The art of obfuscation

Having a voice, an audience, a platform is a privilege not afforded to many. Those who are afforded this luxury wield power, a control over the flow and dissemination of information & narratives. Those that abuse this power to spread misinformation & propagate false narratives represent a particularly strenuous curse. This is because (i) the large scale & brisk consumption of media today makes the damage they do often irreparable and quite substantial (ii) there’s no way to take that power away from them.

So I am going to try to educate whoever reads this on how writers obfuscate and distort the issues in order to propagate false narratives. Particular attention is to be paid to illegitimate, false arguments, or fallacies, that are used to achieve this end. Since Babar Sattar has welcomed criticism of his piece “A perfect heist” -a commentary on the SC probe faced by Sharif family- we can use it as sort of a case study.

Having followed Sattar’s work for a while, I have noticed a tendency to invoke the middle ground fallacy almost as if it were a doctrine. This is not a surprise, writers who put extra emphasis on appearing detached & clear-headed often fall prey to, or make use of, the middle ground fallacy. It has also been a preferred method of obfuscation for media whenever the ruling family runs into legal trouble. The middle ground fallacy, or the argument to moderation, is the tendency to believe/contend that the extreme arguments in any debate are always wrong, that “the truth lies somewhere in the middle”. Of course that is not the case. The argument supported by the facts, no matter how extreme, is where the truth lies.

We see this in the article in question as the agenda is set in the opening para:

“Is the explanation presented by the Sharifs regarding ownership of the London flats believable or plausible? The answer depends on what you already believe.”

The implication is that the evidence for the extreme positions is insufficient, the one extreme being that the Sharifs’ explanation is not true, the other that it is. By the end of the article, the author will grant the Sharif argument plausibility, but hold off deeming it true. That is the key to this method of obfuscation; it presents a false compromise, a status quo. The status quo, obviously, supports the ones in power.

The facts though do not support the status quo, they support the extreme position; the explanation of the ruling family regarding ownership of London flats is not believable – more on that later. So to create enough confusion regarding this, Mr Sattar lends credence to claims that have none, sometimes passing them off as facts, employs more logical fallacies and in the process presents a distorted picture of the case.

Deconstructing all of it is impermissible due to space constraints, but looking at key passages should be informative still. Most telling is the passage justifying the main question; ownership of the flats, or the Al Thani letter story:

“In an interview oft played by the media since the Panama leaks, Hassan Nawaz said that the flats were rented. We now see the mention of ‘ground rent and service charges’ paid by the Sharifs in the Al Thani affidavit and the response filed by Sharif siblings. As no money was paid to the Al Thani family, there is no money trail to be established and no laundered money to be justified. The only question that remains is that of truthful declarations and valid documents.”

This is a classic example of the cherry picking fallacy, or the suppressed evidence fallacy, employed at leisure by Mr Sattar. What this means is that there is a body of evidence available, but the author only cites the evidence that supports the argument he wants to forward, and omits all of the evidence that counters it. The Sharif family has made a number of statements about the properties in question. One of Kulsoom Nawaz states that the flats were bought, not rented, before 2000. One by Maryam Nawaz states that the flats have never been owned by the family at any time. The one by Hussain says they were bought around 2006 and money was transferred officially to Britain from Saudi Arabia, not to Qatar or the Al Thani family. Majority, if not every single facet, of the Al Thani story is contradicted by every statement of every member of the Sharif family. The Supreme Court noted that even the Prime Minister’s statements are contradicted by the letter presented before them.

The author does not notice the contradictions because he is employing the suppressed evidence technique; picking the one statement that, he contends, supports the Al Thani story. Just that it does not. Here he uses the “contextomy” fallacy. This is to say that the reference quoted does not actually support the argument made, just the context is removed to make it sound like it does. The “Ground rent” mentioned in the Al Thani letter refers to an annual token rent paid on leased land in the UK, such as the one the properties in question are built upon. In the interview Mr Sattar has referenced, Hassan Nawaz states that quarterly “rent” not ground rent, is paid for the flats to the owners and the money comes from Pakistan. If that interview were to be believed there must be quarterly payments to Al Thani family from Pakistan; the interview contradicts the Al Thani statement and actually establishes that there is a money trail, from Pakistan no less.

Still more distortion is on the way. Let’s look at a troubling passage which Mr Sattar uses to draw his conclusion:

“Each piece of the Sharif story, seen in isolation, is plausible. Could Mian Sharif have invested AED12 million in the Al Thani real-estate business? People make minority co-investments on the basis of trust without written formalities all the time. Do business families settle investments and make payouts on the basis of profits and mutual understanding? Sure they do. Can grandparents nominate a favoured grandchild to inherit a particular asset or property? Yes. Are such transactions illegal or invalid if not reduced to writing? No.

Plausible or not, does the story sound truthful? That depends on what side you are on.”

