Propaganda reaching borderline con artistry
Since Pakistan being a nuclear-armed nation is not defenceless, a propaganda war has been unleashed
The writer is a political analyst. He can be reached at imran.jan@gmail.com. Twitter @Imran_Jan
The BBC published a report titled “Uncovering Pakistan’s secret human rights abuses”. It makes the case for Pakistan Army’s alleged role in killing innocent civilians in Pakistan’s tribal areas, in cahoots with the Taliban. The common factor in all the stories highlighted in the report is that all victims are allegedly the victims of Pakistan Army’s atrocious behaviour. The report attempts to appear credible by using language such as, “The BBC has gained rare access to some of the victims [of war on terror].” A truth telling BBC would have said the following: The BBC has chosen to gain access to the only victims it finds worthy of its attention in order to further a slanted narrative it is interested in furthering.
The report is the quintessential ancient western playbook. The tactic involves feeling sad for fake victims of the atrocities of a state the West doesn’t like. Elevating such worthy victims to stardom in the media, the tactic interestingly, always argues that such and such government is bad because it treats its own people bad. Somehow treating people bad in other countries is not seen as a crime because that would make the West the biggest criminal. Since the West cannot subject its own citizens to the worst form of terrorism it subjects people in other countries to, treating ‘one’s own people’ has been made to be the standard to measure a government’s level of civility. This narrative also helps justify the newly-created legal fiction called ‘Responsibility To Protect’ (R2P), provided the targeted nation is defenceless. Since Pakistan being a nuclear-armed nation is not defenceless, a propaganda war has been unleashed.
Con artists convince people of their narrative by using emotions as well as telling people what they want to hear. The report is a sophisticated work of con artistry. Pakistan-army-the-villains sells in the West and this report sells exactly that. In a near-perfect con artistry, it has attacked emotions to convince readers of the narrative by using the example of an unfortunate family whose members have been missing. A man named Satarjan narrates a story to the BBC where his brother Idarjan was taken into custody allegedly by the Pakistan Army who also killed one of his sons. Satarjan says that he has chosen not to tell his sister-in-law about the death of her son.
Nabilah Rehman who was injured in a CIA double tap drone strike in North Waziristan while she was out in the nearby field picking okra is someone whose emotional story the BBC missed. Her grandmother Mominah Bibi was cut into pieces. It was the eve of Eid and only two weeks after Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban. Nabila’s father, Rafique, had gone to the nearby city’s market to buy clothes and other gifts for the Eid. When he returned, he discovered that her 81-year-old mother’s body parts were put in a box by the neighbours. Rafique told the author, “When I looked at my mother’s body in the box, it was just like when animals are slaughtered and cut into pieces.”
BBC’s investigative journalism missed this story because it would lay the blame on America, the country with which BBC’s bosses joined hands to invade Iraq based on total lies. Also, it is uncertain that the BBC would allow publishing of such a story because it does not fall in line with the narrative of Pakistan-army-the-villains.
While challenged as untrue, the BBC claims that it got no response from the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan even though Mr Khan had “raised the issue of rights abuses in the tribal areas when he was an opposition politician”. What the BBC again failed to mention so conveniently is that Mr Khan had vehemently criticised and opposed the drone strikes in Fata that killed innocent civilians who were then reflexively labeled by the media as ‘suspected militants’.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 20th, 2019.
The report is the quintessential ancient western playbook. The tactic involves feeling sad for fake victims of the atrocities of a state the West doesn’t like. Elevating such worthy victims to stardom in the media, the tactic interestingly, always argues that such and such government is bad because it treats its own people bad. Somehow treating people bad in other countries is not seen as a crime because that would make the West the biggest criminal. Since the West cannot subject its own citizens to the worst form of terrorism it subjects people in other countries to, treating ‘one’s own people’ has been made to be the standard to measure a government’s level of civility. This narrative also helps justify the newly-created legal fiction called ‘Responsibility To Protect’ (R2P), provided the targeted nation is defenceless. Since Pakistan being a nuclear-armed nation is not defenceless, a propaganda war has been unleashed.
Con artists convince people of their narrative by using emotions as well as telling people what they want to hear. The report is a sophisticated work of con artistry. Pakistan-army-the-villains sells in the West and this report sells exactly that. In a near-perfect con artistry, it has attacked emotions to convince readers of the narrative by using the example of an unfortunate family whose members have been missing. A man named Satarjan narrates a story to the BBC where his brother Idarjan was taken into custody allegedly by the Pakistan Army who also killed one of his sons. Satarjan says that he has chosen not to tell his sister-in-law about the death of her son.
Nabilah Rehman who was injured in a CIA double tap drone strike in North Waziristan while she was out in the nearby field picking okra is someone whose emotional story the BBC missed. Her grandmother Mominah Bibi was cut into pieces. It was the eve of Eid and only two weeks after Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban. Nabila’s father, Rafique, had gone to the nearby city’s market to buy clothes and other gifts for the Eid. When he returned, he discovered that her 81-year-old mother’s body parts were put in a box by the neighbours. Rafique told the author, “When I looked at my mother’s body in the box, it was just like when animals are slaughtered and cut into pieces.”
BBC’s investigative journalism missed this story because it would lay the blame on America, the country with which BBC’s bosses joined hands to invade Iraq based on total lies. Also, it is uncertain that the BBC would allow publishing of such a story because it does not fall in line with the narrative of Pakistan-army-the-villains.
While challenged as untrue, the BBC claims that it got no response from the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan even though Mr Khan had “raised the issue of rights abuses in the tribal areas when he was an opposition politician”. What the BBC again failed to mention so conveniently is that Mr Khan had vehemently criticised and opposed the drone strikes in Fata that killed innocent civilians who were then reflexively labeled by the media as ‘suspected militants’.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 20th, 2019.