As flies to wanton boys….
Those who believe that the mood of the court, more than anything else, influences the decisions of the judiciary, would infer a lot from the findings of the commission that was set up to probe the murder of slain journalist Saleem Shehzad. They would infer from this the verdict of the Abbottabad commission: another acquittal for the powers that be? They would also infer from this the verdict of the court in the memo commission: guilty as charged?
A flawed belief, one that is the province of gut feelings, unable to stand up to reason or scrutiny. Not demonstrably accurate either. If a fair commission, one that would have been to the intelligence agencies’ detractors’ liking, had been set up and couldn’t find any dirt, they couldn’t have gone ahead and created some. Yet the adeptness of the spooks to clean up after themselves and the widespread public perception that they were, somehow, involved, made the commission talk about the intelligence agencies in its report. Bring them under control, it said about the IB and the ISI. Was including the IB an attempt to lessen the sting? If it was, perhaps they could have thrown in the Special Branch as well. Or the irrigation department.
The case itself: Saleem Shehzad couldn’t have been as good as he was at his beat and not attracted the ire of the non-state actors and various “belligerents.” Those protesting the findings of the commission cannot brush away an independent splinter group of militants behind his gruesome murder. The timing of his murder, however, right before he was to publish an installment of his findings on the attack on the Mehran naval base in Karachi, makes it harder to believe that.
The commission’s directive to the investigating authorities to go about their work without the fear of reprisals is merely symbolic; we have been down this road many times before.
The aftermath of Shehzad’s murder, more than the murder itself, is depressing indeed for professional, feet-on-the-ground journalists in the country. If as prominent a journalist as he could be killed off, with no clue about the culprits, what hope do those working for the local media have? What hope do the local correspondents in the districts and tribal agencies have?
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport
