By Samira Shackele
Shortly after 11pm on 8 June 2014, 10 men dressed in military uniforms split
into two groups outside the Jinnah International airport in Karachi. Armed with
automatic weapons, hand grenades and rocket‑launchers, they entered the
complex, one group going over a perimeter wall and the other through an
entrance generally reserved for top government officials and foreign
dignitaries. The assault was tightly planned, and the men were prepared for a
long siege. Some wore suicide vests under their uniforms.
A few minutes later, Zille Hyder, a crime reporter for Geo, then
Pakistan’s most popular news channel, heard an explosion from his home, around
10km away from the airport. Hyder had recently been told by a police contact
that the intelligence services were anticipating an attack on the airport, so
he called the Geo office to report the disturbance. His colleagues on the news
desk immediately ran a ticker along the bottom of the screen announcing an
explosion at the airport. It was Hyder’s evening off, but he got into his car
and raced to Jinnah International.
After 12 years of reporting, Hyder has become one of Karachi’s
most respected TV journalists but the job has swallowed his life whole. He is
on a Taliban hitlist;
his friends are the police and criminals who feed him his stories; his phone is
filled with hastily snapped crime scene photos of dead bodies.
When Hyder arrived at the airport, around 20 minutes after he
heard the blast, police had yet to cordon off the area and he quickly slipped
inside. A violent battle was under way, as troops from the Airport Security
Force exchanged fire with the militants. Inside, staff and passengers hid
anywhere they could. Outside, on the runway, hundreds of terrified passengers
were trapped on grounded planes. By around 1am hundreds more police and
soldiers had arrived at the scene and sealed the airport complex, locking Hyder
inside and the other journalists out.
As the battle continued, television camera crews broadcast
footage of smoke plumes rising from what looked like the main runway. Anchors
speculated about what was happening inside. Journalists and photographers vied
for information, calling police contacts and gleaning what they could about the
battle in progress. Hyder, who claims that he was the only reporter inside the
airport, used his phone to record videos and to text colleagues with
information.
This proved useful not just to viewers at home. As the battle
was unfolding, Pakistan’s relentlessly competitive media did not hesitate to
report everything as it happened. News tickers revealed which gates the army
was entering from, where police were situated, and which areas were being
cordoned off. Inside the airport, the militants were keeping up with the TV
updates and adjusting their positions accordingly. “I accept this is the wrong
thing,” Hyder said later, with a guilty laugh. “But what can I do? It’s my
work.”
Around 4am, an hour before dawn, the fighting stopped. Security
forces had shot dead eight of the 10 militants; the last two killed themselves by
detonating their suicide vests. Four airline employees had been killed, as well
as 14 security forces. The death toll rose a few days later when the corpses of
seven people were discovered inside the airport’s cold storage facility, frozen
to death while they hid. The Pakistani branch of the Taliban, the
Sunni-extremist TTP, claimed
responsibility for the attack.
The Taliban attack on Jinnah
International airport in which more than 30 people died. Photograph: Rizwan
Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images
In the past decade and a half, terror attacks have become just
another element of a crime wave in Karachi that is virtually an insurgency. In May, gunmen entered a
bus and shot dead 46
Ismaili Shia Muslims; in 2011, 20 militants stormed a naval
base; bombings of religious parades are so frequent that on public
holidays the city is placed on high alert and mobile phone networks are shut
down. When Pakistan gained independence in 1947, Karachi was a cosmopolitan
coastal city of 500,000 people, that carried the hopes of this new nation.
Sixty years on, it is one of the most violent places in the world.
For the 23 million people who live there, crime has become a
central part of life, as commonplace as traffic jams and power cuts. In 2013,
at least 2,700 people were murdered, more than in any other city in the world.
The wealthy have armed guards at their homes; even bakeries in the elite
districts have metal detectors and weary security guards sitting outside,
rifles slung across their shoulders. The Express Tribune, an English-language
newspaper, publishes a crime map every day in its Karachi edition, under such
headlines as “Shootings and raids” or “Mishaps and bodies found”.
It is not just the high rate of crime that marks Karachi out,
but the entanglement of crime with the very highest echelons of politics: the
gangsters who stand for parliament, the politicians who sanction street
killings. Karachi’s criminal syndicates do not limit themselves to slums. The bhatta (extortion) economy, is
worth billions of rupees. A few years ago, I visited a poor district in the
east of the city, and met a local youth leader who told me that most families
spent at least a third of their income on water sold from tanks; the “water
mafia” siphoned off the mains supply and charged outrageous rates to sell it
back to people. The “transport mafia” has repeatedly stymied attempts to build
a proper public transportation system. At some point, most citizens have to do
business with criminals – to buy a house, start a business, get running water,
take a bus.
In recent years, militant groups have taken advantage of the city’s
lawlessness to establish a foothold, effectively taking control of certain
areas. Now, suicide bombings and violent attacks on state targets have been
added to the regular gun battles between rival criminal gangs and the steady
stream of targeted killings of political party activists.
It falls to Hyder and the city’s crime reporters to make sense
of the throbbing disorder of Karachi. The fact that crime has infiltrated every
aspect of life there puts them in the curious position of being minor celebrities;
Hyder regularly receives fan mail and is often recognised in public. The
Karachi airport attack shows that reporters can sometimes go overboard – but
deciphering the shifts in ethnic conflict and gangland alliances is a vital
job. The fate of Pakistan depends
on Karachi, the megalopolis that provides a quarter of the nation’s GDP, and
the fate of Karachi will be decided by the power struggles between its
gangsters, terrorists, police and political groups.
Where Hyder’s right forearm meets his
wrist, there is a bullet. Within minutes
of my first meeting with him this spring, he pointed it out to me. “It’s a very
exciting job,” he laughed, as he traced the outline of a small, hard bulge
lodged just under the skin.
Hyder acquired the bullet three years ago, while filming a
night-time shootout between two militant groups in Sohrab Goth, a Taliban
stronghold in northern Karachi. He was caught in the crossfire, and was rushed
to hospital, where a surgeon managed to remove three of the four bullets lodged
in his arm. His TV channel Geo made the event into a cause celebre, putting up
huge posters bearing Hyder’s image. “While chaos, bullets, and explosions cause
most people to flee, Geo’s field staff is fearless and brave,” read the
caption. “Taking their life in their hands, they fulfil their duty.”
In recent years, much of Hyder’s reporting has focused on the
Karachi police. Overstretched and underfunded, the force has just 30,000
officers. (London’s Metropolitan police employs nearly 50,000 for a population
of 8.3 million.) Since 2013, the force has been engaged in an effort to bring
the city under control. Announcing the mission, known simply as the Karachi
operation, interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters that the
police and the Pakistan Rangers – a paramilitary force under the direct control
of the Ministry of the Interior – would focus on the “four heinous crimes of target-killing,
kidnapping, extortion and terrorism”. The result has been a dramatic increase
in extrajudicial killings or “encounters” as they are euphemistically known.
Since the operation began, 800 people have been killed by police. Officers, who
generally claim they are acting in self-defence, are rarely held to account.
Hyder says that he has covered more than 3,000 police
“encounters” over the years. Despite the questionable legality of these raids,
police often invite journalists along, eager to show a disillusioned public
that they are at least doing something. It is a beat that has made Hyder a
target for terrorists. In November 2014, he was told by a police contact that
his name was on a hitlist drawn up by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Swat (TTS), an
offshoot of the main terror group in the country. The TTS believes that Hyder’s
reporting on police killings of militants glorifies the force. It also
considers Hyder a heretic: like 20% of Pakistan’s population, he is Shia.
Hyder is a small man, very thin, with hooded eyes and a sharp
gaze. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the threats to his life, there is something
evasive about him. He is always reaching for one of his two phones, lighting a
cigarette, surveying his surroundings, leaning sideways as if trying to avoid
being seen. If you ask a basic question, like his age, he will give three
different answers on three different days. (He told me 32, 33, and 38 – but
gave his date of birth as 1974, which would make him 41.) Yet he is obsessed
with the idea of reporting the truth, regardless of who it upsets. Despite his
cagey manner, his Facebook page is full of selfies; at press conferences, at
protests, sitting in his office, out for dinner.
“It’s life, not just a job,” he told me one evening, flicking
through WhatsApp messages from police officers. Later that night, we went for a
drive. A rolled up prayer mat sat under the windscreen of Hyder’s car and black
netting blocked out the side windows. Since being placed on the hit-list, Hyder
is wary of attracting unwanted attention. As we drove through the city, his
phones rang constantly. One police officer texted to say that a big shipment of
heroin from Balochistan had been intercepted, another to say that two gangsters
had been arrested and a cache of weapons seized in a separate raid.
