‘Newsgate’
Civilian-military spats are not a big deal as long as they do not make it to the front page of one of an English daily, especially when headline reads: “Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tells military”.
The contents of the report further suggests that the military creates unnecessary hindrances for the civilian set up when they attempt to take any action against militant elements as a result of constant pressure from the same military to ‘do more’.
The story obviously did not sit well within the army ranks considering the security breach aspect. Heads had to roll and almost immediately the army wanted one or multiple individuals identified as the culprits.
‘Newsgate’, as it came to be known, was all everyone was talking about and as with cases such as this the debate over ‘revealing your source or not’ came up. The English daily Dawn, where the story appeared, stuck to its guns and refused to give up its source in clear support of the writer Cyril Almeida.
Naturally, the pressure was on the government to provide at least one high-ranking figure within the PML-N ranks in order to rectify the imbalance in terms of public relations. The now ex-Information Minister Parvez Rasheed was the best the government could come up with given the circumstances, even if the reasoning seemed very weak – the information minister was supposed to stop this story.
The arguments raised by the story in question have effectively brought to the surface a debate that is otherwise avoided or settled behind the limelight in the form of clarifications and corrigendum. This particular report has resulted in a commission tasked with investigating and identifying the actual culprits.
That investigation is slow paced and will naturally run its course much to the relief of the government. Dawn did not buckle under the pressure or present people involved in the story to any scrutiny from army and civilian institutions, which is commendable. The story however could have been more balanced and better timed considering our problems with India, which has an insatiable hunger for proof that Pakistan does not do enough rather restricts effective action against terrorists.