Mr Sattar is answering questions no one has ever asked. Nature of family investments, profit sharing, inheritance? These have nothing to do with the case at hand, which revolves around, in Sattar’s own words, “ownership of the flats, declaration of ownership, source of funds for the acquisition and money trail”. It’s as if he’s using the straw man fallacy on himself. 

On the questions identified as key ones by the author, the answers are pretty clear. The Sharifs have not provided a money trail, they have not provided evidence to refute the documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca and there is evidence, in the form of a UK court ruling, crediting them with the ownership of Park Lane properties before 2006. The UK court ruling refers to the Al Tawfik case & is the most critical piece of evidence suppressed by Mr Sattar.

The most bizarre type of reasoning in the article is saved for the defence of Maryam Nawaz. Have a read:

“Maryam says she is the trustee and not the owner of the offshore companies that own the flats. The allegation against her rests on letters in which the law firm representing the offshore companies identify her as beneficial owner to a foreign investigation agency. But to refute the allegation, the Sharifs have produced before the SC a trust deed executed by Maryam and Hussain (witnessed and verified by a London attorney in February 2006), where Maryam agrees to hold 49 shares of Coomber Group Inc on trust for Hussain.

Each piece of the Sharif story, seen in isolation, is plausible.”

Maryam is listed as sole beneficial owner of the firms Nielsen & Nescoll who in turn hold the Park Lane properties. The omission here is that letters identifying Maryam as owner of Nescoll & Nielsen mention that Mossack Fonseca were unaware of any trust associated with them. The tremendous error in logic here though is this: COOMBER GROUP INC is not NESCOLL or NIELSEN. You cannot refute allegations regarding the latter two with a document regarding the former.

I do not know what this kind of reasoning is called because I have never seen anyone over the age of 5 employ it. It is like somebody tells you that the milk has turned sour, so you take a bite of the apple and say “it seems fine to me”. It is not fine. This is not how it works. This is not how anything works. The apple does not represent the milk, because it is the apple; the milk is the milk. The apple can only represent the apple. I don’t know how this can be confused.

The apple & the milk are different, they are not the same.

Okay then. On to the conclusion where Mr Sattar states that the “buyer”, i.e. the Sharifs and the “seller”, i.e. the Al Thani family, presently have the same story. Right? Wrong. Wrong. Not right. The Al Thani family is not the seller. There is zero evidence to establish that they were ever owners of the Park Lane flats. If they provide the court with purchase deeds, that would help.

That has not happened though. Nothing the Sharifs claim is backed by proof, it is contradicted by their statements and it is refuted by documentation. Yet the reader will leave Babar Sattar’s column with a very different impression. This is the art of the wordsmith. To just subtly pass on claim as fact, shroud what is fact & put into question what is established, all in a seemingly articulate, coherent manner. This is the art of obfuscation.

To recap: Babar Sattar’s assertions are just plain false not because of what you already believe, or what side you are on, but because of the facts relevant to them.

On ownership; the Sharif position is not supported by any documentary evidence and negated by UK court judgment.

On date of purchase; the Sharif position is not supported by any documentary evidence and negated by UK court judgement.

On Maryam’s status as trustee, in turn need for declaration; the Sharif position is not supported by any documentary evidence and negated by documents leaked in the Panama papers.

Oh, and the Sharif position on all questions is proved false by previous statements from every member of the family.

These are the facts. There is no middle ground here.

P.S:

The false arguments pointed out here can be intentionally designed or, for the most part, an unintentional product of inherent bias. I have taken the view that they are a result of intentional design because of (i) my inherent bias/suspicion of the media (ii) the sheer number of them.

If Mr Sattar were to argue that he is so incompetent as to not be able to do basic research for an article, do a google search, or tell that this grouping of alphabets “COOMBER” is different from this one “NESCOLL” I will concede that I have taken an incorrect view and respectfully apologize. 

Media Matters

During the height of the last dharna, former Election Commission of Pakistan Additional Secretary Afzal Khan made an appearance on TV & seemed to endorse the allegations of the opposition. The fallout from his remarks wasn’t only confined to TV screens or newspaper columns, it also played out on social media.

The most memorable, if one can call it that, reaction to Afzal Khan’s statement came from journalist & anchor Nusrat Javed. Nusrat took to twitter in an excessively abusive diatribe, even for him. His remarks can most decently be summarised into this: Afzal Khan was a “gay sex” addict, who performed acts of said gay sex in the Islamabad press club, and Nusrat used to watch.

Even the best of us lose our cool in moments of anger, anguish, disappointment etc. and are prone to outbursts we would later regret. This moment stood out not only because Nusrat insisted he was of sound mind, but also because of what it came as a reaction to.

Nusrat, one of the most seasoned journalists in the country, did not lose his cool when the government shot 100 people in broad daylight. Nor did the outburst come when a CM, sworn to protect his citizens, promised to send “truckloads of tissues” in the wake of a massacre. It came when a former government employee piled on more pressure on the ruling family.

The incident has been retold to highlight two things. One is that while journalists often rightly complain about abuse they have to deal with on social media, they partake in it more often than they would have you believe. Second is the sense among many opposition supporters and third party observers that large sections of the media are partial towards the government.

