PAKISTAN IS A FAILED TERRORIST STATE

Reporters Without Borders is appalled to learn that newspaper reporter Ayub Khattak was gunned down outside his home in Karak district, in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on 11 October.

 

 

Pakistan is a terrorist nation.  From the very beginning, the partnership between the US and Pakistan has been a marriage of convenience.  Pervez Musharraf asserts it was a forced marriage.  Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Pakistan shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to be prepared to be bombed, to be prepared to go back to the Stone Age! 

In the fall of 2001, Americans toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Pakistan had previously helped to install the Taliban in power because it viewed it as an ally against its archenemy, India. So the end of the Taliban also meant the collapse of Pakistan's defensive strategy. Since then, Islamabad has worried that the US could hand over Pakistani intelligence to India.

Pakistan’s strategy is supporting terrorists that attack India.  Pakistan’s nebulous position toward the Taliban led to circumstances in which the world’s most wanted terrorist could reside safely under the nose of the military for six years. Al-Qaeda has links to the Taliban and to terrorists that target India. Thus Pakistan’s soft stance toward these groups ends up facilitating al-Qaeda and its agenda. Indeed, bin Laden struck a deal with Pakistan’s military leadership to ensure his safety in the country. This speaks volumes about the Pakistan’s dual policies on terrorism.

 

“We offer our heartfelt condolences to the Khattak family,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The initial information available to us strongly indicates that this murder was linked to Khattak’s journalistic activities. We urge the authorities to do everything possible to shed light on this tragedy and to focus on the probability that he was killed in connection with his work.

“Khattak is the seventh journalist to have been murdered in Pakistan since the start of the year. Media personnel must be given more security. The causes and forms of violence against journalists vary from region to region but the common feature is that it is not letting up. The federal authorities must step up their efforts to protect journalists.”

A reporter for the Karak Times, Khattak was shot by two men on a motorcycle who were waiting for him near his home. After initially asking him why he was investigating their drug dealing, they returned 15 minutes later and shot him several times with a Kalashnikov. He died while being taken to hospital.

Khattak, who was used to being threatened in connection with his reporting, had been investigating an increase in drug dealing in the Wrana Mir Hassankhel neighbourhood. His family said he was not involved in any personal dispute and that the motive was clearly linked to his work.

Karak-based fellow reporter Haleem Bukharitold Reporters Without Borders he agreed. “The deceased had filed a story on the sale of drugs and drug-sellers and that appears to have been the reason for his targeted killing.”

One of Khattak’s sons blamed the murder on two brothers allegedly involved in drug dealing: Aminullah and Hasab Niaz. As a result of Khattak’s reporting, they are being investigated by the police and are said to be on the run.

Local journalists demonstrated in Karak to protest against the murder and demand justice for Khattak, the father of ten children.

Violence against journalists has been on the rise in recent months. Sardar Shafiq, who works for a local Urdu-language daily in Abbottabad and heads the city’s journalists’ union, was attacked by three individuals armed with steel bars as he left his workplace on the evening of 10 October and had to be rushed to a local hospital. His injuries were not life-threatening.

Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani citizen, was picked up by the Pakistani authorities a few weeks after the May 2, 2011, raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The doctor, at the behest of the U.S., led a phony vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in an attempt to secure DNA evidence from the residents living inside the bin Laden compound. Afridi turned down an offer from the U.S. government to leave the country immediately after the bin Laden raid. Afridi says he never imagined he would be punished for helping to locate the architect of 9/11.  In May 2012, after he had been held for a year, a Pakistani court sentenced Afridi to 33 years in jail.

The Pakistan-based Haqqani, a veritable arm of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, attacks U.S. embassies. While Haqqani have conducted attacks against U.S. and NATO soldiers in the past, embassy attacks now represent an escalation against U.S.  Pakistan’s support of insurgent groups and terrorists is the most significant obstacle to achieving stability in the area.

Pakistan is a society based on tribal groups. Each clan maintains a complicated network of relations, like a mafia. Under these conditions, it hardly seems imaginable that Osama bin Laden could have spent years living unnoticed just a stone's throw away from Pakistan's most elite military academy, an institution as assiduously guarded as the US's West Point or Great Britain's Sandhurst.  Pakistani Intelligence officers knew about bin Laden’s home, but they got kickbacks to keep it secret!

Islam is a terrorist culture, not a religion.  Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com