Nearly all U.S. corporate media are
regurgitating virtually the same set of “facts” on the shooting of Pakistani
14-year old Malalal Yousafzai.
Although the event is not far in the
past, there are many disparities in the story which shed doubt on its
authenticity: One corporate media report mentions the gunmen as being masked.
Another says they were bearded. It is unclear how facial hair would be evident
on a masked individual.
According to an October 10 BBC
report, “One report, citing local sources, says a bearded gunman stopped a car
full of schoolgirls, and asked for Malala Yousafzai by name, before opening
fire. But a police official also told BBC Urdu that unidentified gunmen opened
fire on the schoolgirls as they were about to board a van or bus.”
Also worth noting is the vice-like
embrace in which Paki government officials have placed this particular girl--or
more importantly her story, a story which serves to discredit their opposition.
Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said: "We have to fight the mindset that
is involved in this. We have to condemn it... Malala is like my daughter, and
yours too. If that mindset prevails, then whose daughter would be safe?"
No Paki official offered similar support to the Jamia Hafsa women when their
Islamic university was attacked by Pakistani troops in 2007.
Even more oddly, the chief of the
Pakistan army, General Ashfaq Kayani, has taken great personal interest in the
girl. According to the October 10 Guardian, the “powerful military chief has
put himself at the centre of a national outrage over the attempted murder” of
Malalal. He went to the extent of visiting her personally in the hospital. One
wonders what army chief has time or wherewithal to do that. In a statement
viewed as highly cynical by those aware of the Pakistan army’s multifarious
human rights abuses, he said, "The cowards who attacked Malala and her
fellow students, have shown time and again how little regard they have for
human life and how low they can fall in their cruel ambition to impose their
twisted ideology." (Reuters, October 10)
Over and over, the U.S.-funded
Pakistani military has been discredited for their extreme barbarism and
complete disregard for human rights and the Geneva Conventions. They are viewed
as collaborators with the U.S. and NATO by vast segments of the Pakistani
population.
In October 2010, the Pakistan
military was reported to have shot 250 Taliban prisoners. To shoot a girl such
as Malala Yousafzai would not be beyond such a force.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/new-video-appears-to-show-abuse-of-prisoners-by-pakistani-soldiers/
They have also collaborated with the
U.S. in the killing of hundreds of civilians. Waziristan native Noor Beharam,
who has repeatedly risked his life documenting the deaths of women and
children, believes that 670 women have been killed by drone strikes. He has
taken photos of more than 100 children, their bodies often unrecognizable as
human after the strikes.
http://www.alternet.org/world/murder-skies-us-creating-new-enemies-where-there-were-none
The Pakistan military showed its
prowess in media manipulation and propaganda dissemination in the course of the
2007 Lal Masjid siege, when they banned all independent media from the besieged
area.
This writer would not put it beyond
the Pakistan army to have sent one of their own to shoot Malalal. It would be a
perfect red herring against the increasingly organized opposition to its human
rights abuses and to the U.S. drone strikes in which it is complicit.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, Taliban spokesman,
ostensibly claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the group. Anyone
could call the Pakistani media, claim to be Ehsan, and assume responsibility on
behalf of his organization in order to discredit it.
It is also possible that the action
is the work of one or two misguided individuals. They may have conducted the
action without the advance knowledge of the Taliban leadership. The TPP is a
very large organization, with broad public support among the people of the
frontier, and particularly of Swat, where the Pak army has terrorized the
population over an extended period of time. Once the deed was done, they may
have unthinkingly accepted their organization’s role in it. But was the action
sanctioned by the top leadership, and approved in advance of the fact? Where
are the interviews with the Taliban leadership to ascertain this fact? The
corporate media, in keeping with their role as war time propagandists have
conducted no such interviews.
Imagine if a shooting was conducted
by a Jewish or White Supremacist gunman. It is extremely unlikely that any and
the organizations affiliated with him would be immediately condemned. In this
case, however, that is exactly what has happened. And the TPP, which seems
notoriously lacking in its communication with the media, has allowed itself to
be linked with a single heinous act, and therefore discredited.
Interestingly, only the VOA report
of October 10 does not credit the Taliban with the girl's shooting. The VOA is
highly regarded as the overt U.S. government propaganda organ by independent
news analysists and thinkers.
The contradictions in detail of the
attackers; the fact that Hillary Clinton, the U.S. State Department, the
President of Pakistan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and the Pakistan Army
Chief all went out of their way to condemn the attack when they have yet to do
so in a single one of the killings of women and children by U.S. drones or by
their Pak army lackeys; and the absence of any detailed interview with the
Taliban are all very suspect to an analytical mind. Regardless of who accepted
responsibility afterwards, might the shooting be a Pakistan army/intelligence
action? I would not be at all surprised if the "details" picked up by
all the major media organs stemmed from a Pakistan army press release. The
specter of a young girl being murdered by a force endemic to a country and
fighting a foreign occupier is perfect wartime propaganda to deflect the war
crimes of the occupier.