As the opposition headed to Islamabad again, tensions between journalists and opposition supporters on social media became apparent once more. The last sentence is the problem, why should a showdown between the government and the opposition translate into one between large sections of the press and supporters of the opposition?

The media’s explanation of why that is the case was put forward just the other day by an anchor on Capital TV when he described the opposition as “fascist”. Even when opposition supporters were literally being picked up by the state from their homes, this is a view that held sway among many of his colleagues.

What’s the other explanation? .. Nusrat Javed. 

Like the rest of us, journalists find it harder to hide their biases on social media, which is why the divisions are so clear in that medium. However, anyone paying a little attention to what gets said or written in the press can pinpoint how this partiality has translated into their work.

Consider how violence is covered. The government has a long record now of extremely violent suppression of political opponents. It ranges from entering opposition compounds and killing political opponents by firing at them to entering private halls and hitting pol workers with batons. The opposition’s “violence” ranges from entering a government building to gathering in large numbers in the so called red zone. Yet the government’s actions are often described as “mistakes”, “rash”, “strong arm”, while the opposition is allocated “attack”, “siege” & “invasion”.

Not only is the coverage lenient towards the government’s propensity to kill, the whole narrative is dangerously similar to that of the government. For example, the last DAWN editorial on “economic costs” of protest wouldn’t be out of place if it were released by Ishaq Dar’s office. Almost every point made by the newspaper is one the Finance Minister has pleaded in the past; the stock market shock, the need for a steady ship, the confidence of investors. Tellingly, even the onus to prevent government’s draconian act of confiscating containers and using them to block the arteries of the state, is put on the opposition.

An editor in this newspaper wrote a charge sheet against the opposition a few days before the recent government crackdown started. Following are some of the points he made that are verbatim what Rana Sana, probably the most confrontationist minister in the government, regurgitates regularly:

The opposition wants to lay “siege” to the capital. The opposition leader is “non-democratic” and is “delegitimizing” state institutions. The opposition wants to run through government like a “medieval army”. I could go on.

If history is any indication, the words of this section of the press would have become even more visceral than the government’s if the planned November 2 showdown had taken place. Good citation for said indication is one Kamran Shafi, a columnist for DAWN & Express Tribune, who in 2014 represented little more than a microphone for the vilest of government propaganda. In one memorable, again if one can call it that, episode, Shafi remarked that women go to opposition protests to perform “mujra” and men go to watch it. He then shared a video made by ruling party supporters saying we go to the “dharna” because you can grab a girl and disappear in a container, or in the greenbelts. He was made an ambassador by the government not long after.

Shafi is one of many. An ever increasing number of journalists now appear to be formalizing ties with the government through caretaker positions, government posts etc. They include Muhammad Malick, Absar Alam, Iftikhar Ahmed, Arif Nizami, Najam Sethi, Ata-ul-Haq Qasmi & Irfan Siddiqui. Mushtaq Minhas, recently made a ruling party minister, served for years in the executive committee of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists & was the secretary of the Islamabad/Pindi Press club. Clearly the rot is deep.

These appointments are beyond the money government pours into media houses in the form of adverts; Rs 450 million was the bill during 2014 protests. How bad exactly is it? Even Hamid Mir admitted the other day that the reason for government’s confidence is that they believe they have 3 media houses in their pocket.

It is hard to quantify how much influence is bought through these tactics, but the infestation in Pakistani journalism is hard to ignore. At present, many news outlets just serve as avenues for hit jobs, and the opposition isn’t the only target.

Earlier this year the Friday Times, the paper run by Najam Sethi, launched an astonishing attack on an under-age rape victim. Granted that Sethi has been awarded one favour after the other by the ruling party, there was still something shocking about the way he went after a girl just 15 years old and maligned her character after she suffered the heinous crime at the hands of a ruling party office bearer.

Yet while social media saw a huge outcry over his appalling conduct, journalists, barring some women, closed ranks around Sethi. Not much, if any, of the criticism of his attack on a rape victim made it to mainstream media.

Which represents the second part of what ails journalism in this country.  The interconnectedness, patronage, friendships and favours that run in the industry give journalists a carte blanche to abuse their considerable power, without the threat of any scrutiny of their actions.   

Again Sethi provides an obvious example. In 2014 some women playing for Multan Cricket Club had accused the admin of harassment. Anchor Imran Khan of Express News covered the issue. Najam Sethi, who’s been made overlord for all cricket in the country for some reason, simply told the anchor in question to cut it out. The TV host stopped after assurance by Sethi that he would protect the girls and reinstate them. Instead Sethi left the girls at the mercy of the officials they had complained against. One of them, a 17 year old by the name of Halima, committed suicide.

No journalist I know has questioned Sethi over his role, and I don’t believe many I don’t know did either. The nature of their profession means that any criticism from the outside will always be met with a hint of scepticism, called intolerant or even viewed as an effort to suppress speech. Which is all the more reason that journalists question one another & call out the abysmal abuse of their power.

