Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [136]
Even more importantly, the middle classes and the journalists among them are just as suffused with hostility to the US and its presence in Afghanistan as the rest of society. Depressingly, this has also meant that I have heard as many cretinous conspiracy theories about America from journalists as from ordinary Pakistanis – indeed more, because the journalists’ background gives them more raw material with which to weave their fantasies. In fairness, however, I must say that liberal journalists are just as bad, with the difference that their baroque conspiracy theories are directed at the army.
The media are therefore a microcosm of the Pakistani middle classes, and reflect their views. One sign of this is television’s approach to religion. Many liberals are horrified by the number of religious programmes on TV – though as of 2009 this is only five out of around eighty, which is roughly the US proportion. It is equally true that Jamaati supporters with whom I have spoken have been horrified by the content of many of these programmes.
This is partly because of a response to audience wishes and the strong element of popular religion, involving the worship of saints and other ‘Hindu superstitions’. It is also because, owing to privately owned television’s innate need for controversy and excitement, a considerable amount of debate and disagreement about religion appears on TV – once again, accurately reflecting the conflicting views of Pakistani society, but infuriating the orthodox. I was told about (though haven’t been able to trace) one lively exchange on a phone-in programme on religious rules when a Sunni cleric told a woman that it was sinful to paint her nails, and his Shia colleague asked him why, in that case, he himself was dyeing his beard!
It was indeed surprising that middle-class journalists from classes which generally have a traditional reverence for the army (if only because so many of their relatives are officers) should have turned against the Musharraf administration so radically in 2007 – 8 – especially since they had generally begun by supporting him. This can be partly be explained by a genuine middle-class respect for the law and desire to defend the independence of the judiciary; but it can also be explained by the fact that respect for the army is closely connected with nationalism. As in the judiciary itself, Musharraf’s perceived subservience to the US and obedience to ‘US orders to kill his own people’ had already begun to cripple his prestige with the middle classes before the Lawyers’ Movement rose against him. The same perception of being ‘America’s slave’, together with corruption, explains the growing hostility of much of the media to the Zardari administration in 2009 – 10.
This hostility to the US, rather than extremist feeling as such, explains the rather shocking toleration for the Pakistani Taleban shown by much of Pakistani television up to the spring of 2009. This did not take the form of outright propaganda, but rather of playing interviews with Taleban spokesmen, and military or official interviews, on an equal basis and without commentary; and, in the reporting of terrorist acts, of frequent references to conspiracy theories which might excuse the Taleban from responsibility.
This was not a matter of cynical manipulation – as far as I can see, from a great many interviews with journalists, they believed these theories implicitly themselves. There was therefore a reciprocal effect, with the media sucking up public prejudices and playing them back to the public, strengthening them in the process. In the spring of 2009, however, there was a real change. The military did