Pakistan Cedes Media Control Over Waziristan?

 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—After coming to power last year, one of the first things the new government did was appoint Mr. Murtaza Solangi, a Voice of America employee, as the head of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation.  Mr. Solangi worked for Ms. Farahnaz Ispahani, who worked for VOA before getting a seat in the Senate of Pakistan representing the PPP government.  She is also the spouse of Mr. Husain Haqqani, Ambassador to Washington who is also the present government’s undercover media guru [tasked with defending anything to do with Zardari and US].  Reorganizing Pakistani foreign policy and media policy were two things Mr. Haqqani focused at the start of his government’s term.  Solangi, Ispahani and Haqqani do not represent the ‘pro-US lobby’ within the incumbent Pakistani government.  They are just the tip of the iceberg.  In our tribal belt, you can hardly catch the signals of PTV News, the state-run Pakistani channel, but Mr. Solangi deemed it appropriate to give VOA three transmitters to unleash US propaganda inside this small patch of Pakistan.  Mr. Solangi is a professional Pakistani journalist.  The problem with the deal he struck with VOA is that it expands US influence in a country that has too much of it, in an area where Pakistan’s national security interest is already under attack from foreign elements in Afghanistan.