On July 31, 2011, a programme on a private TV channel was aired in which a TV crew was transported by the Pakistan Army to Wana, South Waziristan. The army soldiers escorted the team throughout their stay in Wana. The team talked with the soldiers stationed in the area along with some tribesmen, and also aired the development work initiated by the army in Waziristan. The whole programme was misleading.
Before their departure to Waziristan, the anchorperson of the programme said this: “The norm is that when you go to a new place, you first ask around to get a knowhow about the area. We are going to Waziristan, but there is no one to ask about this area.” This is factually wrong. People from Waziristan can be found all over Pakistan in state institutions, universities, the transport business and other job markets. Many people from the area, including the entire Mehsud tribe, are IDPs outside Waziristan. But one has to remember that the TV programme was not meant to air the views of the people of Waziristan or to educate the people of Pakistan about the people of Waziristan. The programme was a piece of propaganda. It was meant to present the perspective of the Pakistan Army, which simply does not concur with the ground reality in Waziristan. It is thus no wonder that the anchorperson could ‘see’ none among the thousands of people from Waziristan scattered all over Pakistan for a chat about the area prior to the journey.
The anchorperson interviewed some tribesmen from Waziristan. One of the tribesmen was the son of Maulana Noor Muhamamd, who the anchorperson introduced as a “shaheed”. This jihadi maulana, recently killed in a suicide attack, always had deep links with the military establishment of Pakistan since the days of the so-called Afghan jihad. He had strong relations with al Qaeda and the Taliban leaders. He had the blood of the innocent people of Waziristan on his hands. How could the television channel declare such a person a shaheed?
The TV programme did not even casually refer to the 200 plus tribal leaders of South Waziristan who have been target killed because they opposed the presence of Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Waziristan. Their families hold the ISI responsible for their brutal assassinations. It is pertinent to mention that a prominent journalist, on a recent TV talk show said that in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack, the Musharraf government sent a delegation to Afghanistan to pursue Mullah Omar to hand over Osama bin Laden to the US. This was the public stance of the government. Privately, the delegation urged Mullah Omar to defy the US by refusing to surrender bin Laden. The government wanted to drag and humiliate the US into the Afghan quagmire just like the USSR. The journalist stopped at this point, but there is much more in the follow up than what he said. Tribal leaders in South Waziristan (and later all over FATA), who opposed or potentially could oppose the militants’ escape into their area in the wake of the US’s bombing in Afghanistan were killed in pursuit of trapping the US in Afghanistan. This was according to the plan to create a leadership vacuum in tribal society to be filled by the state-assisted Taliban and al Qaeda.
The TV programme remained silent about the presence of the Punjabi Taliban and other foreign militants in the area. Not far from Wana bazaar, where the TV team spoke from, is Doag, the centre of the Punjabi Taliban. The Wazir tribesmen constantly point out (privately for security concerns) that even the Waziri terrorists are a minority. A majority of the militants, they inform, are the Punjabi Taliban. The TV report failed to show the training centre for suicide bombers in the area. The report ignored the ‘good’ Waziri Taliban commander, Mullah Nazir, based in Wana. The report failed to show the petrol station in Wana bazaar where Farooq Yargul Khel was target killed in 2003 precisely because he had publicly declared that he would never allow the militants to enter Wana bazaar and would evict them from the rest of Waziristan through a tribal lashkar. He was the first among the target-killed leaders of Waziristan for their opposition to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The programme did not even mention the disastrous army agreement with al Qaeda-led Taliban commander, Nek Mohammad, in 2004 that discarded the tribal leaders’-led political order in the area. The agreement is tantamount to dictating a new social contract at gunpoint between the Wazir tribe and Pakistani state, whereby Waziristan was handed over to al Qaeda and the Taliban. The report was also silent on the Wazir tribe’s clashes with Uzbek militants in 2007. Pakistan Army weapons, including long-range artillery, were freely used against the Uzbek militants. Instead of killing the Uzbeks with help from the Wazir tribe, the army authorities let them flee to North Waziristan so as to put them under the influence of the Haqqani network in the area to direct their jihadi energies towards the international forces in Afghanistan. There is nothing in the programme that might suggest that the TV crew had reflected on the commonsense observation of how any local people could provide honest answers in the presence of the army authorities.
A bizarre part of the programme is when its female anchorperson, sitting in a topless military vehicle, veiled herself as the vehicle entered Wana bazaar. “This is the culture here and we have to show respect to this culture,” she pronounced from behind the face veil. The fact is that not all women in the tribal area wear the face veil. Rather than showing respect to the tribal culture, the journalist displayed insensitivity to the tribal norm that accepts that casual female visitors to the area, like this journalist, are exempt from the local pardah (veil) norms. But, let us not forget that the journalist was reporting in Wana bazaar, an area close to the centre of the Punjabi Taliban. Most probably, it was fear of the Punjabi Taliban rather than respect for tribal culture that made her wear a face veil in Wana bazaar.
FATA has been converted into a black hole where reality is created and presented to the world in a manner that suits the security establishment of Pakistan. This TV programme is just such an example. Within hours of the programme, the Chinese authorities reportedly blamed the Uzbek militants based in FATA for recent terror attacks in a Muslim-dominated region of the country. Within hours of the programme, there was a drone strike in South Waziristan that killed militants. But, sadly, such media presentations only serve to mislead the people of Pakistan who have no direct access to FATA. It is most unfortunate that Pakistani media outlets are part and parcel of the military’s propaganda to mislead the people of Pakistan.
The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban