Is Media Fighting War On Terror in Pakistan?
Muhammad Khurshid
February 02, 2009
This is still a debateable question whether the media of Pakistan has been fighting the war on terrorism or they are creating terrorism in the country. Still the terrorist groups have been getting wide coverage in the media. There will be no exaggeration to state here that the media has fought the war on terror. Here the question arises. Why the media has been supporting terrorism and giving coverage to terrorists? The media persons have been earning dollars by publishing the statements of big terrorists. When Bush was ruling the world the statements of terrorists were the demand of Western media. But the situation has been taking better turn. Now the hero of peace lovers Barack Obama is ruling the world now the statements of peace lovers will get coverage in the media. Now the thing is changing.
According to The News International editorial comment, there is much to repair in the battered tribal areas and the Swat valley. Schools and other infrastructure have borne the brunt of the onslaught not by our own armed forces or American drones, but by the various Taliban groups who are vying for supremacy there. It is not just the bricks and mortar that need repairing. It is – once the Taliban have been ousted from their positions of power obtained by the tactics of terror – the hearts and minds of the people who live there. They need to have their confidence restored in government, the army and the individual agencies that all go together to create the safer space that lies between outright war and settled peace. Transitions from war to peace are rarely smooth, especially in the type of warfare we are seeing in NWFP. This is not a war between nation states, it is a form of civil warfare and there is not going to be any armistice, no unilateral laying down of arms on all sides and a concerted rebuilding. There is not going to be the kind of peace that applies across entire territories either, and we instead will see islands of non-conflict that will eventually coalesce into larger more settled areas with a more durable peace. It is in the space between war and peace that the army, civil society organizations and the national and international NGOs need to work together to provide the social glue that will begin to stick it all back together again – which is precisely what the Taliban do not want to happen.
The Taliban of North Waziristan have banned the development work being carried out by the army and threatened NGOs with dire consequences – i.e. death and destruction – if they also begin to operate in the region. They have issued leaflets to the media written in Urdu citing previous agreements which proscribed uplift work post conflict. Development, no matter who does it, is simply not on the Taliban agenda. They do not want it for themselves and are going to make sure that what they want everybody else gets as well. The ordinary men and women of the region cry out for development, it is their single most consistent plea for decades. For decades successive governments have either denied it or delivered it in penny packets. Now, with the Taliban ascendant and calling the shots, the government is trying to work on development in the space between peace and war. Winning the peace is no less difficult than winning the war, and winning the safe space perhaps the hardest battle of all.
The End
According to The News International editorial comment, there is much to repair in the battered tribal areas and the Swat valley. Schools and other infrastructure have borne the brunt of the onslaught not by our own armed forces or American drones, but by the various Taliban groups who are vying for supremacy there. It is not just the bricks and mortar that need repairing. It is – once the Taliban have been ousted from their positions of power obtained by the tactics of terror – the hearts and minds of the people who live there. They need to have their confidence restored in government, the army and the individual agencies that all go together to create the safer space that lies between outright war and settled peace. Transitions from war to peace are rarely smooth, especially in the type of warfare we are seeing in NWFP. This is not a war between nation states, it is a form of civil warfare and there is not going to be any armistice, no unilateral laying down of arms on all sides and a concerted rebuilding. There is not going to be the kind of peace that applies across entire territories either, and we instead will see islands of non-conflict that will eventually coalesce into larger more settled areas with a more durable peace. It is in the space between war and peace that the army, civil society organizations and the national and international NGOs need to work together to provide the social glue that will begin to stick it all back together again – which is precisely what the Taliban do not want to happen.
The Taliban of North Waziristan have banned the development work being carried out by the army and threatened NGOs with dire consequences – i.e. death and destruction – if they also begin to operate in the region. They have issued leaflets to the media written in Urdu citing previous agreements which proscribed uplift work post conflict. Development, no matter who does it, is simply not on the Taliban agenda. They do not want it for themselves and are going to make sure that what they want everybody else gets as well. The ordinary men and women of the region cry out for development, it is their single most consistent plea for decades. For decades successive governments have either denied it or delivered it in penny packets. Now, with the Taliban ascendant and calling the shots, the government is trying to work on development in the space between peace and war. Winning the peace is no less difficult than winning the war, and winning the safe space perhaps the hardest battle of all.
The End