The liberal media in Pakistan played a major role in bringing about the end of Pervez Musharraf’s military dictatorship. For a couple of decades, the media in Pakistan has been a voice of freedom and it is not surprising that the doctrinaire Taliban have been targeting media persons in the country, especially in the past few months. In March, a well-known columnist and TV anchor, Raza Rumi managed to escape an assault. And now Hamid Mir, an anchor of Geo TV, has been attacked. Mir suspected that should there be an attack on him, the culpability would lead as far as the Inter-Service Intelligence of the country. The ISI is the watchdog of the Pakistan political troika. The Pakistan army mans and controls the ISI and Mir’s journalistic outpourings have put it in high dudgeon. The regulatory authorities have demanded the dismantling of the Geo TV channel, which is the largest in the country.
Mir is not alone in condemning the ISI. A prominent author and journalist, Syed Saleem Shahzad had made a similar attack on the ISI shortly before his death in 2011. The interconnection between the state agencies and some shadow warriors was not hard to see for investigative journalists and in the regimented environment someone considered to be anti-national was cannon fodder. Of course, the journalists were not so intimidated as to run away from the unholy nexus. Naturally, the ISI and the Taliban have been gunning for them. They may not be killed but the outrage on them needs investigation. The Nawaz Sharif government has to keep a vigilant eye on the gagging of independent journalism. Otherwise, the press in Pakistan will be like Izvestia in Stalinist Russia which, though it meant the truth, carried no truth.