NEW DELHI, 2 February — Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan as he tried to unravel the trail of the British shoe-bomber Richard Reid, got a short new lease of life Thursday night.
Just as the original deadline was expiring, his kidnappers sent new messages to Western media, announcing: "We will give you one more day. If America will not meet our demands, we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalists could enter Pakistan..."
So the pressure and the drama continue to mount. But it is pressure of a strange sort. It is felt, of course, by friends and family, and in particular his singularly brave, heavily pregnant French wife Mariane; but the object on which it is ostensibly being applied — the US government — has no likelihood of yielding to it.
The kidnappers, who send their messages by e-mail from an account called [email protected], from which the earlier demands and photographs were sent, have demanded, among other things, the return of Pakistani prisoners held by the US in Cuba to their homeland for trial there, and the removal of the former Taleban ambassador to Pakistan, Mohammed Zaeef, back to Pakistan.
There is not a hope of the US acceding to either of these, nor indeed to the demand that America send over the F16 jets which Pakistan attempted to purchase many years back. As the former Beirut hostage Terry Anderson put it last night, Pearl’s kidnapping "is not useful — it doesn’t work... No one is going to negotiate with kidnappers." That fact — the self-evident futility — is only one of the baffling aspects of this case. Who are these people? What do they really want? As there is no realistic hope that it will alter US policy toward its prisoners, what do they suppose they can achieve? No one had ever heard of the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, the group that claims responsibility for Pearl’s capture. And the group is not merely unknown: Its name is quite unlike those preferred by the sort of Islamic militant groups that litter the Pakistani landscape.
These always adopt fearsome, overtly fanatical Arabic titles, names which translate "Army of the Pure" or "Militia of Muhammed", spelling out their commitment to jihad. This group, by contrast, sounds as if it was set up as a discussion group by discontented intellectuals in one of the sleeker suburbs of Lahore.
And the distinctiveness is carried through into the rhetoric: No blood-curdling references to holy war, to infidels, to the will of Allah, the duty of the faithful. Instead, points are made about the treatment of the US’s prisoners that merely amplify the sort of statements voiced by Western liberals. The demands are not preposterous, nor is the reasoning behind them. Pakistani prisoners in Guantanamo Bay should be returned, for example, because "Pakistan was a full member of the international coalition against terror and it deserves the right to try its citizens." This is not unreasonable; it might almost be a secret memo to President Musharraf from an unhappy official in his government.
In later communications, too, there is no pious Islamic bluster, but instead a vein of acrid humor. "We apologize to his family for the worry caused," ran a message received on Wednesday, Jan. 30, "and we will send them food packages just as amreeka apolgized for colleateral damange and dropped food packages on" the relatives of Afghans "that it had killed."
"We hope Mr Danny’s family will be grateful for the food packets."
The story of Daniel Pearl’s descent into hell began more than three weeks ago. Aged 38, he had been a reporter at the high-powered New York financial paper for 12 years, graduating from domestic newsbeats to London and Paris, from where he covered the Middle East, and finally to Bombay as the paper’s South Asia correspondent.
"He was used to working in treacherous, unstable environments," a close colleague, Khozem Merchant, of the Financial Times, said yesterday.
But Pearl’s goal in Pakistan was particularly risky: He "was in Karachi," wrote Helene Collins of the Wall Street Journal, "seeking to interview leaders of Islamic groups for possible articles on the war’s impact on the region." For two weeks he labored to set up meetings with men committed to using terrorist violence to achieve their aims, whether in Afghanistan or Kashmir or Manhattan. He would have been aware of the risks he was running; but, as Ms Cooper wrote, "Mr Pearl... is known among his colleagues for his cautious approach to reporting and concern for safety."
Last Wednesday, Jan. 23, his efforts seemed about to bear fruit. He took a taxi to a restaurant in central Karachi, where he met up with two non-American intermediaries, and left with them, apparently of his own free will. It is likely that he thought they would guide him to the interview rendezvous. Instead, he disappeared.
Three days later, at 11 a.m. local time on Saturday, "kidnapperguy" dispatched his first message.
Pakistani police first claimed off the record that Pearl had been kidnapped by Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, one of the best known Pakistan-based militant groups. Later they claimed that the journalist had been taken to meet a man called Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, the leader of a group called Jamaat-al-Fakr, banned by the US in 1996 as an active terror group.
Gilan was detained by Pakistani police in Rawalpindi on Jan. 30, but his arrest seems to have left Pearl’s captors unmoved. No other breakthroughs in the case have been announced since then, although President Musharraf’s spokesman, Rashid Quereshi, insisted last night that "There has been progress... I can’t go into details because of jeopardizing the investigations." But then he added a comment that on the face of it was merely bizarre: "There is an Indian linkage to this." He refused to say more. India’s Ministry of External Affairs promptly termed the charge "ridiculous." So it may be. But it shows the way the Pakistani government’s thoughts, and fears, are tending.
Daniel Pearl represents Gen. Musharraf’s most serious blip for months. Ever since his decision, days after Sept. 11, to throw Pakistan’s weight behind the coalition, Gen. Musharraf has led a charmed life. The culmination was his speech of Jan. 12, in the course of which he brilliantly rebranded himself as the scourge of Pakistan’s Islamic extremists.
Last night it was not President Bush but President Musharraf who was coming under pressure from the kidnappers, with hours of air time given to the story, interventions from both Mohammad Ali and Secretary for the Treasury Ken Dam.
Gen.Musharraf’s rhetoric has served to drape a multitude of chronic problems. His pro-American stand has made him powerful enemies. Now that rhetorical screen may be about to be torn away; and the general’s powerful enemies, whoever they are, are preparing to strike in the way they think they can hurt him most — by killing an American.(The Independent)
