H

amid Mir is a well-known Pakistani journalist, though perhaps not so well-known outside Pakistan. However, as a program host on Geo TV, he is a celebrity there.

Presently, he is hitting the headlines because an attempt was made to assassinate him near the Islamabad market on Nov. 26, the fourth anniversary of the Mumbai massacre.

The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for planting a 0.5 kilogram bomb under his car parked near the market where he had stepped out for something.

When I read the news in Dawn and Tribune, the name Hamid Mir clicked in my memory and when I checked The Jakarta Post links, the link below popped up www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/04/10/letter-whyhide-behind-cia-skirts.html.

The above link will open my letter to the Post about Mir’s interview with an Indian journalist during President Zardari’s private visit to India to pray at the Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti dargah in Ajmer. An Indian TV anchorwoman had asked him a pointed question about the clandestine support that the Pakistani Army (and its intelligence arm the ISI) was giving to terrorists in general and to Hafiz Saeed, founder of Jama’at-Ud-Dawa, considered to be Lashkar-i-Toiba’s new avatar, in particular that has been linked to the Mumbai massacre.

Instead of replying to that question in a straightforward “yes-or no” manner, Mir took refuge in a stock answer that it was the CIA that initiated the practice of helping terrorists (who were then called the Mujahideen) during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. That Afghan war ended in 1989, but he still blamed the CIA.

As I have repeatedly said, terrorists have religion and can be swayed to change their targets by a speech of some rubble-rousing orator like Hafiz Saeed or when somebody does something they don’t like.

That is what happened now to Mir. Darling of the TTP because they thought he was working in the interest of Islam and Muslims, Mir suddenly fell out when he condemned the shooting of teenage activist Malala Yousafzai. Now they consider him to be working against Islam and Muslims and that made him a marked man.

TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by telephone from an “unknown location” that Mir was saved by the Grace of God but TTP would make another attempt to assassinate him. If one day in the near future the TTP have Hafiz Saeed in their crosshairs, it would surprise nobody.

In the meantime, the little girl Malala has called Mir from the UK to express her solidarity and her trust that they will together defeat the terrorists.

Things in Pakistan will not change unless the Pakistani political leadership orders their armed forces to get rid of their “strategic assets” i.e. the terrorists.

K B Kale
Jakarta