Author: Jim Hoagland
Publication: Houston Chronicle
Date: February 22, 2002
URL: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1267951
Heartbreaking to his family and
colleagues, the ritualistic slaughter of reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan
is more than a personal tragedy. This is a political murder that exposes
the fractures and violence of a land that has escaped the control and influence
of the Westernized, affluent elite that pretends to govern it.
The killers of The Wall Street Journal
correspondent made sure the religious fanaticism that has undermined the
rule of law in Pakistan featured prominently in their ghastly work. According
to Pakistani officials quoted by news agencies, a videotape shows an assassin
slashing the reporter's throat immediately after Pearl says into the camera:
"I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew."
Abductions and murders happen in
the most orderly of societies. It is logically possible to write off Danny
Pearl as the victim of a deranged criminal act that could have occurred
anywhere. Possible, but not wise: This murder happened where it happened
as it happened for a reason. And, other governments investigating this
crime would not have surrounded it with exactly the same odd collection
of half-truths, misstatements and evasions that came out of the regime
headed by President Pervez Musharraf.
The killers had their own symbols
in mind for the world to take away from this event. They may have been
trying to undermine Musharraf's regime, which is one of several explanations
the general has given in the month since Pearl was abducted in the chaotic
drug-smuggling port of Karachi.
But there is a larger symbolism
available. The lawlessness of Karachi that helped cost Pearl his life is
the result of a decades-long, losing struggle by the country's tiny, highly
sophisticated and essentially secular upper class to run a country founded
as an Islamic state. The impoverished and uneducated populace is virtually
invisible to its leaders as they sit in the palaces of the remote, sterile
capital of Islamabad.
Musharraf, his finance, foreign
and interior ministers, along with other senior officials I also met last
month in Islamabad, can hold their own in the chancelleries and salons
of any Western capital. They are charming, articulate and expert in their
fields. And like the generals and political brigands who held office and
robbed the nation blind before Musharraf seized power, they have cultivated
fan clubs of influential foreigners. Colin Powell's State Department and
the woefully uninformed U.S. Embassy in Islamabad currently lead the cheering
and tribute-paying.
But the conversations with Musharraf
and other officials uncovered both a fear and an ignorance of political
and social behavior in the rural areas and biggest cities of Pakistan.
Musharraf repeatedly explained that he had been astonished to discover
that he could denounce religious extremism and not face serious upheaval
in the streets of his cities. And he said he would not increase the miserly
amounts now spent to educate girls in rural areas because that would be
culturally controversial.
There is a political schizophrenia
as well as a cultural divide in Pakistan. Asked one day about Pearl's abduction,
Musharraf sought to blame it on India. Then the general said his domestic
opponents had done it to embarrass him. His security officials leaked word
of the arrest of a prominent Islamic militant, Sheik Omar Saeed, on kidnapping
charges as Musharraf was arriving in Washington on Feb. 12. It now turns
out that Saeed turned himself in a week earlier.
Unraveling the details of what happened
to Pearl would be difficult under the best of circumstances in the gangland
shadows of Karachi. But with the investigation under the control of an
intellectually inconsistent regime that merely pretends to be in touch
with its own disinherited population, that task will be next to impossible.
Despite Musharraf's assurances in Washington that Pearl was likely to be
rescued soon, the leads that would have made that possible never developed.
Daniel Pearl died in a journalist's
search for truth, in the best tradition of his profession. But the political
uses of his murder implicate all Americans in his fate. Washington is pouring
billions of dollars in aid and debt relief into a very shaky society, which
has grown embittered over repeatedly seeing aid money disappear before
it ever gets to the villages and ghettos. The U.S. assumption is that Musharraf
wants to and can stabilize the collapsing system he inherited. This abduction-murder
and its bungled investigation are more signs of how tenuous those assumptions
-- and Musharraf's grip -- really are.
Hoagland is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
syndicated columnist, specializing in foreign affairs. hoaglandj@washpost.com
