Unlikely role

The attack on Pakistan’s leading talk show host Hamid Mir in Karachi was the second on a prominent media personality within a month, after writer-columnist Raza Rumi was attacked in Lahore. Suspects have ranged from intelligence agencies to Islamist militants.

If you study empirical cases of insurgency and counterinsurgency, you’ll inevitably find that a combination of the insurgents’/terrorists’ ability to control their public image and the state’s lack of credibility as a trusted protector of its citizens tend to be present in every case where states can’t tame insurgencies for protracted periods — in fact, where they tend to end up on the losing side.

The recent attacks highlight just how obviously this combination exists in the Pakistani case.

On the one hand, the Islamist militants have made their intent to go after the media very clear. If there was any doubt about their seriousness, the attack on Rumi, said to be carried out by Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, removed it. The conversation within the media circles seems to have switched abruptly since — from being about individual TV anchors, journalists, and owners under threat to the industry feeling the heat.

This is precisely what insurgents/terrorists lacking genuine support from the society they operate in need. The Pakistani Taliban and their affiliates — read the militant nexus — realise they stand for an ideology that cannot make them a truly popular anti-state force. Constant conflation of their real agenda of establishing an Islamic emirate in Pakistan with all sorts of alternatives — anti-Americanism, upholding Islam in the face of Western onslaught, wanting Sharia in Fata only, speedy justice, etc — is a necessary survival strategy for them.

As the number one source of information for Pakistanis today, media is the most important player in this regard. Were the media truly able to forge a consensus on presenting the dark side of the Taliban and its affiliates, expose their true face to a still deeply confused Pakistani society, present the state as the victim, and constantly reinforce that the overall situation is an existential threat to the people of Pakistan, it would very quickly suck the life out of the insurgency. And thus attacks such as the one on Rumi: a message that anyone using a media platform to expose the militants’ conflations will be silenced.

Such episodes force others in Rumi’s position to lie low, consciously or sub-consciously tone down their pronouncements, turn their focus away from the Taliban to less controversial topics, or feel forced to give the Taliban a pass under duress. Those still unfazed by the Taliban’s message find themselves increasingly isolated and vulnerable.

The end result: the confused narrative about the Taliban continues.

The number one antidote to this type of vulnerability for the media in such contexts is the state’s commitment to defending them. Where the state apparatus is sensitive to the power of narratives as a key counterinsurgency tool and has the capacity to defend the narrators, the journalistic fraternity feels less pressured to pull back than where they are left to defend themselves.

No points for guessing which camp the Pakistani state belongs to. Considering the Pakistani state as a defender of the journalistic fraternity is nothing short of a laughable proposition now.

And it gets worse in a way that the whole model of counterinsurgency that is premised on the state being able to defeat non-state actors through astute policies and public support is upended.

I am pointing to the troubling prospect that in Pakistan’s case, this ultimate defender of the citizens may also be busy silencing narrators just like the insurgents.

The point most relevant here is not whether Mir’s allegations against the ISI (or Saleem Shahzad’s before him) are well-founded (of course, an impartial inquiry followed by logical next steps against perpetrators must be undertaken).

It is that the state is so discredited that many already believe this to be true.

In fact, one can generalise this further to say that few, if any, Pakistanis trust the state to be serious about upholding its social contract with the people. The Pakistani state is seen as indifferent to the plight of its people at best and as an adversary at times when allegations such as Mir’s come to surface.

For the insurgents, this is nirvana. The society is unable to rid itself of the conflation about them. In addition, the state is truly discredited and allegations such as Mir’s make it even less likely that the citizenry will unequivocally back the state’s policies against the militants — or for that matter on anything.

If Pakistan is able to overcome the militant challenge despite this, it would be the first country to have done it. Miracles do happen — perhaps — but I wouldn’t bet on this one.

The writer is a foreign policy expert based in Washington D.C.

By arrangement with Dawn