Response to the Dawn News Article

I detest Jingoism in all its forms, irrespective of any country that engages in it. I recently read an article by Mr. Shahzeb Ahmed in Pakistan’s most trusted English language newspaper, The DAWN. The article discusses the nonsensical role that the Indian media is playing in creating a false narrative against Pakistan and its armed forces.

Wars and conflicts are not only about two countries exchanging artillery shells and bullets. It also entails information warfare, a potent weapon to crush the moral of enemy and boosting the moral of its own people. History has illustrated how evil a propaganda warfare can be. What the Nazi propaganda machinery under Joseph Goebbels did to the Jewish community is horrendous and abominable. Therefore, I do agree with the author but I do have my reservations, especially when it is argued in the context of the ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan.

While I agree that some of the Indian media houses are disseminating incorrect information thereby violating ethics of responsible Journalism but the author fails to mention what the media houses in his country have been doing. Leave aside the media houses, does the author has nerves to contemplate and share with his audience what the Army chief of his country says about Hindus? Does he reasons with what an idiotic analyst, Zaid Hamid says about Hindus and how he pompously claims that he will carry “Ghazwa-eHind” on India? Does he penalizes his Journalists and panelists from spewing venom against Hindus and threating India by creating “Khalistan”? Is the Pakistani media not giving this conflict a religious color? Can he talk rationality with the Indian women who were inconsolable after they lost their husbands at the hands of terrorists? These can be uncomfortable questions for the author to answer in a country where every aspect of its existence is dominated by its army.

It is not hidden to the world that Pakistan is a terror factory. Mr. Khawaja Muhammad, the defense minister of that country has already admitted that it has been doing this “dirty work” for United States more than thirty years. According to the American analyst Bruce Riedel, the top three most wanted terrorist in its list are based out of Pakistan.

And I do not blame it on the ordinary citizens of Pakistan. In my own professional and personal experience, I have met amazing people who hailed from Pakistan. It is the administration and more importantly the armed forces who have an extremist bent of mind. They are solely responsible for orchestrating nefarious plots to create instability in Kashmir and India. Their role in disintegrating India by instigating the Khalistan movement in late 1970’s and early 1980’s is evident and well documented.

I reiterate and second that there are Indian journalists and media houses which indulge in creating war hysteria and the author did critiqued them in his piece. Now it is the turn of Asif Munir and its radical goons to get roasted by the same author in the most “rational” newspaper of Pakistan, The DAWN.