Who
Killed the Pakistani Journalists in Waziristan: An RSF Investigation
PARIS,
March 4: The 7 February fatal shooting of two reporters in Wana
(in the northwestern Tribal Area of South Waziristan) was claimed
10 days later by an unknown group calling itself Sipah-e-Islam
(Soldiers of Islam).
In
a fax sent to The News, an English-language daily, the
group said: “We take responsibility for the murder of the
two journalists in South Waziristan last week (...) Some journalists
were in the process of working for Christians (...) They are used
as tools in the negative propaganda of the Christians against
the Muslim mujahideen (...) As well as killing two journalists,
we mujahideen killed American spies.”
The communiqué was signed by Ahmed Farooqi, a name not
known to journalists who specialize in covering Pakistani jihadist
groups. The BBC correspondent Rahimullah Yusufzai in Peshawar,
for example, said he had never heard of Sipah-e-Islam
and thought it would be very hard to verify if it really existed.
The claim supported the position taken by senior officials, including
the federal interior minister, who said within hours of the attack
that it was an act of terrorism aimed at sabotaging the government’s
efforts to pacify the Tribal Areas. North West Frontier Province
governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, for his part, said the “miscreants
could be foreigners or nationals” and that the government
would “eliminate” them with the help of the tribal
groups.
The authorities singled out Taliban warlord and Taliban commander
Abdullah Mehsud, who opposed any peace accord with the army and
who forcefully rejected any reconciliation with his former mentor,
Baitullah Mehsud and the Pakistani government. He was the ideal
suspect but he quickly denied any involvement in the shooting.
In a 9 February phone call to the correspondents of the BBC
World Service and Daily Times in Peshawar, he said
his group had nothing to do with the killings: “The government
committed this murder in order to accuse me (...) What I do, I
take responsibility for it immediately.” In the course of
the call, he threatened the BBC correspondent with reprisals if
he did not publish the entire interview.
A shooting in the center of Wana Reporters Without Borders spoke
to one of the 10 journalists who was in the van that was targeted
in the 7 February attack. He said: “We were in the town
of Wana near the public hospital at around 7:30 p.m. when a white
car overtook our van. Two men sitting one behind the other opened
fire on us with AK-47 assault rifles. The shooting took place
less than 60 meters from the tribal militia building. They didn’t
move to stop the attackers (...) Noor’s skull exploded while
Nawab was hit in the base of the neck. They fired around 60 rounds.
Each of them emptied his clip with the aim of killing. After they
had finished their job, they did not speed away. They left slowly.”
This survivor added: “We called for help. Students and members
of the tribal militia ran over.
They took one of the injured, AFP correspondent Anwar Shakir,
to the public hospital where he underwent an operation for a stomach
wound.” The two fatal victims were Amir Nawab Khan, who
was a cameraman with the international TV news agency APTN and
a reporter with the Pakistani daily The Frontier Post,
and Allah Noor Wazir, a reporter with the privately-owned Pakistani
television station Khyber TV, the Lahore-based daily The Nation
and the German news agency DPA.
They were killed at the heart of what a local journalist called
Wana’s “green zone,” in an allusion to the highly-protected
central part of Baghdad. A strategic town a few kilometers from
the Afghan border, Wana is the Pakistani army’s center of
operations in its campaign against Taliban and Al-Qaeda groups.
The shooting took place about 100 meters from the army’s
regional headquarters, and opposite official buildings protected
by security forces.
The van carrying the journalists was not clearly marked as a press
vehicle. It had been provided by the Tribal Area administration
so they could attend the surrender of Baitullah Mehsud, one of
the Taliban commanders. But the authorities had not laid on any
special protection for the press. Still, a local source pointed
out that, by providing them with a vehicle, the authorities were
helping the press for the first time and that from March 2004
until then they had done nothing but hinder the right to information.
Reporters Without Borders has learned that no suspect was stopped
at any of the military checkpoints around Wana although an alert
was quickly issued by the security forces. The authorities later
said paramilitaries combed the area in a search for the two killers
but no arrests were ever announced. Within the Pakistani government
there seem to be differences about the presumed motive for the
attack. While the military have loudly declared it to be a terrorist
act, the civilian authorities said in a one of their Daily Situation
Report that it was linked to personal quarrels.
Fear
takes hold in the Tribal Areas
The
offensive by an international military coalition against the Taliban
regime in Kabul at the end of 2001 put the journalists in Pakistan’s
federally-administered Tribal Areas at the center of the news.
After years of isolation and fight against the authoritarian attitudes
of Islamabad’s representatives and inter-tribal vendettas,
around 100 professional journalists – most of them members
of the Tribal Union of Journalists (TUJ) – found themselves
being recruited by the Pakistani and international press.
Osama Bin Laden’s alleged presence in the Tribal Areas and
the Pakistani military offensive of March 2004 put these relatively
inexperienced journalists at the heart of international coverage
of the war against terrorism. Journalists in the Tribal Areas,
many of them now working for more than one news media, had to
face new obstacles. The Pakistani army imposed a strict news blackout
that cut South Waziristan off from the rest of the world for months.