Fool’s dream. 

Supporting mass murder

Mumtaz Qadri’s execution on 29^th February was a net positive. For once the judicial system delivered and he was held accountable for his crime. It shows that despite support for a murderer, he is, and should be treated as, a murderer.

What has happened since isn’t all that though. That a large number of people treated Qadri as a hero and launched protests was expected. As was the turnout for his funeral. So the shock over that was a little bemusing; his execution was a big deal precisely because he had this support.

Yet more than the shock over the numbers that turned out, the surprise over the idea of it was, more bemusing? There was indignant outrage over the fact that people - mullahs, uneducated idiots, religious nutters, seminary students, etc. - openly support a murderer. Yeah. That people can support murderers caused considerable doom and gloom, not to mention anger. Pakistanis have a special talent for overlooking irony, especially journalists.

Mustafa Kamal’s tell some press conference a couple of days ago explained why that was nauseatingly hypocritical. Sub nauseatingly hypocritical for more bemusing. Since when is support of murderers an alien concept, especially for journalists?

Whenever the truth is spoken about the MQM, many pillars of clarity in the media react like they were Mufti Naeem and somebody had said we have a rape problem. Straight to the foreign agenda, in this case the “script”, coupled with ad hominem quips and a vague, deliberately false reference to lack of proof when knowing that most cases go unreported, with an even more abysmal conviction rate.

Yet Mufti Naeem isn’t as suave and I am pretty sure that his explanations wouldn’t tally as closely with a rapists’, as these journalists’ do with the mass murderers. It’s like the editorials and MQM press releases are written on the same desk.

A more important distinction is that while a Mufti Naeem does his best to convince you that rapes aren’t an issue – DAWN’s editorial on the subject makes no mention of the fact the MQM commits mass murder, does not mention killings at all actually, not even in passing – he wouldn't go on TV to bat for a particular rapist.

Again. A very important distinction. Not just apologia, not just obfuscation, not just misdirection; support for the perpetrator.

Have you seen a Mullah come on TV and tell you that rapists actually have a nice personality? Or write in an Op-Ed that rapists have some progressive values? Vote for the rapists to strengthen democracy? Rapists are the bulwarks against terrorism?

Yet that is the prescription from the, I think “rational” is the self-anointed badge now, section of the media. The mass murdering terrorist organization in Karachi is openly supported, championed by people in the media (Dishonourable mention: Nadeem F Paracha). We are told it is the bulwark against terrorism, of all things, liberal hope and shits rainbows.

Even by 2012, target killings in Karachi had killed roughly the same number of people as all of the suicide bombings & drone attacks combined, combined, in Pakistan’s history. Target killers, convicted target killers, have been arrested literally from MQM’s headquarters. Many of the same people that support the mass murdering MQM often take to writing dramatic, emotional details of the atrocities they want to highlight in order to spur a reaction. Although that largely works, they are among the target audience here and since they don’t actually give a shit about human life, going into the details would largely be redundant.

Which brings us to the propaganda job journalists do for this mass murdering entity. No matter what happens, they keep telling people that actually nothing has happened. If an MQM member confesses to security agencies, they will tell you it was under duress. If he confesses to the media, it’s the script. If he confesses to the Scotland Yard.. screenplay perhaps? Supreme Court ruling; well there’s a lot of extremism in the country. Convicted and convicts captured from the bloody headquarters of the party; Musharraf was a supporter of RAW then?

There’s denial because it’s deliberate. There’s side tracking because it is intentional. There’s no intellectual honesty here because people who wilfully support mass murder aren’t looking for an honest dialogue.

This is an invaluable service these journalists provide to MQM. Misdirection, diversion, intellectual dishonesty and plain lying help maintain legitimacy for MQM. A terrorist organization that shoots elderly women in the face, cuts people up from limb to limb or burns them alive for extortion is continually presented as a viable political entity. It has a mandate, and so many admirable qualities that it should be accommodated in the political system.

You could say but it already has support of the people, well as did Mumtaz Qadri. As did Malik Ishaque, who wasn’t even convicted despite killing a lesser number of witnesses. Should they be viable stakeholders? Do votes give a right to murder? Do elections results bring back the dead? Would it be okay for DAWN to say the Nazis had a “well-earned reputation for strong-arm tactics” but they did improve the economy and were “popular” so… you know..

Guess who would encourage a soft corner for the Nazis as the bulwark against…. say communism?

Hint: Rhymes with foebbels.

People vote for MQM because of ethnic identity, ideological leanings, death threats, illegal patronage or self-interest and make their peace with its mass murder. They are supporting mass murderers because there’s a contract where they get something in return. That does not however mean that it is not a mass murdering terrorist organization. It is. The same way the Nazis were. Malik Ishaque. Mumtaz Qadri.  

The good thing again is that Mumtaz Qadri paid for his crime, and people who support him were called out for it. Supporters of a murderer; how disgusting. Revolting. Sickening. Repugnant. You get the idea.

