At War: Pakistan Loses Another Journalist

Arshad Arbab/European Pressphoto AgencyNasrullah Afridi, a local journalist in Peshawar, Pakistan, was killed by a bomb planted in his vehicle.

“You better come to your senses.” This was the last threat received by the Pakistani journalist Nasrullah Afridi days before he was killed in a car bomb blast in Peshawar on May 10, his friend and colleague Sher Khan said in a telephone interview.

Pakistan has been listed as one of the deadliest countries for journalists by independent journalists’ associations, and there have been a number of uninvestigated deaths of journalists. However, the harshest and most frequent attacks have taken place in the northwestern region of the country, which includes Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Since the kidnapping and slaying of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, at least 15 other journalists have died in targeted killings in Pakistan, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mr. Afridi, 35, had been receiving threats since 2007; those threats eventually forced him to leave his home town, Bara, in Khyber Agency, a tribal area in northwest Pakistan. His house was even bombed with low-intensity explosives.

Mr. Afridi, like a number of other journalists from the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan, had to move his base to Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. There, he worked for Mashriq, an Urdu-language daily, and was a correspondent for the state-owned Pakistan Television. He was also president of the Bara Press Club.

“We thought it was safer for us to work from Peshawar,” said Mr. Khan, who was with Mr. Afridi the day before the bombing. That day, he said, Mr. Afridi had been buying wheelchairs for a school for special-needs children with money he had raised. The cause was close to Mr. Afridi’s heart, because three of his six children had disabilities.

Mr. Afridi was widely known to have been a been a target of Lashkar-e-Islam, a banned militant group headed by Mangal Bagh that is known to have ties with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Islam is one of several militant groups fighting for control of the Khyber Agency. The Pakistani military has had limited success in tamping down the fighting among these groups, and Mr. Mangal Bagh has not been captured.

Most of the journalists from the Khyber Agency live in the same building where they work. Mr. Afridi did not.

Mr. Khan said he heard a loud explosion four minutes after Mr. Afridi had called him to let him know that he was leaving early for home because he was tired. Mr. Khan and other journalists ran outside, thinking there had been a blast in the building, but saw Mr. Afridi’s car in flames. When the flames died down, they saw a charred body in the driver’s seat, unrecognizable even by those who had known him for years.

“One could not even tell if that body was of a human being,” Mr. Khan said, his voice breaking during the interview. Mr. Afridi’s associates and relatives decided not to show his body to the family. Mr. Afridi’s father, who caught a glimpse of it during the burial, has still not recovered from the shock. Mr. Afridi’s eldest son is 18, and there is no family member who can support his family now.

Mr. Afridi’s death, like other targeted killings in the region, has created a climate of fear among reporters and residents. “We are scared of our own shadow,” Mr. Khan said.

Rabia Mehmood is the I.W.M.F. Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T., and is a correspondent for Express 24/7 in Lahore, Pakistan. Follow her on Twitter @Rabail26.

 

U.S. Loses Bids to Supply Jets to India

The decision was a blow for President Obama, who had pushed hard for this and other defense deals during his visit to India in November as part of his agenda to deepen and broaden the United States’ relationship with India. The American ambassador to India, Timothy J. Roemer, who separately announced on Thursday that he would resign from his post for personal reasons, said the United States was “deeply disappointed by this news.”

While political and economic relations between India and the United States have been warming for years, American arms makers have struggled to win big contracts here. After decades of frosty relations during the cold war, which pushed India to rely extensively on the Soviet Union for military hardware, many in the Indian defense establishment are still wary of American intentions and United States military aid to Pakistan, India’s main adversary.

The American bid to build the fighters came from Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Boeing had offered its F/A -18 jets, and Lockheed Martin pitched its F-16 planes. But India instead narrowed the list to the Rafale fighter from Dassault and the Eurofighter Typhoon jet made by a consortium of European companies. Russian and Swedish bids were also turned down.

The 126 planes are meant to replace aging Russian jets. A spokesman for the Indian Defense Ministry said the country hoped to make a final decision by the end of March 2012.

Both American companies are also looking to sell other military hardware to India, which unlike much of the Western world has been sharply increasing its defense spending. Some analysts say India could spend $50 billion to $80 billion on equipment in the next five years.

One Indian international affairs analyst, C. Raja Mohan, played down the significance of the American companies’ loss of this deal. He said that the Indian government was buying more from United States contractors than ever before.

“One deal doesn’t make everything,” said Mr. Mohan, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “There has been a lot of hype about this deal. We are doing things with the U.S. that we never did before.”

But another analyst, Nitin Pai, argued that India’s decision would hurt relations with the United States, at a time when the country needed stronger ties with America to advance its interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the United Nations Security Council, on which India is seeking a permanent seat.

“This move will most certainly reduce India’s geopolitical leverage with the U.S. military-industrial complex, at a time when India needs it most,” Mr. Pai wrote on his blog, The Acorn. He added, “Is the United States more likely to be sympathetic to India’s interests after an $11 billion contract — which means much needed jobs for the U.S. economy — is awarded to someone else?”

Dinesh Keskar, president of Boeing’s Indian operation, said that while the company was “obviously disappointed” about not making the cut for the fighter jets, it was “quite excited about the opportunities in India.” He added that the company was seeking a meeting with Indian officials to find out why its planes were not selected.

Boeing said the company and the Indian Air Force were in the final stages of negotiating a contract for C-17 cargo planes that was announced by Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in November. And it is hoping to win orders for attack and heavy-lift helicopters.

“We are quite engaged with and will continue our partnership with India,” Mr. Keskar said in a telephone interview.