Skeptic
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written by Robert Mackey, the editor and main blogger of The Lede, the news blog of The New York Times on The Lede.
A Grand Conspiracy Theory From Pakistan
The Web site Pakistan Daily is an Islamabad-based hub for Pakistani citizen journalism, promising Pakistani readers: Your News. Powered by You. It is also an excellent place to turn if you want to read in on the latest conspiracy theories making the rounds in that country. Or just get very scared.
Somewhat disturbingly, the source for the top story on Pakistan Daily today is Pakistans president, Asif Ali Zardari. As an anonymous article on the site reports accurately, in an interview with NBC News which aired on Sunday, Mr. Zardari claimed that he knew that Osama bin Laden was an American operator during the 1980s.
Mr. Zardari told David Gregory, in the part of the interview embedded below, that this knowledge dates from 1989, when, he said, his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was then Pakistans prime minister, had called the first President Bush to complain about Mr. bin Ladens efforts to destabilize Pakistan, presumably on behalf of the government of the United States.
Since Mr. Gregory made no effort to follow up on this statement by Mr. Zardari, we have no idea what information his belief about Mr. bin Laden is based on, but his statement does closely echo one he made in an interview with Fox News last September. In that earlier interview, Mr. Zardari displayed a shaky grasp of where exactly the line between fact and fiction lies, since he also recounted a story about Oliver North having supposedly warned Congress about the dangers posed by Mr. bin Laden in 1987 a story that, as my colleague Brian Stelter pointed out, is based on a hoax e-mail message that circulated widely after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
While most of the conspiracy theories posted on Pakistan Daily seem easy to debunk like allegations that Osama bin Laden may be Jewish or that Islamist militants in Pakistans Swat Valley are Indian intelligence agents it is not hard to understand why some Pakistanis are so willing to believe that unseen forces are behind their current troubles. After all, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the United States did in fact work closely, and secretly, with Pakistans spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to destabilize that countrys government by supporting Islamic extremists like Mr. bin Laden.
Elements of Pakistans government have also obviously played on the fears of the population to win their cooperation at certain times. In fact, they have done it as recently as last week. As my colleague Dexter Filkins pointed out, the prominent Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported last Friday reported that Pakistani soldiers were using the threat of shadowy foreign forces to encourage citizens to support their current battle with the Taliban. According to Dawn:
According to Mr. Quraishi, the entire battle against militants in Pakistan is nothing less than a huge American psy-ops campaign to distract from the failures of the United States in Afghanistan. Mr. Quraishi writes:
In less than two years, the United States has successfully managed to drop from news headlines its failure to pacify Afghanistan. The focus of the Anglo-American media American and British has been locked on Pakistan. In order to justify this shift, multiple insurgencies and endless supply of money and weapons has trickled from U.S.-occupied Afghanistan into Pakistan to sustain a number of warlords inside Pakistan whom the American media calls Taliban but they are actually nothing but hired mercenaries with sophisticated weapons who mostly did not even exist as recently as the year 2005.
Mr. Quraishis reading of events hinges on the idea that a statement by President Obama, during the news conference on his 100th day in office, that he was concerned that Pakistans civilian government right now is very fragile, was a veiled call for a military coup and essentially amounts to a declaration of war against another country. Mr. Quraishi also claims that academic programs are being launched in the U.S. that advocate the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of smaller entities.
How you might ask, has Mr. Obama been able to get away with this huge psy-ops campaign against Pakistan? Thats where we come in. In Mr. Quraishis view, alarming reports on the progress of Taliban militants in Pakistan are all part of the plot, in which, he says, the U.S. media and officials are single-handedly tarnishing Pakistans image worldwide to justify a military intervention. According to Mr. Quraishi:
Your Lede blogger can only say that if there is a plot like this someone forgot to send us the memo. That said, we have seen signs that some readers of this blog seem to agree with Mr. Quraishi that the fix is in. Here, for instance, is a recent comment from a reader named Chithra KarunaKaran, explaining the purpose of my work, and that of my colleagues Dexter Filkins and Alan Cowell:
It is disturbing but predictable that Mackey, Filkins and Cowell would file articles and blog posts that hide the US hand in the vast internal displacement of Pakistanis within their own homeland. Despite their claims of objectivity, their job is in accordance with the diktat of the Obama administration and Congress.