It would be nice if these MQM supporting journalists & media people, who ironically take pride in facing “fascist” trolls on social media, were confronted for being supporters of a mass murderer who is the closest thing to Adolf Hitler in this part of the world. 

The Lifafas

 

Some years ago I came across an article about Najam Sethi & GEO, before the two were together. The article narrates the story of a visit to the US by GEO TV CEO Mir Ibrahim Rehman. Mr Rehman graced with his presence a reception thrown by US AfPak ambassador Richard Holbrooke's media assistant Ashley Bommer. This was a time of strained relations between the US administration & GEO because of the latter’s aggressive nationalist, “anti-american” rhetoric. The purpose of his visit apparently was to assure the US that his channel was changing tact soon, and that the allegedly millions of US tax dollars it receives for airing American propaganda show “Voice Of America” need not be stopped. Accompanying Mr Rehman was Najam Sethi. 

Not much later, Najam Sethi joined GEO & started his show “Apas Ki Baat” on a pretty neat time slot. Everyone will have their own interpretation about whether that’s a step in more or less “anti-american”-ness.

Some critics have pointed out that there seems to be a peculiar trend in the Pakistani media. Neutral journalists that are hounded through accusations of bias by rabid social media “trolls”, often end up with cushy jobs. The jobs then often turn out to be provided by people they are, unfairly, accused of being favourably biased towards.

The latest incidence in this unsubstantiated fabrication untruth thing is appointment as ambassador of one Mr Kamran Shafi. To that harsh, unforgiving, wasteland; Cuba. Yet Shafi and friends have not made a big deal of the tough task he has been handed. Perhaps because earlier when uncle Micky almost got the UK job, ungentlemanly conduct ensued on social media. In case you are wondering why, it is because of Mr Shafi’s, entirely unwarranted, reputation as an attack dog of the PMLN.

Mr Shafi is expected to guide Raul Castro on intricacies of misogyny against political opponents.

Individual frailties, if a frailty at all right? Recall that during Dharna days last year, an attempt by the protestors to move from in front of the Parliament to in front of the PM House resulted in a crackdown by the police. Killed a few, injured a few hundred. The PMLN back then paid 450 million to private media, from the public exchequer, to promote their ads terming the episode an attack on parliament. As luck would have it, many journalists working for the channels paid started to propagate exactly what the PMLN were saying.

VC PHA & Geo journalist Iftikhar Ahmed gives his professional, unbiased & independent opinion on flowers to not his boss' son.

The point of these examples is to see things on three different levels so as to be sure before drawing any conclusions. That individual journalists, single news channels, and larger media all appear to bend their rhetoric to suit apparent benefactors is, surely, without a doubt, positively; an accident. 

It’s what you may call a fluke, a glitch, stroke of luck, chance, freak of nature, unlucky break, random occurrence, an anomaly, an inconsistency, an irregularity, or an abnormality. Etc. Point is; it’s not indicative of anything. These things happen.

“There are accidents”, said grand master Oogway.

That Najam Sethi is hired after he and GEO management assure the US of going soft on them is an accident. That Kamran Shafi gets the cushy post he’s been hankering after for years whilst attacking PMLN’s political opponents is an accident. That 450 million paid to the media coincided with journalists using exact terms as analysis as those advertised by PMLN is, no prizes for guessing; an accident. 

"O ballay ballay phir PCB chairman bana dya Mian sahab ne"

Here is a partial list of accidents one can recall that happened to journalists or people in the media who in turn happened to be parroting the stance of those in power.

Murtaza Solangi (Radio Pakistan)

Najam Sethi (GEO)

Irfan Siddiqui (Advisor)

Najam Sethi (Caretaker 90s)

Mubasher Luqman (Caretaker)

Najam Sethi (Caretaker 2013)

Iftikhar Ahmed (Vice Chairman PHA)

Najam Sethi (PCB Caretaker)

Arif Nizami (Caretaker)

Najam Sethi (PCB suspending constitution)

Muhammad Malick (MD PTV)

Najam Sethi (PCB Board)

Kamran Shafi (Ambassador Cuba)

Hussain Haqqani (Ambassador USA)

Ata-ul-Haq Qasmi (Chairman Alhamra Arts Council)

Note: Marxist rebel turned US real estate investors are more prone to accidents than others.

"Nazareen ab contractually mandated 5 minute me Murtaza ko bolnay du ga kyun ke channel PPP ka hai"

Of course these are bigger names whose misfortunes have been of a public nature. Accidents are happening daily. In areas such as gov housing allotments to journalists, plots, business to advertising companies, or media consultancies run by journos or spouses or relatives.

If you go through the names above the preceding lines, and the ones in between them, you will surely realize that most, if not all, of these gents have had it with their motives being questioned. They have all faced the virulent harassment by trolls who think, unreasonably, that they sell their speech for various incentives. That harassment must stop. They are the victims here.

