And Saleem Safi and Ehsanullah Ehsan
Conflict journalism, especially active war reporting, has undergone tremendous change since the war on terror. There are no more stories of correspondents covering both sides of wars, sheltering with opposing parties on their way to a Pulitzer, etc. Now, primarily because of the vicious nature of AQ, ISIS, Taliban, it is no longer safe for journalists to roam around on their own; hence the evolution of ‘embedded journalism’. Interestingly, some journalists tried to report from the depths of ISIS controlled areas. And at least three from Qatar – two men and one woman – were raped and beheaded in the Syrian countryside not long after they filed their last report (which was, incidentally, anti-Damascus).
The Pakistani war is different. Only a precious few journalists have been granted the ‘embedded’ privilege in the tribal area, and mostly the media has played along with ISPR tweets as far as the story of the war is concerned. Ehsanullah Ehsan’s interview, therefore, by Saleem Safi, raises some interesting questions. For example, it’s not as if news of Ehsanullah’s capture lit the journalist bulb inside Mr Safi’s head, and he ‘ran after it’ till he had the former bad guy in front of a mic and camera – the reasoning of his argument leaving the military high command with no option but caving in.
It’s more likely that capturing – or was it a walk in? – and parading him on TV was part of the same script. And if Mr Safi, like some who defend his position, was thinking his sense of journalism would extract something novel for Ehsanullah, that the military wasn’t already going to divulge, then he’s been covering an entirely different theatre of war these past two decades. Of course, the media should engage with the Ehsanullahs of all wars, but not when it has to tie itself to a string that someone else is pulling.