Postcard USA: Bashing Pakistan: the only game in town —Khalid Hasan
courtesy: Dailytimes
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_1-2-2004_pg3_7
How is it possible for every major newspaper in this
country to run the same story over and over again? It is
unprofessional but it makes perfect sense if the purpose is to
bludgeon the country
The savaging of Pakistan in newspapers across the United
States that was beginning to ebb, gained fresh life with,
first the President’s CNN interview to Ms Christian Amanpour
(who always reminds me of a younger Begum Nusrat Bhutto) and
then story after story from the well-wired Pakistani stringer
of the Washington Post. He it was who first named Dr Abdul
Qadeer Khan, both in his own newspaper in Pakistan and the one
that he strings for here, as the man who had passed on nuclear
materials and know-how to Libya, Iran and perhaps North Korea
for no reason higher than money. He also wrote about Dr Khan’s
vast interests in business and real estate holdings. There is
a phrase in English which says it all: cutting one’s nose to
spite one’s face.
As the storm raged around Pakistan’s alleged nuclear
waywardness and the risk such irresponsible conduct posed to
the West, I asked one of this town’s leading Pakistan
‘experts’ what the endgame was. “Will Pakistan, if found
guilty as charged, be hanged by the neck by the next tree or
will it be let off just for the last time with the direst of
warnings?” I wanted to know. He did not disagree that this
entire ‘nuclear-secrets-sold’ business was part of a
well-planned and deftly executed campaign.
How is it possible for every major newspaper in this country
to run the same story over and over again? It is
unprofessional but it makes perfect sense if the purpose is to
bludgeon the country into doing what the big and mighty lords
of the world think it should do. “Repeat the medicine till the
patient is dead,” could be a good slogan for the
Pakistan-bashing that has gone on here for the last several
weeks.
The Embassy of Pakistan has maintained a Buddha-like calm
while the media war on Pakistan has raged on. Perhaps unlike
the rest of us who hang around on the sidelines, the ‘core
professionals’ have seen the light, in which case, it would be
my earnest request to them to kindly share their wisdom with
us unenlightened ones. Not a word has come out of the embassy
or any of Pakistan’s paid and duly accredited representatives
in any American newspaper on the nuclear issue. Neither am I
aware of any of our distinguished diplomats having gone on
television or radio to speak in defence of the country that
keeps them living in the style to which they have become
accustomed.
It is for this reason that what a small group of Pakistanis
living in New Jersey has done deserves to be saluted. Syed
Asif Alam of the Association of Pakistani Professionals
organised a meeting at Columbia University last week to
discuss the American media onslaught against Pakistan, to
understand what was behind it and to devise ways to deal with
it. He gathered a small and committed group of Pakistanis who
all came at their own expense. They agreed that the US media
should be engaged in a proactive manner. They said the media’s
single-track agenda was that ‘Pakistani begins and ends with
extremists’.
Recently, Syed Asif Alam along with some friends went to meet
the New York Times editorial board to protest the negative
manner in which Pakistan was being dealt with. He has also
been emailing critical columnists back and forth in an attempt
to point out that they are not being fair. Far be it from me
to suggest that this is something our diplomatic reps should
be doing.
At the Columbia meeting, Moeed Pirzada drew attention to the
‘synchronisation’ and ‘timing’ of stories on both sides of the
Atlantic that were designed to establish that Pakistan was a
dangerous proliferator. “What is the objective? Who
coordinates? What interests influence the media? What
economics lies behind such moves? Why do such stories not
appear about Israel and India even when major failures take
place? Is the market for ideas and information free?” he asked
the meeting.
However, I think we should all stop worrying because our
esteemed information minister and principal spokesman of the
Government of Pakistan, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, arrives on these
shores soon and who can doubt his troubleshooting abilities!
Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent
