'One more misery'

Fatemah Farag follows the cruel saga of an American reporter's abduction in Pakistan
Former Beirut hostage Terry Anderson put it best when he said: "[kidnapping a journalist] is not useful -- it doesn't work... No-one is going to negotiate with kidnappers." And yet, 38-year-old correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, , was kidnapped last week. It happened in Karachi, Pakistan. He walked out of a restaurant with two men and was not seen again until his picture appeared on the Internet showing him shackled, his head pushed down and a gun pointed at it.
Fahmy Howeidy, the Al-Ahram columnist who signed a petition calling for Pearl's immediate and unconditional release, explains that this is an action undertaken "out of frustration. To vent anger without thought of the consequences." It is the action of those who have lost hope in the ability to change anything.
The reasoning to Pearl's abduction stems from the exacerbated sense of frustration in the region since the US-led "war against terror." In a recent article from Pakistan, written by Christopher Hitchens and published in Vanity Fair, he notes with alarm that while, "As a rule, I resent reading feverish journalistic accounts of swarthy locations; I avoid using non-human terms such as "teeming" or "seething," and I have often been received with exquisite hospitality in the poorest parts of the Islamic world... this was different." According to Hitchens, in Pakistan there was "a miasma of self-pity mingled with self-righteousness. It takes hysterical and contradictory forms..."
One such form is the plight of . Some of the content of the e-mails sent by his captors indicates this. The one sent on 30 January stated, "We will give you one more day. If America will not meet out demands, we will kill Daniel." And the reason for this cruel ultimatum? "Are the Pakistanis imprisoned in Cuba not human beings? Why is our government silent about them? Are innocent people not among them? Unfortunately there is no court and no justice available for them. America can take whatever decision it wants... Pakistanis are weaker than [the citizens] of some counties but we are not shameless."
No religious rhetoric. Instead, the same arguments regarding the appalling conditions of prisoners at Camp X-Ray that most decent western intellectuals are making.
There is also the bitter sarcasm of those upon whom great pain and injustice has been inflicted: "We apologise to his family for the worry caused," ran the message, "and we will send them food packages just as amreeka apologised for collateral damage and dropped food packages on" the relatives of Afghans "that it killed. We hope Mr Danny's family will be grateful for the food packets."
Pearl had been in Pakistan for two weeks attempting to unravel the trail of the British shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who had allegedly been in e-mail contact with an associate in Pakistan before attempting a suicide mission while flying from Paris to Miami in December. Also, according to Helene Collins of the Wall Street Journal, "he [Pearl] was in Karachi seeking to interview leaders of Islamic groups for possible articles on the war's impact on the region."
A reporter for the high powered New York based Wall Street Journal, Pearl had climbed the ladder of success from domestic news beats to the London and Paris offices, from where he covered the Middle East, and finally to Bombay as the paper's South Asia correspondent. In a Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) petition calling for his release and signed by prominent American and Arab journalists, Pearl is described as "a professional journalist of the highest standard. During his own assignment covering the Arab part of the Muslim world, he worked with honesty, courage and independence of mind to write the truth about the conflicts and problems of the region as he saw it. Like the rest of us, he did his best to convey the opinions and emotions of the people of the region."
Hisham Kassem, publisher of the weekly Cairo Times, met Pearl in Cairo for the first time in 1996. "I translated for him a few times. Later, whenever he was in Cairo, we would make time to meet. He was very affable," recounted Kassem to Al-Ahram Weekly, "He was not one of those foreign correspondents who grabs a quote from here and another from there and then sticks it all together. He was very dedicated to his work." He takes a minute before confiding, "One of the things that makes me very sad is the thought of his pregnant wife, Marriane. I remember when he first met her, how he said she was so wonderful. He came back to tell me they were thinking of moving in together. And after all that they face this."
Local journalists are often derisive of foreign correspondents, forever on the trail of one "newsworthy" incident after the other. They watch men and women, who for the most part are ignorant of their language, history and cultural context, walk in and out of their countries spouting all sorts of at- best-superficial "objective truths" -- the cut and paste types described by Kassem. Pearl, according to all who knew him, was not of this type, but the real problem is that the Western, and especially the American media is increasingly being perceived in the Arab and Muslim world as a monolithic whole, fully identifiable with the policies of the US government.
Wall Street Journal correspondent James Darcey acknowledges the frustration, although he argues it is two-sided. "Americans in the US are frustrated by the way the Arab media covers their news and portrays them. I am currently in Saudi Arabia and I know the kind of frustration that people on this side of the world feel as well but, in the Arab case, I think that much of the anger is because people do not make the distinction between editorial material and straight reporting. In most cases they are really angry with the editorial," he told the Weekly.
It is not the first time that journalism's potential hazards have taken a personal bent for Darcey. "This is not the first time that a colleague of mine has been kidnapped. It would not be the first time a colleague was killed. It is not the first time [that the job] has become personal. But this does not change the way I do my work."
Whatever the reasons are for Pearl's abduction or the extent of Arab and Muslim anger at America's "war on terror", when news of Pearl's abduction broke, journalists of all persuasions across the Arab world expressed both horror at the kidnapping and solidarity with the appeals for Pearl's immediate and unconditional release. "The response [to the appeal] has been overwhelming," Darcey explained, "Everybody of prominence in the Arab world has expressed support."
What has been reconstructed of the events leading to Pearl's abduction is the following: on 23 January Pearl took a taxi to a restaurant in central Karachi, where he met up with two non-American intermediaries, and left with them, apparently of his own free will.
From then on, the whole operation went high-tech, with the culprits employing the Internet, digital cameras, photos sent as JPEG attachments and mobile phones, not to mention very good idiomatic English -- all symbols of the modern, "civilised" world.
After four days of no news, news bureaus received the first e-mail from his captors. The e-mail was from kidnapperguy@hotmail.com, the first in a series of five which included sender addresses such as strangepeoples@yahoo.com and antiamericanimperialism@yahoo.com.
The first e-mail included four pictures of Pearl and announced that he had been abducted by the until then unheard-of Movement for the Restoration of Pakistan's Sovereignty. The e-mail spelled out the group's demands; the most important of these was the release of Pakistani captives being held by the US at the infamous Camp X-Ray as well as a demand that the trial of these suspects be held in Pakistan -- the argument being that since "Pakistan was a full member of the international coalition against terror... it deserves the right to try its citizens." Also the captors called for the release of Mullah Abdul- Salam Zaeef, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan and that the US complete a previous deal made with Pakistan for a number of F-16 planes. If these demands were not met, the e-mail claimed Pearl would be killed.
On 30 January, a second e-mail stipulated a 24 hour deadline after which, were their demands not met, they would kill Pearl. The deadline was then extended by another 24 hours.
The State Department announced that it would not negotiate with the kidnappers. Pearl's pregnant wife, Marianne, went on television to plead for her husband's life and John Sussey, senior executive for the Wall Street Journal, headed to Karachi. In New York, the Journal's managing editor, Paul Steiger, sent out repeated messages to Pearl's captors calling for his release. "Only through Danny's safe release will your group have the opportunity to tell your side of the story and have the entire world focus on your words," Steiger said.
On Friday, an e-mail was sent to US television stations claiming that Pearl had been killed and his body thrown in a Karachi cemetery. A search by the police of the local cemeteries came up with nothing and this e-mail is now viewed as a hoax.
Finally, there was the latest in the series of e- mails, asserting that the person who sent the e-mail announcing Pearl's death had been killed in punishment for his action.
The unfolding of events has been simply tortuous and is currently being investigated by a new team, led by Mir Zubair Mohamoud, a senior police official fresh back from a counter-terrorism training course in the US. According to Pakistani sources, the FBI are involved in following up the cyber trail. At first, it was reported that the Pakistani police suspected Harakat Al-Mujahedin, one of the best known Pakistani militant Islamist groups. Later, the same police claimed that Pearl had been taken to meet Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, the leader of Gamaat Al-Fukra, founded in the US over 20 years ago and banned in 1996 on the grounds that it had become an active terrorist group. Gilani has been detained by Pakistani police in Rawalpindi, yet it remains unclear as to whether this has yielded any results.
Elsewhere, a man who calls himself Arif and has been identified as Qadir Hashim, is the one who helped Pearl arrange the doomed meeting in Karachi. However, when police raided Hashim's house last week, his family said that he had died four days earlier fighting Americans in Afghanistan. Since then, two other names have been added to the wanted list: Imtiaz Siddiqui and Bashir.
On 31 January, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman, Rashid Quereshi, told the press that "There has been progress... I can't go into details because of the risk of jeopardising the investigations." He added, however, that "There is an Indian linkage to this." India's Ministry of External Affairs promptly denounced the charge as "ridiculous."
Pakistan is under pressure to solve the case before Musharraf's scheduled visit to Washington next week. According to Moinuddin Haidar, the Pakistani minister of interior, his government is optimistic that Pearl will be found alive. In the meantime, an American team headed by Kenneth Dam, deputy treasury secretary, was in Pakistan on Monday with the message that everything should be done to insure Pearl's safe release.
Pakistan is no stranger to various forms of violence against the men and women of the media. The independent organisation, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has documented that this is a country where "journalists [in the year 2001] were still arrested, newspapers banned and... the press a victim of violence." Part of this is the government's doing, and part is a direct result of corruption and ethnic fighting. Karachi and other parts of the Sindh province have seen countless kidnappings in recent years. Meanwhile, the interior of Sindh has been out of bounds to foreign reporters without an armed escort for many months.
None of which is any consolation, since Pearl remains in captivity, his life hanging in the balance. Al-Ahram's Howeidy, whose weekly column is often fiercely critical of American policies, from an Islamic perspective, is adamant that there can be no justification for Pearl's kidnapping. "To attain noble causes we must never use immoral means. To protest against the American position on many counts is legitimate, but the use of criminal methods is not. Such actions work against the overall cause and are an unacceptable incursion on the rights of journalists that cannot be tolerated."
These arguments are in part mirrored in the CJP petition which was signed by media professionals as diverse as Christiane Amanpour from CNN London, Cengiz Candar from Yeni Safak in Istambul, Raghida Durgham of Al-Hayat in New York and Hani Shukrallah of Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo. "We affirm the rights of journalists everywhere -- be they Western, Arab, Muslim, or any other nationality and religion -- to perform their vital tasks without being subject to accusations and threats," asserted the petition.
It is highly doubtful, in any case, that Pearl's abductors expected anything positive to come out of their deed. Desperation and the need for vengeance may be explained, but ultimately it all boils down to individual suffering and pain. Speaking on BBC television from Karachi, Marianne, Pearl's wife, told her husband's captors, "Don't harm an innocent man because you're just going to create one more misery," she said. "Using Danny as a symbol and all of this is completely wrong, completely wrong."
For more information on Pearl's case and the state of journalists across the globe see: www.rsf.org
If you have any information regarding the Pearl case contact: psteiger@wsj.com
Or, to join the appeal, write to: jmdorsey@attglobal.net
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