ON Jan 19, Pakistan closed the Islamabad office of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Pashto-language service, Radio Mashaal. The decision has been presented as a response to national security concerns, but it is self-defeating.

Radio Mashaal, together with its parent company RFE/RL, serves no foreign intelligence agency, and US law protects its editorial independence. Its reporters are Pakistani citizens who live and raise their families in the communities they report about. In contrast to Taliban radio, Radio Mashaal, working in Pashto, provides verifiable news, open debate and responsible discussion. It is a platform for diverse points of view, consistently including comments from conservative, liberal and secular analysts, religious leaders, and former military officers in its reporting on security and political issues.

It is a voice for local communities, reporting on water quality, health-care facilities, the polio vaccination campaign, girls’ education, schooling, infrastructure, agriculture, and legal reform in the tribal areas. Its outlook is positive. It is an ally in the war against terrorism, spreading hope, not hate.

Its openness has also made it a target of the region’s militant groups. In 2011, Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud threatened Mashaal reporters in a video message, warning “we will soon be coming after them.” The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) then issued a written fatwa against Radio Mashaal.

Prominent Pakistani political leaders and journalists have decried the ISI ban as an assault on basic freedoms. For example, Professor Ibrahim Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami, opposed the ban saying, “Closing the radio, television or newspaper is not the right step…We condemn the one-sided move by providing no opportunity to the other party to present its clarification…Talk to the [Radio Mashaal leadership] and act only when they [the government] proved the allegation against them.”

By seeking to restrict Mashaal’s moderating influence in the tribal areas’ volatile landscape, the ISI order undercuts its own mandate to promote Pakistan’s security and the public interest.

Thomas Kent

Media executive

US

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2018