Between the media, the political governments and state institutions, there is a particular dialectic, a pattern.
Take the dengue crisis. There was a perceived lapse on part of the state and there was much media criticism of both the Punjab health department and the provincial government itself. The chief minister personally took it upon himself to not only do something about it but also be seen doing something about it. Years in, a relatively better protocol has been developed to deal with the problem.
Take the power outage that KP and Punjab experienced last week. WAPDA, the DisCos and anyone who could possibly be perceived to be responsible, were grilled by the media, all while the engineers and technicians raced to rectify the situation.
That is a general pattern. First, there is a crisis. Then, there is the media glare. Then – and perhaps much before the media glare – there is the political oversight. And then, we see some modicum of rectification of the issue at hand.
In the war against terror, a spanner has been thrown in the works of that dialectic. Why? Because the institution meant to control the problem rarely comes under the spotlight of the media and it certainly doesn’t accept any political oversight.
In fact, quite contrary to other institutions, the military seems to become even more powerful after there is a lapse on its part. In the aftermath of the APS attack, any public criticism of the then proposed military courts were equated with treason. All the while there was a wall-to-wall broadcast of sappy odes to the military on the airwaves. As they say in Las Vegas: no matter what happens, the House always wins.
The only information we have about the war on terror is what the ISPR releases. The army’s rather strange drain-the-swamp methodology of clearing out an area of its civilian population – which would include the militants as well – and then pounding it with artillery, lends itself to very little independent reporting. The few who do attempt some independent reportage, like Saleem Shahzad, end up like him.
No one is around to gauge. As a result of that, there really isn’t the general trend of improvement that we might see in other sectors.
The military’s insularity means no fresh set of eyes can examine its approach to things. Other state institutions, like the police, say, might be corrupt, inept and high-handed, but because of constant public scrutiny (some of it even unfair) rectify their behaviour.
Going ahead with the police example, it is because of that aforementioned accountability that the intelligence provided by local police stations seems to be more current, coherent and actionable than the military’s intelligence agencies. This was publicly admitted by the late Maj-General Naseerullah Babar during the Karachi operation of ’96.
In fact, as online viewers can hear Rauf Klasra say in the video below, the army was informed in 2009 of a possible attack on the GHQ by the police. The army is said to have scoffed at this intel provided by mere policemen.
Now compare the depressingly decrepit facilities of the police of Dera Ghazi Khan (from where the intel was received) with the plush offices of the fabulously well-funded ISI.
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There is a multi-purpose safety valve for the establishment when it comes to terrorism: the narrative that RAW facilitated the Afghan government to do it.
Well, as opposed to the evidence that the Pakistani deep state is placing its bets on some unsavoury horses in Afghanistan, there is relatively little evidence that the Indians are funding the TTP. Were there even the slightest sliver of evidence, our more-than-efficient ISPR would have made it public. In fact, last year, when Pakistan submitted a dossier of Indian involvement in terror to the UN, the Pakistani advisor on foreign affairs, when grilled in our Senate, admitted that the said dossier contained no “material evidence” but the “pattern and narrative”.
Pattern, narrative and I-have-a-hunch is the sort of fare gossip mills of the chai-stall legions produce, not something that one would expect from the state.
On the media, immediately in the aftermath of the Charsadda incident, there has been a spate of programmes specifically on the involvement of RAW in the incident. Not much by way of questioning the military and its intelligence agencies even if RAW was involved. In fact, even the provincial government has been spared.
The Indian angle is a narrative that is certainly pushed by the military. Lt Gen (the Tweeple have a three-star among them) Asim Bajwa said in his press conference that investigators found Afghan SIMs on the phones of the attackers. Upon being asked, the Pakistan Telecom Authority told Geo News that SIMs from Afghanistan cannot, in fact, be used in Pakistan.
In fact, the senate’s standing committee on the interior had been told back in June 2015 that the roaming facility of Afghanistan’s SIMs had been blocked.
This blame-India narrative continues unabated, specifically in the vernacular press. This led to a curious state of affairs during the previous government. You see, the ANP was the party that was – and continues to be – attacked most by the TTP. So, the local media would have us believe that the ANP (who are Indian agents) were constantly being attacked by the TTP (who are Indian agents.)
Similarly, in Charsadda, the Indians and Afghans attacked a university named after a recipient of the Bharat Ratna who chose to be buried in Jalalabad by way of symbolism.
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Till the media starts scrutinising the military with even a fraction of the glare it reserves for other institutions, and an emboldened political government can tighten the screws, as it were, we can expect more and more of events like Charsadda happening. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