I know it’s a small step, but I hope this write-up has clarified a number of misconceptions that pollute social media & trolls will now realize how wrong they have been to question our paragons of virtue, truth, neutrality & weird hairdos. So the next time you see them or their friends having an indignant rant on TV about allegations of bias, or sharing a joke on social media about non-payment of bribes, have a heart and give them a hug. They need our support, for they get no Lifafay.

P.S: Wishing Mr Shafi a jolly good time & deep statesmanship in Cuba.

PPP, Thar, Death & Hunger

In the second week of October it was revealed that around 300,000 bottles of mineral water, meant for the drought victims in Thar had expired in a government warehouse. Earlier in the year, wheat meant for the victims had met the same fate. At least 31 lives were lost there in October and 234, mostly children, in the preceding episode.

A reporter revealed that the district administration of Thar at that time was in the hands of Makhdom Amin Fahim’s offspring. He is the senior vice chairman of the PPP. Meanwhile an inquiry commission formed to probe the handling of the drought back in April determined that the Sindh Health Department and elected representatives of the area were to be blamed. They belong to the PPP.

In between the deaths in Thar was of course the PPP’s jalsa in Karachi. Where Bilawal, and the rest of the PPP leadership, failed to elaborate on their plans for dealing with the situation in Thar. After all, death in Thar is hardly new. In fact, it’s been here for a while. Over 1000 people died there in the last couple of years. Just because the media made some noise this time doesn’t mean priorities should change.

What was worth mentioning then? Well, Bhuttos for one. Bhuttoism for another. Shahadat. Jamhoriat. & Bhuttoism. Sprinkle some “causes” that you never did anything about when in power on top and glorious leadership is born.

Unfair perhaps, they did do something about them. In his speech that day Bilawal took credit for the PPP responding to the Hazara-Shia sit-ins in Quetta & sacrificing their government. Hmph.

Syed Nasir Ali Shah, the Hazara MNA from Quetta staged a sit in at the entrance of Parliament house in October of 2011. He belonged to the PPP & resorted to protesting against his own party after 14 Hazaras were gunned down in Quetta, and no action was taken by the government. 2011.

Why didn’t the PPP government in the province take any action? Nawab Aslam Raisani was the Chief Minister of the province, the tribal head  of Raisani tribe, influential in Mastung. Mastung, coincidentally, houses the biggest ASWJ seminary in Balochistan and witnessed numerous attacks on Shia pilgrims.

One of the first acts of Nawab Raisani after taking over as CM Balochistan was to appoint Nawabzada Humayun Jogezai as chief of police in Quetta. Jogezai, often accused of having links to the LeJ, in the past had ordered police to open fire on Hazara protesters killing 25. He is Nawab Raisani’s son-in-law. Coincidentally, Hazara killings picked up after he was appointed.

The sacrifice of the PPP government, for two whole months, wasn’t the first course of action either. Initially the PPP CM had proposed to settle the Hazara mourners issue by sending them truckloads of tissue papers. The PPP’s tissue paper strategy worked for a couple of years. Finally protests broke out throughout the country & tissue papers ran short. Hence the PM descended upon Quetta. Where Hazaras were reminded that there would be no dialogue with him, prompting one to ask;

“Kyun PM viceroy hain ya hum jaisay insaan nahin hain?”

Once the PPP made the ultimate sacrifice and removed its government, a couple of peculiar incidents took place. One PPP minister, Ali Madad Jattak, was arrested with 15 guards because Hazaras had complained he had ties to a “defunct militant group”. Chatter was that the guards were LeJ men.

Alamdar road had witnessed two blasts, one a suicide blast inside a snooker club and then a more deadly one from an explosive laden car. In February the Hazaras were targeted again, this time an explosive filled water tanker was used.

Later in the year, FC recovered 104,480 KGs of explosives from a warehouse in Quetta, the largest such find in the country’s history. The officials described the warehouse as a “car-bomb factory” complete with mixers, detonators, remote controls and of course lots of explosives to fit into vehicles. Coincidentally, the car-bomb factory belonged to a PPP leader who was later arrested.

Clearly the PPP, contrary to popular opinion, did a lot to the Hazaras.

Where did the bright speech come from any way? One influence clearly was the party old guard, who themselves spent the night recounting medical benefits of Bhuttoism. The other is the group of supposedly neutral journalists, intellectuals & NGO workers who were more excited by the PPP rally than the actual participants bused-in from around Sindh.

Is it a coincidence that almost everyone losing their shit about how many pressing issues Bilawal mentioned in his speech has been totally oblivious to the drought & the deaths in Thar? ALL of them didn’t read the last week?

Having party loyalists embedded in the media cannot possibly be a disadvantage, but the PPP is well versed in the impossible. Propagandists are a valuable resource but for external consumption, not for internal evaluation. It was just silly how Bilawal lifted his arguments from PPP apologists ever present in the media, & social media.

Sindh is underdeveloped since partition and because we had no resources. Everyone wants the blockades around Bilawal House removed because they want me to be killed. Corruption allegations are just an excuse to malign us. Governance isn’t that better elsewhere either.