Crime reporter Zille Hyder at the
scene of a gun battle between police and militants in Ali Town, Karachi.
Photograph: Qaisar Khan/Commissioned for the Guardian
Hyder stopped the car at Sea View, one of Karachi’s beaches. A
group of teenagers behind us were roasting corn over a barrow. Small children
ran up and down the side of the beach. In this anonymous space, Hyder seemed to
relax.
“You see the lights at sea? It’s ships and boats,” said Hyder.
“If you travel six hours from here, you reach Bombay. In 2008, the men who
attacked the Taj hotel took the boat from Karachi.” To Hyder, the city is a
living tapestry of crime past and present; even a serene ocean view has a
thread of violence running through it.
On 8 August 1979, a young student
activist named Altaf
Hussain stood before a rally at the tomb of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of
Pakistan, and set fire to the country’s flag. Following decades of ethnic
tension, it was an act that marked a new phase in the inter-ethnic violence
that would eventually come to define Karachi. The party Hussain went on to
form, the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), represented Mohajirs, Urdu-speaking
Muslims who came to Pakistan from India during partition. For years, the
Mohajirs had clashed with the local Sindhi population, who resented the fact
that Mohajirs – who tended to be educated, and already spoke Urdu, the new
lingua franca – easily slotted into government jobs. Now, with the creation of
the MQM, the violence evolved from spontaneous riots into something altogether
more organised.
In the 1980s, at the same time that the MQM was emerging as a
political force, millions of Pashtun refugees from Soviet-occupied Afghanistan
arrived in Karachi. Sindhis, Pashtuns and Mohajirs fought over land, influence,
and political power. Street warfare broke out in parts of the city.Combatants
were equipped with Kalashnikovs and sometimes rocket-propelled grenades and
machine guns. In 1992, the army responded with Operation Clean Up, in which
thousands of people were killed or went missing. It is generally regarded as
the bloodiest period in the city’s history.
Most political parties – including the main parties of national
government – maintain an armed wing in Karachi. Often, they operate in
conjunction with one of the city’s many criminal syndicates. The MQM has long
had a militant wing that is said to torture and assassinate opponents. Its
trademark is putting corpses – sometimes those of journalists – in body bags
(or bori) and then dumping them in vacant properties or drains,
ready to be found by members of the public. In a political meeting in London
captured on video in 2009, Hussain – who denies that his party is violent –
suggested that his political opponents in Pakistan should get themselves
measured for body bags.
In order to get closer to the stories he is reporting, Hyder has
built close relationships with prominent gangsters. Lyari is Karachi’s biggest
slum, a dusty and crime-ridden area that has been the centre of an intermittent
gang war for over a decade. Until recently, Lyari’s kingpin was a self-styled
gentleman gangster named Uzair Baloch,
who regularly hosted international journalists at his Scarface-style villa.
Over the last few years, he has sought access to mainstream politics,
plastering huge posters of himself around Lyari.
Some years ago, Baloch tried to bribe Hyder to abandon a story
about one of his associates. Hyder politely refused, and the two soon became
friends. Baloch allowed Hyder safe access to Lyari. For reporters unwilling to
befriend these criminal elements – and some refuse to, on principle – it was
inaccessible. “Lyari is Karachi’s most dangerous place, but it’s my favourite
place because Uzair is my very best friend,” Hyder told me. (He is given to
superlatives.)
In December 2014, the two men went on holiday to Dubai together.
It was partly a working trip – Baloch had promised Hyder news – but partly for
leisure. Hyder says that during the trip Baloch, aware that his political
fortunes were turning, told him that he intended to be arrested in Dubai.
“He doesn’t want to be in jail in Pakistan because he will be
killed in a fake encounter,” Hyder told me. “In Dubai he can stay alive.”
Hyder flew back to Karachi, and within days, Baloch was arrested
in Dubai. From jail, a few months later, Baloch reportedly confessed to
carrying out assassinations on behalf of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). It
was a spectacular turnaround in fortunes for a man who was once untouchable.
Now that Baloch is no longer at large, Hyder relies on lower‑ranking
gangsters for his stories. Many have gone to ground because of the current
police operation in Karachi. Instead of fleeing to other parts of the country,
well-connected criminals hide out in the wealthy districts of Defence and
Clifton, where high walls and wide avenues provide cover. The city is vast: gun
battles might consume one area while life goes on as normal elsewhere.
Hyder grew up in the middle-class area of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, where he lived with
his parents and four sisters. He studied English at the University of Karachi.
After graduating, he had a brief and unsuccessful stint running a hairdressing
salon with a friend. Then he dedicated his time to seeking out a media job and,
in 2003, was hired by Geo TV to work on the entertainment desk. On the side, he
began to work as a researcher on a programme called National Investigation Cell
that reconstructed crimes. “I’d go to the locations and follow up thoroughly
even in no-go areas,” Hyder said. “I didn’t feel at all afraid of going to
dangerous spots to discover more. So my bosses thought, ‘OK, he should be in
the news.’ My dreams came true. God always fulfils my dreams.”
The Geo TV office is situated in the heart of Karachi’s business
district, on Chundrigar Road. It is set back from the street by a series of
roadblocks. As is standard at media offices in Pakistan, armed security guards
and metal detectors obstruct the entrance.
One afternoon, I took a rickety wood-panelled lift to the news
desk on the fifth floor. Marooned on an island of empty desks – journalists
start work late in Pakistan – was Talha Hashmi, senior reporter at Geo and a
long-time colleague of Hyder’s. An amiable man with a neatly trimmed beard, he
was busy receiving news updates via WhatsApp or telephone, making calls to
check facts, and writing news tickers. Police, terrorists, and even gang
leaders are all keen to make it onto the tickers. In 2003, when Lyari was
consumed by a brutal turf war, gangsters from each side would call contacts at
TV stations to get them to broadcast tickers about the murder of prominent
opponents. Senior police officer Rao Anwar, the man in charge of the operation
to bring Karachi under control, is also a regular fixture. Every crime reporter
I met had a wry laugh about Anwar’s eagerness to be personally credited as the
killer of suspected militants.
Geo was established in 2002, after the military ruler General
Pervez Musharraf allowed the licensing of private broadcasters. Until then,
there was only one news channel, the state-run PTV. Now, there are scores. For
most of the last decade, Geo has been the most popular. There is no shortage of
news in Karachi but, on Geo, any lull is considered unacceptable. Anchors hype
up the smallest developments and the screen frenetically cuts to different
crime scenes. (When I lived in Karachi in 2012, I once saw a ticker on Geo
announcing an explosion near my house. I cancelled my evening plans. Later, it
transpired that the “explosion” was a car engine backfiring.) Flick to any of
Pakistan’s other news channels, and the experience is much the same. They are
competing on the same ground: who can be fastest and most exciting. “It’s a
rat-race,” said Hashmi. “Now there are so many channels, and in the craze to be
the fastest, you have to compromise.”
The lives of Karachi’s journalists have been at risk for years,
but terrorist groups – which became much more active in the years following
September 11 – added a violent new element. Many reporters avoid the subject of
terrorism altogether, while others use neutral terminology: “banned
organisations” for groups and “militants” or “activists” for individuals. Hyder
reports on terrorism, as his place on the TTS hitlist shows, but tends to use
the term “activist” even in private conversation. Journalists also face a
threat from the security services and political groups. In 2011, Hyder’s
colleague at Geo, Wali Khan Babur, was shot dead by activists from the MQM.
“For crime reporters, life is calculated,” Hyder said, as we
drove to dinner in Clifton. It was evening and the city was cloaked in humid
darkness. Hyder’s mood was morose; a contrast to his usual pronouncements about
how lucky he is. Hyder’s parents don’t like his job. Neither does his wife, who
works in a bank and cares for their two young daughters, aged one and three.
“I cannot move anywhere easily,” he said. “I don’t often sit
with friends, I don’t go to parties. I have to be very careful.”
A few months ago, when he took his three-year-old daughter to
register at school, the head teacher recognised him. “I don’t want to receive
threats or cause problems for other children,” she said. She would admit his
daughter if he agreed to one condition: never to collect or drop her himself.
Hyder had no choice but to agree. Increasingly, old friends are slipping away,
afraid to be seen with him in public. “I used to play cricket, but now, people
don’t want to play with me. If I try to get a friend to go shopping, he’ll
refuse – not outright, but they’ll make excuses: ‘I’m busy today.’ It is very
painful.”
The police and gangsters to whom he often refers as his “very
best friends” are a poor substitute. “That’s just for work,” he said. “It’s
part of life and a part of the job. If you’re not friends with any gangsters,
how is it possible to get criminal news? If you don’t have friends in the
police, who will disclose anything to you? True friendship is a different
thing.”
