Vajpayee’s threat
MR VAJPAYEE’s threat that India intends to step up its offensive in occupied Kashmir against freedom fighters there cannot but cause widespread concern. Talking to reporters at Varanasi, the Indian prime minister said that an offensive might be launched after “considering all options.” Already, India has 700,000 troops deployed in the occupied territory, and there is nothing they have not done — no savagery or excesses spared — to crush the freedom movement and tighten India’s grip on the valley against the wishes of its people. Their methods have included murders, arson, rape and other gross violations of human rights which have elicited the most severe kind of censure from international human rights organizations. The number of the Kashmiri civilian dead stands at a conservative estimate of 70,000, besides thousands of those who simply “disappeared” or were forced to leave their homes for the safety of Azad Kashmir. With this horrendous record, one wonders why the Indian prime minister has chosen this particular time to threaten an escalation in India’s repression in occupied Kashmir.
The Sept 11 carnage in the US has changed the world environment the way few incidents in recent times have. With evidence pointing to Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network as the prime suspects in the attacks that killed thousands of civilians, the world community had hoped that the Taliban regime would turn over the suspects to a third country for trial. However, the Taliban’s refusal to do so has left the US-led world coalition with no option but to take military action. Pakistan, being Afghanistan’s neighbour, is a key member of this world coalition against terrorism.
Immediately after the Sept 11 events, Pakistan offered to cooperate fully with the international community for the fight against terrorism. It has also taken the courageous decision to share intelligence with the US and Britain and to provide logistic support to the US-led operation. This Pakistan did in spite of opposition from Islamist hardliners within the country. The whole world has appreciated Pakistan’s positive response and acknowledged the crucial role it is playing in the current military campaign against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. Apparently, India has been peeved by the fact that, while Pakistan is now the focus of world attention, India has been sidelined and ignored. The hurt seems to be deeper because, even before anyone had asked for it, India had offered logistic support to the US-led coalition.
India also seems frustrated over the world community’s refusal to link Islamabad to the terrorist attacks in the US and to see a parallel between what happened in New York and Washington and what has been going on in Kashmir over the last eleven years or so. The Anglo-American leadership has clearly told the Indian leaders that whatever was going on in Afghanistan had nothing to do with the Kashmir issue. No wonder, then, that in desperation India should try to raise the level of violence in Kashmir to draw the world community’s attention to its supposed plight. This is unlikely to work. The world coalition will not allow India to divert its attention from the pursuit of the war against the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Whatever mischief India may do in Kashmir, it will not find any helpers. Besides, as a Foreign Office spokesman said on Thursday, Pakistan is ready to face any situation and repulse aggression. One hopes New Delhi would not attempt any mischief while Islamabad and the world community are engaged in the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan.
Scapegoating Al Jazeera
US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertion that the Qatar-based private television channel, Al Jazeera, gives an “undue amount of time and attention to vitriolic and irresponsible kinds of statements” needs to be examined and seen in perspective. In fact, Mr Powell has gone a step further and taken up the matter with the Emir of Qatar, asking him to use his influence on the news channel regarding its coverage of events and developments since the September 11 terrorist attack episode. In the meantime, US national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, has had a meeting with senior executives of leading American news networks and asked them to rethink their editorial policies regarding broadcasts of videotaped messages of Osama bin Laden and his associates. White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer has also called on news networks to “exercise judgment” in this respect, asserting, rather unconvincingly, that the broadcasts of such statements were pure propaganda and could even be used by Osama bin Laden as a cover as well as a channel for “issuing orders to his followers to initiate [more] such attacks”. CNN has already acted on Washington’s ‘advice’ saying that all such messages from now on will be first vetted thoroughly before taking a decision on whether or not to broadcast them. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which controls Fox News and the Star TV network, has said that it intends to follow suit.
However, a closer look at Al Jazeera’s programming would suggest that by no means is its coverage one-sided. For one thing, the messages of Osama bin Laden or his associates contain nothing that has not been heard before. Of particular importance was bin Laden’s call for a world-wide jihad against US-led western powers and those siding with them in their military campaign against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Al Jazeera was the first news network to telecast this call, contained in a videotape which it made available to other networks as well. To suggest that the telecasting of that call was all propaganda and had no news value for a terror-stricken America and for the rest of the world is to throw one’s judgment out of the window. What then, one may ask, is the world coalition against terrorism up against if not a widely perceived terror threat emanating from bin Laden and his Al Qaeda outfit?
The other side of the fuzzed picture is that press conferences by senior US officials are usually carried live, with an Arabic translation as are statements by the Taliban. Al Jazeera is the only network that has correspondents based in Kabul and Kandahar and footage coming out of both places. To imply that it is biased because it has had, and continues to have, access to these key places, or to say that this access is proof of its close political or ideological links with the Taliban is to put logic and common sense on their heads. Which channel would not want to have correspondents in Kandahar or Kabul these days? As far as ‘culpability’ of having access to the corridors of power in a particular country is concerned, CNN and BBC should be held guilty of bias because of the access they enjoy in Washington, London or other important world capitals.
As Qatar’s foreign minister rightly pointed out in his rejoinder to America’s criticism, an independent news channel is precisely what Muslim countries need to keep abreast of what is going on and what the trends of opinion are on various issues in Muslim countries and the rest of the world. In fact, it should come as no surprise that of all countries, America — a nation that prides itself on giving its citizens and its media unfettered freedom of information and expression — should be asking for curbs to be placed on an Arab network. Perhaps this shows an inherent bias towards all non-western sources of information. Or, it could all be about control, and for now Al Jazeera is outside the US state department’s authority. The wiser course of action would be to follow the example of the British government which said that the issue of what to broadcast was a decision best left to the networks themselves.