Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal’s reporter, died in the line of duty. The rigorous search operations by Pakistan’s many law-enforcing agencies and the American FBI had all drawn a blank. Around the Eid Al-Adha weekend in Pakistan, his kidnapers released the video filming his beastly slaughter. As the news of Pearl’s gruesome murder spread, weeks of suspense and of prayers for his survival ended. Pakistanis were outraged. Editorials in all leading newspapers condemned the murder. There is a strong realization that the Pakistani state and society, caught in the throes of an extremely chaotic sociopolitical and security phase, would come under further internal and external pressure by such a heinous act.
The list of demands put forward by Pearl’s assassins included better treatment and release of Taleban prisoners, release of F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan and release of Mulla Zaeef, Taleban’s former ambassador to Pakistan. Such a demand list linking Daniel’s captors to the negative feeling within the Muslim world against Washington’s sledgehammer policies and action toward those the US views as terrorists had the aim of earning them support for their brutal murder. They have not got it. Pakistanis may be critical of the conduct of Washington’s anti-terrorist campaign, but they abhor such gruesome acts. The murder can only damage causes, never advance them.
The death of Pearl compounds the pressure on Pakistan to nab those responsible for his murder. Nationwide hunt continues. This is a test case for the Musharraf government. The world wants assurance that all sections of the state will follow the government’s policy on enforcing the rule of law irrespective of any religious outfit’s earlier affiliation with Pakistan’s security agencies.
However, the handling of this case, which has become the litmus test for the “new Pakistan” that Musharraf promises and the global community seeks, has been inept and intriguing. There has been vacillation between extreme hopefulness to confusion in official statements on the status of the investigation. Even more intriguing has been the time lag between the surrender and production in court of the British national Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of the self-professed kidnappers.
He is one of the three men the police formally charged with aiding and abetting the kidnap. The police are still searching for a key suspect, the man believed to have driven Pearl from his Karachi hotel while he was following a story about the Al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden. Omar’s own previous activities in Bosnia and Kosovo, his alleged involvement in the 1994 capture of Western tourists in India, and his arrival in Pakistan after the Kandahar deal between the hijackers of an Indian plane and the Indian government indicate the intricacies of the Daniel case. Omar’s court statements have been very revealing. He has claimed links with Pakistani agencies, retracted his earlier confession, and his Feb. 25 complaint before the Sindh High Court that the police was forcing a confession under duress.
The investigation of this case will continue to be jointly conducted by the US and Pakistani law enforcing agencies. Like on many other cases involving US nationals or US security interests, the US agencies will remain fairly proactive. This is unlikely to change even if Omar is extradited from Pakistan. The extradition question has already been sought by the US government in a meeting between Pakistan’s president and the US ambassador. The absence of a Pakistan-US extradition treaty is unlikely to deter the extradition of Omar. In the past, several “suspects”, including a renegade CIA agent and Pakistani national Aimal Kansi, were quietly handed over during former President Farooq Leghari’s term to the US government. The US is also claiming that its Justice Department had secretly indicted him for the 1994 kidnapping of four Westerners, including an American, in India. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld too has suggested Omar be tried before a United States military tribunal.
There is, however, consistency in the Muslim anger. Widespread condemnation of Pearl’s cold-blooded murder does not mean the resentment against the US is any less intense now. The double standard of the US while promoting human rights, international security and international law are questioned. The mode of killing differed from that in New York, but thousands of innocent Afghans died from the US bombing. The treatment of Taleban prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay X-ray camp is outrageous. Mothers like Mrs. Juma, according to the Feb. 24 Guardian, are now complaining that her son “is being treated badly and being kept in a cage without any exercise. Many have been held without charge and deprived of any rights.” Oxford University professors have rejected the US argument that unlawful combatants deserve no legal rights. The US has been criticized for contrasting treatment given to Taleban prisoners. The US citizen John Lindh has been given basic legal rights while the Camp X-Ray detainees have been denied that.
US policies are increasingly viewed as dangerously unilateralist. The range extends from Afghanistan to Palestine and from Kashmir to Chechnya. When will the US invoke the mandate of the UN Security Council and call for the implementation of its resolutions granting right of self-determination to the Palestinians and to the Kashmiris? The precedent set by the UN in the case of intervention in Kosovo, Bosnia and East Timor prompts criticism for its paralysis on other issues.