Clear evidence that the Pakistani public is not buying the Western medias explanation of recent events is also offered by the results of a recent poll conducted in Pakistan of 3,500 adult men and women by the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit group based in Washington that is affiliated with the Republican Party and promotes democracy abroad. Despite strong indications that the attacks in Mumbai last November were the work of a militant group based in Pakistan, Pakistanis surveyed overwhelmingly said that they did not believe the media reports:
Asked, by the same pollsters, to say who they believed was behind the attacks in Mumbai, the largest number of Pakistanis pointed the finger at the Research and Analysis Wing, Indias intelligence service. Just one per cent of the sample said that terrorists were responsible, while 20 times that many Pakistanis blamed America:
Update: A reader notes that Mr. Quraishis biography on his Web site says that since 2003 he has worked for FurmaanRealpolitik, Inc., which is a political consulting firm that designs media campaigns. Mr. Quraishi says on his site that he tailored and executed government-assigned public outreach projects, for that firm. The firms Web site brags of practical experience of using the internet as a campaign-management and issue-advocacy tool.
In 2007 the blog MicroPakistan cast some doubt on another elaborate theory of Mr. Quraishis. Reader comments on that blog post echoed some posted here by readers who suggest that there may be some connection between Mr. Quraishis government-assigned public outreach projects and his writing online.
Now I know where these wild theories emerge from which are doing round on this forum.
A Grand Conspiracy Theory From Pakistan
The Web site Pakistan Daily is an Islamabad-based hub for Pakistani citizen journalism, promising Pakistani readers: Your News. Powered by You. It is also an excellent place to turn if you want to read in on the latest conspiracy theories making the rounds in that country. Or just get very scared.
Somewhat disturbingly, the source for the top story on Pakistan Daily today is Pakistans president, Asif Ali Zardari. As an anonymous article on the site reports accurately, in an interview with NBC News which aired on Sunday, Mr. Zardari claimed that he knew that Osama bin Laden was an American operator during the 1980s.
Mr. Zardari told David Gregory, in the part of the interview embedded below, that this knowledge dates from 1989, when, he said, his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was then Pakistans prime minister, had called the first President Bush to complain about Mr. bin Ladens efforts to destabilize Pakistan, presumably on behalf of the government of the United States.
Since Mr. Gregory made no effort to follow up on this statement by Mr. Zardari, we have no idea what information his belief about Mr. bin Laden is based on, but his statement does closely echo one he made in an interview with Fox News last September. In that earlier interview, Mr. Zardari displayed a shaky grasp of where exactly the line between fact and fiction lies, since he also recounted a story about Oliver North having supposedly warned Congress about the dangers posed by Mr. bin Laden in 1987 a story that, as my colleague Brian Stelter pointed out, is based on a hoax e-mail message that circulated widely after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
While most of the conspiracy theories posted on Pakistan Daily seem easy to debunk like allegations that Osama bin Laden may be Jewish or that Islamist militants in Pakistans Swat Valley are Indian intelligence agents it is not hard to understand why some Pakistanis are so willing to believe that unseen forces are behind their current troubles. After all, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the United States did in fact work closely, and secretly, with Pakistans spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to destabilize that countrys government by supporting Islamic extremists like Mr. bin Laden.
