Pakistani media was quick to spin UN action on Masood Azhar as diplomatic win for Islamabad

Pakistan’s establishment will continue to play the double game on Kashmir and India-focused militancy.

File photo of a man reading a newspaper in Karachi | Representational image | Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg

The United Nations listed Masood Azhar, the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), as a global terrorist Wednesday. The UN action was dubbed by most countries as a huge diplomatic victory for India.

However, in Islamabad, the local press was quick to spin it into a diplomatic victory for Pakistan. Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs (MOFA) led the charge, with its spokesperson Mohammad Faisal holding a media briefing in Islamabad.

When the news of the UN listing first came out, only international news agencies and their journalists in Pakistan were reporting it, with the Pakistani journalists taking a muted stand, given the sensitivity of the issue and the limited freedom the local news industry enjoys in matters related to national security. However, once the MOFA spokesperson briefed the journalists, they were quick to build a similar narrative.

How was the UN action on Masood Azhar projected as a victory for Pakistan? Faisal focused on the aspect where the listing did not mention the Pulwama incident, or Masood Azhar’s involvement in Kashmir. The spokesperson further tried to take ownership of this UN action by stating that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had recently said that no space will be given to proscribed organisations or its affiliates to operate from Pakistan. The UN listing, therefore, was in line with Pakistan’s vision too, he said.

Following this presser, most news organisations in Pakistan, especially those reporting in Urdu, toed the government’s line and labelled the UN listing as an “embarrassing incident for India”. Some media outlets also said that such listing will not affect Pakistan in any way. Only a few media houses remained neutral and chose to report the incident without taking any sides.

While the local Pakistani press spins a counter-narrative to Indian media’s reporting on Masood Azhar, things on the ground are unlikely to change.

Jaish-e-Mohammad has been a banned militant organisation in Pakistan since the early 2000s when General Pervez Musharraf, then-military dictator, proscribed it as part of a crackdown against militant groups in the wake of 9/11.

After it was banned in Pakistan, the group tried targeting the general, but despite such brazen attacks against the head of the state, it continued to remain active in Pakistan. Recently Musharraf himself lamented in an interview to a local network that agencies under him did not take concrete action against the group because they were using it for activities across the border.

Jaish was founded in 1999 and banned in 2002, but in the last 20 years, it has been able to grow and penetrate deep inside Pakistan. It currently runs several seminaries and mosques in the country, some of which act as its training and recruitment grounds. It recently built a grand centre, believed to be its headquarters, in Bahawalpur city, the hometown of Masood Azhar.

The Pakistani government has repeatedly claimed to have taken control of the JeM headquarters, but people who manage the facility on behalf of the authorities are said to be close to the JeM. Pakistan has also placed restrictions on Masood Azhar’s movements and put him under house arrest, but such measures are largely seen as cosmetic since Azhar and his group have continued to carry out their activities inside and outside Pakistan despite such crackdowns.

In many ways, the UN listing of Azhar will go down the same lane as the listing of Hafiz Saeed in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks. Saeed’s Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has reincarnated itself several times over with new names to defy bans. Hafiz Saeed has also faced several arrests and yet he has not only been able to operate charities and seminaries but recently launched a political party as well, which was backed by the Pakistani military establishment.

The Pakistani press’ narrative around the UN listing of Masood Azhar shows there is neither an introspection on the subject, nor any impetus to investigate JeM’s continued and widespread presence in the country. Pakistani authorities have been able to manage the narrative at home well, by controlling and intimidating the press and painting the international media hostile.

Along the western border, Pakistan’s military has been able to play a double game with the United States and its NATO allies post 9/11. On one hand, it claimed that it was waging a war on terror, and on the other hand, it allowed militants sanctuary on its soil.

It will continue to play the same game on the issues of Kashmir and India-focused militancy. It has already denied the presence of Jaish-e-Mohammed in the country even as it claims that it is cracking down on the group.

Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi recently issued a sympathetic statement about Masood Azhar, claiming that “he was too unwell” and therefore implying that he could not be involved in terror activities any longer.

But with growing international pressure and global isolation, and the upcoming Financial Action Task Force review over the effectiveness of measures against money laundering and terror financing, it is in Pakistan’s interest to show that it is serious about tackling militancy at home. Failing to do so can put Pakistan on the FATF blacklist.

Given the prevailing circumstances, Pakistan definitely has an interest in showing the world that it is doing something against militancy. But on the ground, it has no interest in actually dismantling the jihadi infrastructure because it serves Pakistan military’s strategic interests at home and in the entire region.

By allowing the militancy to flourish, the Pakistan Army ensures that there is no peace in the region. Because by doing so, the military can guarantee its domestic and regional relevance and justify its ever-increasing budgetary demands and dominance in Pakistan, a country which has been successfully turned into a security state.

The author is an award-winning Pakistani journalist living in exile in France. He teaches journalism and is writing a book on Pakistan. He also manages safenewsrooms.org, a digital media platform documenting press censorship in South Asia. He tweets @TahaSSiddiqui. Views are personal.