.

Mr. Quraishi’s reading of events hinges on the idea that a statement by President Obama, during the news conference on his 100th day in office, that he was concerned that Pakistan’s “civilian government right now is very fragile,” was a veiled call for a military coup and “essentially amounts to a declaration of war against another country.” Mr. Quraishi also claims that “academic programs are being launched in the U.S. that advocate the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of smaller entities.”

How you might ask, has Mr. Obama been able to get away with this huge psy-ops campaign against Pakistan? That’s where we come in. In Mr. Quraishi’s view, alarming reports on the progress of Taliban militants in Pakistan are all part of the plot, in which, he says, “the U.S. media and officials are single-handedly tarnishing Pakistan’s image worldwide to justify a military intervention.” According to Mr. Quraishi:

The most spectacular, anti-Pakistan media campaign ever against our country has been launched by the U.S. media and continues unabated, with the purpose of softening the international opinion for a possible military action against Pakistan. And there is no question that this campaign has some backing from official U.S. quarters as was the case in the propaganda that preceded the invasion of Iraq.

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