Elements of Pakistans government have also obviously played on the fears of the population to win their cooperation at certain times. In fact, they have done it as recently as last week. As my colleague Dexter Filkins pointed out, the prominent Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported last Friday reported that Pakistani soldiers were using the threat of shadowy foreign forces to encourage citizens to support their current battle with the Taliban. According to Dawn:
But one of the most interesting conspiracy theories posted recently on Pakistan Daily is the grand, unified theory in a signed essay by a Pakistani blogger and journalist named Ahmed Quraishi, headlined Barack Obama Is Lying About Pakistan. In his essay Mr. Quraishi, who has worked as a television journalist for PTV, Pakistans state broadcaster, outlines a supposed plot against Pakistan by the American government and media.
According to Mr. Quraishi, the entire battle against militants in Pakistan is nothing less than a huge American psy-ops campaign to distract from the failures of the United States in Afghanistan. Mr. Quraishi writes:
In less than two years, the United States has successfully managed to drop from news headlines its failure to pacify Afghanistan. The focus of the Anglo-American media American and British has been locked on Pakistan. In order to justify this shift, multiple insurgencies and endless supply of money and weapons has trickled from U.S.-occupied Afghanistan into Pakistan to sustain a number of warlords inside Pakistan whom the American media calls Taliban but they are actually nothing but hired mercenaries with sophisticated weapons who mostly did not even exist as recently as the year 2005.
Mr. Quraishis reading of events hinges on the idea that a statement by President Obama, during the news conference on his 100th day in office, that he was concerned that Pakistans civilian government right now is very fragile, was a veiled call for a military coup and essentially amounts to a declaration of war against another country. Mr. Quraishi also claims that academic programs are being launched in the U.S. that advocate the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of smaller entities.
How you might ask, has Mr. Obama been able to get away with this huge psy-ops campaign against Pakistan? Thats where we come in. In Mr. Quraishis view, alarming reports on the progress of Taliban militants in Pakistan are all part of the plot, in which, he says, the U.S. media and officials are single-handedly tarnishing Pakistans image worldwide to justify a military intervention. According to Mr. Quraishi:
Your Lede blogger can only say that if there is a plot like this someone forgot to send us the memo. That said, we have seen signs that some readers of this blog seem to agree with Mr. Quraishi that the fix is in. Here, for instance, is a recent comment from a reader named Chithra KarunaKaran, explaining the purpose of my work, and that of my colleagues Dexter Filkins and Alan Cowell:
It is disturbing but predictable that Mackey, Filkins and Cowell would file articles and blog posts that hide the US hand in the vast internal displacement of Pakistanis within their own homeland. Despite their claims of objectivity, their job is in accordance with the diktat of the Obama administration and Congress.
Clear evidence that the Pakistani public is not buying the Western medias explanation of recent events is also offered by the results of a recent poll conducted in Pakistan of 3,500 adult men and women by the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit group based in Washington that is affiliated with the Republican Party and promotes democracy abroad. Despite strong indications that the attacks in Mumbai last November were the work of a militant group based in Pakistan, Pakistanis surveyed overwhelmingly said that they did not believe the media reports:
Asked, by the same pollsters, to say who they believed was behind the attacks in Mumbai, the largest number of Pakistanis pointed the finger at the Research and Analysis Wing, Indias intelligence service. Just one per cent of the sample said that terrorists were responsible, while 20 times that many Pakistanis blamed America:
Update: A reader notes that Mr. Quraishis biography on his Web site says that since 2003 he has worked for FurmaanRealpolitik, Inc., which is a political consulting firm that designs media campaigns. Mr. Quraishi says on his site that he tailored and executed government-assigned public outreach projects, for that firm. The firms Web site brags of practical experience of using the internet as a campaign-management and issue-advocacy tool.
In 2007 the blog MicroPakistan cast some doubt on another elaborate theory of Mr. Quraishis. Reader comments on that blog post echoed some posted here by readers who suggest that there may be some connection between Mr. Quraishis government-assigned public outreach projects and his writing online.
Now I know where these wild theories emerge from which are doing round on this forum.
