Saturday 5 May 2012

Weapon of Mass Intimidation


Recently the terrorists in Pakistan have been using many advanced weapons, but most of the people have not yet realized that the most effective of the advanced weapons adopted by the terrorists are not any new kind of firearms. It’s something more effective and more dangerous. It’s the media. One might think that at least in Pakistan, none of the TV channels is owned by any terrorist or extremist organizations, then how could the terrorists have used the media for terrorism?

As a matter of fact, in Pakistan the terrorist outfits and banned organizations are certainly not allowed to broadcast anything, but the Pakistani law is not applicable in other countries where the organizations banned by Pakistan might be enjoying full liberty.  So, there exist some channels, being broadcasted from other countries, which primarily preach extremism. Though none of these channels is allowed to be included in the Pakistani cable network, but individuals can watch these channels through satellite. Besides terrorists also use the internet to serve their purpose, despite the government’s cyber crackdown.

This is not the major issue though. Such channels are not quite popular and affect only a very tiny part of the Pakistani population. The problem is that nowadays the Pakistani news media has been instrumental in augmenting terror in the Pakistani society. Though it’s not owned by the terrorists, but unintentionally it has become the most useful tool for them.

Terrorism is the "systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal". To intimidate a single person, the terrorist will use violence against him. But to intimidate the whole population, the terrorist can’t use violence against every person in the population. So what they do is to use violence against some people, and let the media deliver the terror to the whole population. In older times, when there used to be no electronic media, terrorists would have had a tough time to intimidate the population. The news of violence in one city could have never reached the other cities with such swiftness and effectiveness as nowadays.
      
In addition to over emphasizing the reports of terrorist activities, the Pakistani news media rarely hesitates to show graphic images, sometimes without any warning. There is absolutely no sense in showing all this to the whole population while it’s understood that these reports only depress and terrorize the population. Doing all this just fulfills the goal of the terrorists i.e. to coerce the people.

Of course it doesn’t mean that terrorist acts shouldn’t be reported at all. But there should be a proper way to report it. What would be more delightful for the terrorists than getting the whole population terrorized with a single blast, as if the whole population was present at the scene. It’s like providing audience to the terrorists. Terrorists will feel quite helpless once the Pakistani media learns to report an event like it should be reported.