May 05, 2017

Pakistan Army picks deadly militant for propaganda

located:	Pakistan
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

The ever-powerful army in Pakistan has orchestrated yet another strategic move of using a ruthless militant for propaganda purposes that has left the civilian government, and for that matter family and friends of the victims stunned.

Ehsanullah Eshan, a former mouthpiece of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has been proudly claiming responsibilities for a number of brazen militant attacks across the country for the past many years leaving scores of civilian, including women and children dead, and wounded.

Among the deadly attacks claimed by Ehsan include the attack on the Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai in 2012, in which the child activist sustained injuries to her head but survived. The rocket attack on Bacha Khan International Airport, Peshawar in December 2012, in which four people were killed. Killing of nine foreign tourists in Gilgit-Baltistan in June 2013. Twin attacks in Mohmand agency in November 2014, in which six peace committee members were killed. Suicide attack at Wagah Border in November 2014, killing 60. Suicide attack in Attock in August 2015, which killed then-home minister of Punjab Shuja Khanzada, and 13 others. Suicide attack on Easter day in Allama Iqbal Park, Lahore in March 2016, resulting in the death of 72 people.

It was the Pakistan Army’s media affairs wing, the Inter-Service Public Affairs (ISPR) that announced Ehsan’s surrender last month. It seems the Army aims to use him against the ‘arch enemy’ India, and country of the so-called strategic depth Afghanistan. Seemingly comfortable and relaxed Ehsan’s video in which he is narrating tales about the so-called Taliban-India-Afghanistan nexus.

A leading Pakistani journalist Mohammad Hanif’s op-ed on this matter in the New York Times has been totally removed from the NYT’s edition published in Pakistan.

Hanif has written that with his [Ehsan’s] appearance, the Pakistani Army seemed to be sending this message: You can kill thousands of Pakistanis, but if you later testify that you hate India as much as we do, everything will be forgiven.

The civilian government’s silence in this once again exposes the rift with the army as reported by the country’s reputed English language Dawn last year.

In its story titled “Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tell military”, on October 6, Dawn’s senior reporter Cyril Almeida exposed that the civilian government had informed the military leadership of a growing international isolation. Cyril quoted individuals present in a crucial national security meeting saying that the participants were informed that Pakistan faces diplomatic isolation and that the government’s talking points have been met with indifference in major world capitals.

Photo: UMB Wiki