June 10, 2011

Why Was Saleem Shahzad Assassinated?

 

Assassination is the most extreme form of censorship.

- George Bernard Shaw

An astute and intrepid investigative reporter of Asia Times on Line, Syed Saleem Shahzad, 40, who had scored several scoops on Al Qaeda and the Taliban, was reportedly kidnapped from Islamabad on May 29 while he was on his way to a local TV station to appear on a talk show. His dead body bearing several marks of torture including broken ribs was found two days later in a canal some 90 miles southeast of his residence.

Pakistani news media vehemently condemned the act, called it an assassination, and expressed strong suspicion of the ISI, the country’s premier intelligence agency, being involved in it. The agency refuted the charge as strongly, but circumstantial evidence lent support to the allegation. Some of the indicators are mentioned below.

He was covering Al Qaeda and Taliban and had often scored stories that no one else had. He managed to interview the prominent Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, a year before he was killed in a drone attack. Some time back he secured an interview with Ilyas Kashmiri, 47, the Al Qaeda militant who is believed to have masterminded the Bombay carnage of November, 2008 as also the attack on Mehran Naval base in Karachi of May 22, 2011. Reports have just come in that Kashmiri was killed in a drone attack in Waziristan.

Shahzad had focused on the activities of Al Qaeda and Taliban and their possible links to Pakistan’s armed forces. He had collected a lot of information on this and included that in his book “Inside al Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond bin Laden and 9/11”. He was by any measure on a dangerous beat.

Two days before his assassination, he had published the first part of a report about the attack on Mehran Naval/Air base in Karachi that destroyed two Orion surveillance and anti-submarine aircraft worth $36 million each. He disclosed that Al Qaeda and the Navy had negotiated the release of naval officers arrested on suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda. The attack took place as the Navy refused to release the officers and had launched “massive internal crackdowns on al-Qaeda affiliates within the navy”. This was a journalistic scoop, but an inconvenient disclosure from the military point of view. Shahzad had promised to make the second part, yet to be published, much more revealing. He was eliminated before he could do that.

The ISI had grown hyper-sensitive after the killing of Osama in a secret operation at Abbottabad on May 2 by US Navy Seals. The ISI was not informed by the CIA of the operation for fear of the information leaking to Osama. More humiliating was the belief that some elements in the ISI were in cahoots with Al Qaeda. The ISI was wreathing under the charge of complicity. Shazad’s above-mentioned report confirmed that some naval personnel were taken into custody as they were suspected of hobnobbing with Al Qaeda. He insinuated that similar groups existed in the army and air force too.

Shazad was called to the ISI and warned against filing stories pointing out the existence of Al Qaeda sympathizers within the armed forces. He had in an interview with a foreign news network (TRNN) on May 21 confirmed the possibility of a kind of mutiny within the armed forces of Pakistan owing to their close alliance with Islamist forces.

The armed forces, always upheld by the people as a source of national pride, have now a sinking image. The refusal of the CIA to take it into confidence on the May 2 Abbottabad operation and their inability to kill half a dozen terrorists for 16 long hours and the success of these few terrorists in destroying two Orion aircraft worth $72 million showed the miserable failures of the forces. They expect the people to accept the ability of Osama to hide in a semi-garrison town in open eye-sight as an intelligence failure. To do so would be an insult to the intelligence of the common people.

Criticism of the unlimited greed, incompetence and duplicity is being expressed openly by even prominent members of the society. In a milieu like this, the investigative reports of Shazad had become quite inconvenient and intolerable for the ISI.

Shahzad had left a note with Human Rights Watch, Pakistan, expressing concern over the threatening calls he had received from the intelligence agencies. In response to enquiries about his whereabouts, Human Rights Watch was informed that he would return home by the evening of Monday, May 25. Instead, his dead body was discovered in a river canal some 90 miles from his home.

Since 2010, 15 Pakistani journalists have been killed, making Pakistan one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the profession, according to Reporters Without Borders. Ali Dayan Hasan, head of Pakistan chapter of Human Rights Watch who has intimately followed Shahzad’s case writes, “We don’t know if the ISI killed him, but the manner of his killing is consistent with the other murders where there has been credible evidence of ISI involvement. The fact is that no military or intelligence personnel are ever punished for crimes that may have been perpetrated by them.”

The ISI being under fire at home and abroad ever since the discovery of Osama bin Laden living comfortably just down the street from the country’s premier military academy, might have elected to send a bloody and scary message to the rest of the media to scare the sniffing hounds off. That would also take care of Shazad and his unsettling reports on the presence of fanatics among military ranks.

What the bright boys of the ISI might not have realized is the freedom that the numerous TV channels and other media have been enjoying in Pakistan from Musharraf’s period and the confidence this has generated in their ranks. People who watch the numerous talk shows have also developed a discerning taste. They can’t be hoodwinked any longer. The men in uniform humiliated in the eyes of their foreign benefactors and toppled at home from their lofty pedestal will have to restrain their habit of trying to get away with their follies on the pretext that the king can do no wrong. “The king is naked”, some child may cry out. Matter of fact, the cry has come from no less a person than Asma Jehangir, an outstanding leader of Pakistan and chair of Supreme Court Bar Association and, above all, a woman of great conscience.

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” - Thomas Jefferson.

arifhussaini@hotmail.com