Finger on the pulse.

This I am not making up; in his first interview after the 18^th October jalsa in Karachi, chairman of the PPP Bilawal claimed that 60% of Pakistan’s population is young, and so is he. Therefore, he can relate to them more than any other leader in Pakistan.

Just like Justin Bieber can.

Yes, a billionaire kid who has lived most of his life outside Pakistan, doesn’t even know the language, believes he can relate to a country where, according to World Bank, 60% of the population lives under the international poverty line, more than anyone else; because he is young.

The level of delusion is staggering, breath-taking.

So while the young prince lives in his bubble, relating to his darbaris in the party & the media, where does that leave the people? After all, it is the Pakistan “Peoples” Party.

Among death & hunger, of course. Those are the gifts the party has brought them. Thar & the Hazaras are but just a glimpse.

Consider that all over Pakistan 6,126 lives have been claimed by suicide bombings, in our history. By just 2011, the PPP had lorded over, and participated in, the killing of over 7,000 people in Karachi alone. The figure must be over 10,000 now, as the killing hasn’t stopped.

Hunger is the bigger hallmark though. Shortage of food & malnourishment is not just an issue in Thar, it persists throughout Sindh to a disgraceful extent. In Ethiopia the stunting rate for children is 51%, in Eritrea it is 44%, in Sudan 40%. In Sindh it is 56.7% and in the loyal PPP stronghold of rural Sindh, it’s 63.3%.

63.3% in 2014.

Death & hunger.

Death & Discourse

The recent strikes in North Waziristan have prompted some to conclude that the "time for talk is over", and this could indeed be the case if a long standing peace deal with Hafiz Gul Bahadur in NWA is revoked. However, the PMLN government’s penchant for saying one thing and doing nothing means that the confused lull will prevail for a while longer.

What struck me the most is the attention the strikes received and the questions raised, again, over the identity of those killed. Perhaps it is because of government ownership and high profile nature of talks, but strikes in NWA seem to come under the spotlight ever since Nawaz Sharif took power. This has given yours truly renewed hope that some truth about our war on terror might be on its way to a screen/newspaper near you, and that blatant lying about the dead may end in the distant future.

The partisan nature of our media and media men is such that for the truth to ever come out; their interests/agendas must be aligned with it. With 4 separate agendas coming to the fore this time around, we have a tiny window of opportunity.

The first group comprises of earnest supporters of democracy who can be seen cheering on the army to bomb without political approval.  They are pretty much set in their ways, and will not bring about desirable effects. Expect newfound patriotism and alignment with Pak army lover for life crowd.

The second are the mostly right-wing guys. Always uneasy with the ops, it has however been difficult to choose between the mullah and the military. If the NS government falls out with the army, they could spin into action and start pointing out transgressions of the army.

Third - the drone-mongers. An unhealthy obsession with robots killing people, to ultimately save mankind (Hello Hollywood), means they will continue to preach the lesser evil. Pointing out heavy collateral from strikes is imperative.

Finally we have the “can’t deal with being out of power” ANP, PPP types. Hard-core fans of military operations, they are looking to somehow use casualties from bombings as a stick to beat anti-ops people with.

The media, its incompetence and its agendas are one of the most important factors in this war, and certainly the most powerful in shaping public perception. It’s for that reason that the bullshit about 50,000 people killed by TTP persists in our discourse. It persists regardless of what the interior ministry says, regardless of what independent research says, and regardless of how many people you irritate by pointing it out.

To what extent do the intellectulas in media mutilate the facts? Dawn, a newspaper that has emerged as consensus “sane voice” these days owing to media infighting, should serve as a reliable enough barometer.

On the pages of Dawn one among many seasoned, former PPP and current, columnist, professed in February of this year that 40 K innocents had been killed by our enemies in the tribal badlands. By March, that number had climbed to 50 thousand innocents killed. And in April it had come to the attention of said author and paper that at least 55 thousand fatalities had been incurred.

The paper and the author have a strictly anti-talks approach on the matter, and if 15 thousand killed extra over two months reinforces their argument, why not? You could see their desperation, and the number of dead, growing as the talks moved forward.

Fact is, media people couldn’t care less how many lives have been lost, or how. Meanwhile, “reporting” is an alien concept. What happens here is they reach a conclusion among their little cliques, and then invent facts & arrange events to help everyone else reach the same conclusion. After-party sees them tell each other how objective and balanced they are.

This is why the new agendas emerging are an exciting prospect. If they can go to such lengths with their own faeces, imagine what these “news” organizations could do with facts.

The most dangerous lot is the right-wing, pro gov one. Granted they will only go into overdrive if PMLN takes on the army, but the potential is enormous. They are the only group, because conservative and Nawaz, that will touch the heavy “collateral damage” accumulated in the last decade, and the façade of the 50 thousand killed.

The drone-mongers, ANP-PPP dudes are only going to do little teasers. Their “liberal” orientation dictates that collateral damage happens and lying for a good cause is not really lying, so 50 K stays. The best outcome they can achieve is pique the interest of people in collateral damage with their jibes.

