Crisis Balochistan | January 26, 2013 | Of Nobel Peace Laureates and Dirty Wars

By Wendy Johnson

While I do not qualify as a person allowed to make a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, I believe the system is imperfect and so I will proceed as if the world were a fair one and nominate, for what it's worth, my Nobel Peace Prize pick: the Daily Tawar and its journalists, both living and extra-judicially killed.

A rare bird as Pakistan news outlets go, the Daily Tawar is a Karachi-based publication (print and website) that publishes in the Urdu, Balochi and Brahvi languages and offers extensive coverage of the Dirty War in Balochistan.

Like other media organizations in Pakistan, Daily Tawar has been subject to repeated threats of violence over its efforts to cover news that Pakistan's military establishment and its proxy outfits both do and do not want published.

And these are not idle threats"”Daily Tawar has lost eight journalists since 2010, yet astonishingly, like the Eveready Energizer Bunny, the Daily Tawar keeps on "going and going and going" in spite of three forces that would like it to stop, stop, stop.

Daily Tawar journalists, extra-judicially killed

L to R: Jawed Naseer Rind (Nov 2011), Rehmatullah Shaheen (Apr 2011), Abdul Hameed Hayatan (Nov 2010), Siddiq Eido (April 2011)

L to R: Ahmed Dad Baloch (Jan 2011), Ali Sher Kurd (September 2010), Nawaz Ahmed Marri (no pic), Munir Shakir (August, 2011, no pic)

Directive #1: Stop

Prior to the dumping of former Daily Tawar deputy-editor Javed Naseer Rind's tortured body in November 2011, Chief Justice Qazi Faiz Essa delivered a cynical admonishment to Pakistan's reporters in response to their complaints of threats of violence, "If you can't face the pressure then stop publishing newspapers."

The court's upset with respect to Balochistan has to do, in part, with the belief that media organizations like the Daily Tawar glorify violence by reporting on the nationalist war in Balochistan and Baloch guerrilla attacks on the Pakistan military, the Frontier Corps (FC) and probably the world's most bombed gas pipelines.

The Balochistan court, in fact, threatened "to imprison journalists for six months if they publish the statements of militant organizations that have been banned because of their involvement in violence and terror."

Directive #2: (Don't) Stop

From another direction comes the threat to not stop publishing. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the alleged Pakistan military proxy outfit who most recently claimed responsibility for the massacre of over a hundred Hazara Shia Muslims in Quetta, Balochistan, insists reporters, despite threat of imprisonment, print their press releases word for word or they will kill them.

LeJ threats come with a twist and follow a standard of sorts. 'Reporters who have spoken to LeJ representatives on the phone say the organization insists that it has a "religious responsibility" to warn reporters at least three times before killing them. "If reporters defy our warning for a third time then we naturally get the religious endorsement to kill them."'

This appears to be a kind of LeJ publishing world riff on the sharia divorce practice of granting a divorce after uttering three times, "˜I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee."

Quite separately, Baloch nationalist resistance fighters have expressed frustration with mainstream media for its lack of coverage of their war, Pakistani military operations in Balochistan and extra-judicial abductions and killings.

Directive #3: Stop

Like the LeJ, the Frontier Corps** (FC) of the Pakistani Army also threaten reporters. Their threats over the printed and spoken word often bring lives to a full stop and these lethal reactions are evidenced in this incomplete database of Baloch missing and dead. Military and FC involvement in the Balochistan carnage has been speculated about and covered extensively and a recent Daily Telegraph article confirmed the practice of extra-judicial abductions in Pakistan.

Peace laureates and dirty wars

So despite death threats and murders, the journalists working for the Daily Tawar (often for free!) have endeavored"”with few resources"”to bring the news of the mayhem in Balochistan to the citizens of Pakistan and the world"”receiving only rare acknowledgement in petitions or in the obituary sections of local newspapers. For its resilience and fortitude in the face of danger, Daily Tawar and its journalists deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. After all, peace often comes only with understanding and without good journalism peace doesn't stand a chance.

One of the ironies for journalists working in Pakistan is that the violence these reporters are threatened with and subject to is indirectly related to U.S. foreign policy.

The U.S. government provides large sums of military aid to Pakistan regardless of well-documented human rights abuses. If the U.S. administration conveys words in private to Pakistan's military, the public is not aware of it. We know friendly admonishments have been offered by State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland and expressive ones by Representative Dana Rohrabacher. Without any teeth, however, these concerns fall on the deaf ears of Pakistan's military and Interior Minister. Pakistan's activists, particularly those activists, writers and poets from Balochistan, experience only a doubling down of the violence and are rarely seen alive again following an extra-judicial abduction.

And why should anyone expect anything else? After all, the United States itself has set a precedent by passing legislation that allows the indefinite detention of prisoners while denying them recourse to courts and legal representation as outlined in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The U.S. also declines to prosecute those accused of torture, opting instead to vigorously pursue whistleblowers.

If a Noble Peace Prize laureate can sit with his advisors on a "˜Terror Tuesday' and extra-judicially discuss and pick "˜who's going to live and who's going to die across the world,' in its effort to fight the U.S. War on Terror, why can't the Pakistani military and FC do the same?

The January 24 article in the Daily Telegraph reveals that Pakistan is, for all practical purposes, simply taking a page from the United States government's own playbook.

Clearly the Pakistan military and its proxies have taken to heart Obama's campaign slogan 'Yes, we can' and there are hundreds of tortured bodies to prove they have a license to kill--and they 'can.'

In 2006 two friends and I attended a mini-jirga in Wadh, Balochistan, where Khan of Kalat Suleiman Daud, Sardar Attaullah Mengal, many Baloch citizens and journalists met to discuss the state of Balochistan following the murder of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

Mini Jirga with Khan of Kalat Suleiman Daud and Sardar Attaullah Mengal, 2006

Following the discussion, a group of reporters sat between the Khan of Kalat and Sardar Mengal asking numerous questions and taking copious notes. I never did learn the names of the reporters who attended this mini-jirga, but I have often wondered how many of them have survived the war on journalists in Pakistan.

Reporters from various news organizations, Wadh, Balochistan, 2006

If a Nobel Peace Prize can be bestowed upon President Barack Obama who supports a drone target-kill program* infamous for its "˜kill list,' then surely an organization caught in U.S. foreign policy cross-fire deserves consideration for its herculean efforts to inform and educate the citizens of Balochistan and Pakistan about the world in which they live. Let's give peace a chance. I nominate Daily Tawar for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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*Note: Click for list of children killed in US drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen.

**Note: The Frontier Corps (FC) employs trained full-time soldiers. Its leadership, tactical and higher, is from the Pakistan Army. The FC has APVs, helicopters, artillery and quick air support at its disposal, unlike paramilitaries who can't call in air-strikes.

From wikipedia: "The Frontier Corps (reporting name: FC) (Urdu: فرنٹیئرکور"Ž) is a federal reserve military force under the command of the paramilitary command of Pakistan, recruited mostly from the tribal areas along the western borders and led by general officers of the Pakistan Army. The Frontier Corps comprises three major subdivisions: FC NWFP (stationed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (formerly known as North-West Frontier Province) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas) and FC Balochistan (stationed in Balochistan province). Each subdivision is headed by a seconded Inspector General, who is a Pakistan Army officer of at least major-general rank, although the force itself is under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry.