ISLAMABAD/SRINAGAR: Stunned by the Mumbai terror attacks and dismayed by the strain it has put on India-Pakistan ties, many Pakistanis are blaming the media of the two countries for vitiating ties through “irresponsible” reporting.
“I have been monitoring TV channels and newspapers of both the countries and am shocked that they are insisting that their leaders issue harsh statements against each other,” said Ambreen Hussain, a political science student at Iqra University.
“All anchors of the Indian channels are busy blaming Pakistan for the attacks, while Pakistani anchors are busy refuting these charges and trying to prove that the attacks were done by Indians themselves,” Hussain told IANS.
Misbah Fasih, who works with an international NGO, said: “I believe the media in India and Pakistan are free but highly irresponsible ... it seems that either they are not trained to cover events of such sensitive nature or they are trained to excel in accusing others.”
Indian authorities have blamed “elements in Pakistan” for the Mumbai terror strikes. However, Islamabad has denied playing any role in the tragedy and offered to help New Delhi probe the attack. Some Pakistani media reports have suggested that the attacks were orchestrated by Indians for political gain.
Giving examples of the “dirty role” played by the Indian and Pakistani media in souring relations, Fasih said the anchor of a private Indian news channel repeatedly said that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was directly involved in the attacks.
Similarly, a Pakistani private television suggested that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had masterminded the attacks for the benefit of the ruling Congress party, which was losing popularity and is likely to lose the polls scheduled for early next year.
“I don’t know if this campaign is sponsored by the respective governments or the journalists themselves are trying to prove their loyalty to the country...this is not nationalism but unprofessionalism,” Fasih told IANS.
Pakistani politicians have agreed to come together to tackle the diplomatic crisis arising out of India blaming “elements in Pakistan” for the Mumbai terror attacks even as tribal leaders in the restive North West Frontier Province (NWFP) urged the government to remove troops from their region and focus on securing the border with India.
The main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is willing to participate in the meet. “We will go to the conference and are ready to play our role,” PML-N leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told IANS.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader Azim Tariq said members of the party will attend the conference as “it is an issue of national importance”. The Jamaat-e-Islami said it will decide whether to attend the meet by Monday evening. However, a party leader told IANS: “I don’t see to any reason for us to stay away from a meeting to discuss a critical issue.”
Meanwhile, leaked intelligence on who might be behind the devastating Islamist attacks in Mumbai has been greeted with a deepening sense of dread and foreboding by Muslims in Indian Kashmir.
An emerging consensus suggests the well-planned assault was the work of Lashkar-e-Taiba — the most powerful Pakistan-based militant group fighting against Indian rule in the disputed Muslim-majority region.
That means an automatic escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan, which in turn spells trouble for Kashmir, over which the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947.
The Kashmir issue is, to many South Asian Muslims, what the Palestinian issue is to the Arab world — a reliable and fertile source of outrage over the mistreatment of disenfranchised Muslims.
Rights groups like Amnesty International have criticized the sweeping powers India grants its security forces in Kashmir and accused them of using torture to quash the long-running Muslim insurgency in the region.