Hopefully then some idiots with “journalist” in their bios can look into it. Well, stranger things have happened.

Say for arguments sake that enough idiots start looking into the whole thing. By the law of averages, one of them could reach the logical conclusion that if suicide bombings, the most lethal weapon in our enemy’s arsenal, have claimed 6 thousand lives, it is unlikely that IEDs and hit and runs etc. would have killed another 44 thousand. From there it could follow that perhaps the numbers put out by organizations like PIPS are more credible than the numbers pulled out of their own assess by senior columnists?

And what about collateral damage? Is there any collateral damage at all? Is that picture photoshopped? I bet everyone who’s dead because of our bombardment deserves it. Twitter has become a court where credibility is judged by witty one-liners rather than by facts & patterns.

There’s this report at the Costs of War website that talks about Pakistani civilians killed by Pakistani military operations. The figures it quotes for civilians we have killed are pretty impressive, which it has sourced from PIPS.

Interestingly, the PIPS annual security reports, available for download at its website, do not label these deaths as civilian deaths. They are defined just as deaths in “operational attacks”.

Operational attacks are further defined as “Pre-emptive attacks launched by military and paramilitary troops to purge an area of militants.” Hmm, what could that mean...

A report by CIVIC titled “Civilian Harm & Conflict in Northwest Pakistan” came out in 2010 and it sheds some light onto the purging pre-emptive assaults we have used.

Artillery fire and mortars used by our military, according to those interviewed by CIVIC, “were the most common causes of harm suffered by civilians during military operations”.

The report cites some chilling interviews, from a boy who saw scattered organs of his mother, a man whose grand-daughter was blown to pieces and one who lost 5 members of his family in a single strike.

Military jets and gunships are not very forgiving either. One resident cited in the report recalls, “They were shelling just in the bazaar... it was indiscriminate fire, not discriminating between people and militants...the shrapnel struck me in the leg and the head.”

Another incident cited goes like this “On April 10, 2010, Pakistani jet fighters bombed targets in Sra Vela, a village in Khyber Agency, believing they were hitting a meeting attended by a high-level militant commander.

Instead, they hit the home of a pro-government family with three brothers serving with government forces. A second bomb hit crowds of neighbors as they tried to help those injured in the first strike. At least 60 civilians were killed and 30 injured.”

This, totally guessing, has to create resentment against us. The kid who lost his mother had this to say,

“If my mother was killed by the Taliban, one can expect it from them because they are crooks. But one can’t expect it from a trained army…they are to protect us not to kill us like rats.”

These pre-emptive, purging attacks claimed a staggering 14,148 lives from 2008 to 2012. The PIPS reports break them down as:

3,182 deaths in 2008

6,329 deaths in 2009

2,631 deaths in 2010

1046 deaths in 2011

960 deaths in 2012

It should be noted that these numbers do not include any terrorists engaged and killed by security forces. These are only the people we have bombed to death. The terrorist fatalities in confrontations with security forces, initiated either way, are separate and much lower than fatalities in these purging attacks.

A total of 6198 deaths were reported when terrorists have been engaged by security forces in the same period, according to PIPS, with the breakdown as follows:

655 deaths in 2008

1,163 deaths in 2009

2,007 deaths in 2010

1668 deaths in 2011

705 deaths in 2012

Another hushed up aspect of the war are the rights violations. While Balochistan has made enforced disappearances famous, the practice was probably first used by the Musharraf government against those suspected of supporting the jihadist cause. More importantly it has not stopped since Musharraf’s departure.

Amnesty International’s 2012 report titled Hands of Cruelty speaks of many violations committed by both the Taliban and the army. Ours include deaths in custody, torture and enforced disappearances. The report noted that 2000 cases pertaining to missing persons are registered in the Peshawar High Court, but the actual number could be much higher.

Tough break.

Now we do not hear about all this in the media because it does not fit with the picture they want to paint. The “liberal” voices, usually no fans of the military and usually big fans of human rights, are especially keen to look away because “the Taliban deserve it”. Additionally, and more importantly, highlighting killings, torture and other abuses taking place in military operations weakens their case for use of force, and could raise sympathy for the TTP.

The greater good coming into play again here.

Problem? By rigorously lying about how much damage the enemy has done, and resolutely ignoring any that we are doing, a fabricated identity of the war has been created.

That the national discourse about the war is carried out in the same fictional environment does the rest of us a great disservice. The thousands that have lost loved ones in the theatre of war, and the millions that have been forced to flee it, end up with a very different perception of the war than we do.

Theirs is based on what has happened on the ground; the number of dead, the number of missing, the loss of property is all real to them, not made up to suit one narrative or the other. And they don’t have the luxury of looking away when it isn’t pretty anymore.

War is dirty business, and perhaps we have no choice other than to do what we have been doing. But disregarding half of what's happening will bring us no closer to understanding how to deal with it, and is likely to keep us clogged in this circle of violence.