Thanks to its military success, the military government at the
end of 2004 began to feel able to invite journalists to cover
warlord surrender ceremonies or visit areas recovered from Taliban
groups.
The murder of Khan and Wazir, members of the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe
who were known for taking a leading role in the past three years,
has shaken this community of brave and seasoned journalists to
the core. Both had been detained or otherwise prevented from working
several times since March 2004. Wazir’s editor at the Pashto-language
Khyber Television described him as “very active and always
ready to use his initiative.”
The
video footage shot by Khan was often used by APTN for its reports
on the Pakistani army’s offensive against the Taliban and
Al-Qaeda. Their deaths has revived fear within the press community
in the Tribal Areas. Since March 2003, the journalists there have
been used army restrictions and threats from jihadist armed groups,
but they have had to face a new, violent and invisible threat
since 7 February.
A journalist in Wana who works for a Pakistani newspaper and an
international radio station told Reporters Without Borders that
he and around 20 other Wana-based journalists adopted additional
security measures on 9 February. “We go home earlier and
we limit our movements in order to avoid these mysterious killers,”
he said on condition of anonymity. “It is hard to explain
the feeling of fear in which we live. We don’t open the
door after nightfall. Many of us are thinking of leaving Wana
for Tank, Dera Ismail Khan or Peshawar.”
TUJ president Sailab Mehsud was categorical: “I fear that
there will be new attacks if the killers of Amir Nawab and Allah
Noor get away with it.”
Journalists under threat from the Taliban
Journalists in the Tribal Areas and Peshawar told Reporters Without
Borders that jihadists often harass them if they do not like their
work or the terms used in reports about them. “The warlords
threaten me with reprisals if I do not report everything they
say,” the correspondent for a national daily based in Peshawar
said. “They do not understand how the modern press operates.
They want to be glorified and want us to write long articles about
them.”
The threats have continued as Taliban chiefs surrendered. A journalist
in Dera Ismail Khan (a district in south of Peshawar) said: “I
wrote that Baitullah signed the peace accord but the newspaper
ran a headline saying he had surrendered. Since then I’ve
been scared because I don’t know how they may react.”
A journalist in Wana recently received a visit from Taliban jihadist
militants who were dissatisfied with his articles. “Be careful
next time,” they said.
On 8 February, the TUJ president appealed to Pakistani editors
to try to reduce the risks for them: “Please do not use
the word surrender for armed militants. Avoid words that will
anger them.”
Who
benefits from the murders?
The 7 February shooting followed a series of targeted murders
which observers blamed on the most radical jihadists. In an article
headlined “Psy warfare by Wana militants,” The
Friday Times correspondent in Peshawar, Iqbal Khattak, wrote:
“While the military offensive has smashed the strongholds
of Al Qaeda (…) the militants (…) have changed their
retaliation strategy by targeting government employees (…).
The strategy seems to have had the desired effect on tribal elders,
journalists and government employees.” Was the attack on
the journalists part of a new stage in this policy of terror waged
by increasingly marginalized jihadist groups?
While a personal or tribal dispute cannot be entirely ruled out,
most of the Pakistanis questioned by Reporters Without Borders
were convinced that it was a premeditated and orchestrated attacked
aimed at intimidating the press.
No one has publicly accused the security forces, but the ease
with which the killers eluded the investigations of an army on
a war footing has raised questions. For religious or security
reasons, the militants often take journalists to task for filming
or photographing them. The US news agency, Associated Press,
reported on 8 February that the Taliban attending Baitullah Mehsud’s
surrender ceremony some 80 km from Wana became irate about the
use of cameras and video cameras by journalists. But would this
irritation have been sufficient to have led to
this kind of reprisal?
Promises to investigate
Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the head of military operations in South
Waziristan, promised a TUJ delegation on 12 February that the
killers would be arrested. He also promised that 3,000 euros would
be given to the families of the slain reporters and said the army
had undertaken to support the press in the Tribal Areas. Two days
before that, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain told a delegation of tribal
chiefs and religious leaders from Wana that “the government
is analyzing all the aspects of the murder of the journalists
in order to know if they were targeted because of their work,
personal quarrels or old enmities.”
As the two murdered journalists were TUJ members, the union has
gone to great pains to seek justice for them. Its president, Mehsud,
went to Islamabad and Peshawar to meet officials. “The killers
will be brought to justice,” he has repeatedly been promised.
Reporters Without Borders fully supports the grievances which
the TUJ has presented to the civilian and military authorities.
The international press freedom organization calls for a thorough
investigation into this attack, an investigation in which all
possible motives are explored. It must go beyond the mysterious
claim of responsibility by an unknown group.
The
investigation was done by Press Freedom, International Secretariat
Asia-Pacific Desk 5, rue Geoffroy-Marie 75009 Paris France Tél
: (33) 1 44 83 84 84 Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51 E-mail : asia@rsf.org
Web : www.rsf.org www.press-freedom.org