He was silent for some time, the background chorus of honking
horns and traffic noises filling the gap. “I don’t trust anyone.”
One morning I woke up to a WhatsApp message from Hyder
asking how I was. A few minutes later, my phone buzzed again. I opened the
message to find multiple pictures of corpses, close-ups of the bloodied faces
of five bearded men, staring blankly into the camera lens. “Police encounter on
TTP militants in Sohrab Goth last night,” he typed. A few minutes later, he
sent through some cheerful selfies of himself in his new office.
A few weeks earlier, Hyder had quit his job at Geo after 11
years, frustrated by diving ratings and long delays in salary payments. These
difficulties began when Geo faced off against Pakistan’s powerful
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency after a senior presenter named Hamid Mir was
shot. Geo alleged that the attack was ordered from within the ISI. The agency
fiercely denied this claim.
Geo’s changing fortunes were a sharp reminder that freedom of
speech in Pakistan only goes so far. Like many others, Hyder was tempted to
join a new network, called Bol TV. It offered handsome salary packages and
plush offices, with an on-site barber and gym. There was serious money behind
it, although no one I asked seemed to know exactly where it came from. Vans,
auto-rickshaws, and billboards all over Karachi proclaimed it: “Pakistan’s
imminent number one media enterprise.”
Hyder’s new channel was not yet on air, and its launch date kept
being pushed further and further back. During the day, he was at the Bol
office, building up a team – cameramen, junior reporters, and drivers – and
assembling an archive of stock footage of politicians and key public
institutions. But he continued to spend his nights circling the streets in his
car, waiting for phone calls from police. A small matter like not having a
working channel to air his findings did not stop him covering his beat. “I have
to keep up my contacts, I’m always the first,” he said when we met that
evening. I asked if he had missed reporting since leaving Geo a fortnight
earlier. He nodded, his frustration visible. “Oh, very much.”
The current anti-crime initiative seems to be working. According to
official statistics, at least, the city-wide murder rate is significantly
reduced. (970 murders were reported in the first half of 2015, 57% less than in
the same period in 2014.) Of course, this does not include the hundreds of
people shot dead by the security forces. Police justify these illegal killings
by saying that Karachi is in a state of war and that any deaths are an
unfortunate result of armed clashes. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan,
an NGO, has brought several cases against senior officers.
Hyder has a complex relationship with the police. In 2011, he
reported on a bungled search operation in the north-western district of Orangi
Town, in which innocent people were arrested. Police demanded that Hyder hold
the story. When he refused, he was badly beaten by officers. (The camera was
still running and footage of the assault was broadcast on Geo.) Hyder and his
cameraman were detained for seven hours. Nonetheless, he was affronted when I
suggested that police might sometimes kill the wrong people. “If police are
involved in wrong things, I report it, but above 90% of encounters are
genuine,” he said.
Late one cloudy, starless night, I accompanied Hyder to meet a
police contact in Sohrab Goth, the “no-go zone” where he was shot in 2012, and
the frontline of Karachi law enforcement’s battle with religious militants. As
we left the city centre, the lights went out: Pakistan’s energy crisis means
that only affluent areas have constant electricity.
When we pulled up at the police station, the entrance was cut
off by an assault course of sandbags and cement blocks. We parked and walked
through a side gate and into a small, badly paved courtyard, past a cell with a
stained floor where three prisoners squatted.
In a back room with cracked paint and visible wiring, station
house officer Shoaib Shaikh sat on a bed, chain-smoking. He was a large
unsmiling man in his 40s, with a bushy moustache and huge bags under his eyes.
Shaikh has shot dead scores of militants in Karachi, including some TTP
leaders, earning him the nickname Shoaib Shooter. In February 2014, a case was
registered against him for killing a student leader in an encounter. He was
briefly suspended, but the case was dropped and he returned to work.
He showed us a picture on his phone of a TTS leader, and I asked
if this was someone he had arrested. “Arrested, and killed,” said Shaikh.
He said that he had arrested one Afghan Taliban leader who
continues to coordinate activities from jail. He believes that his only option
is to kill terrorists when he can. Despite the current crackdown, money is
tight. “This job is very difficult. We have no support from the government, no
facilities. We are fighting hand grenades and rocket launchers with
Kalashnikovs.”
Police officer Shoaib Sheikh – nicknamed
Shoaib Shooter – who admits to killing scores of militants, shows a death
threat texted to his mobile. Photograph: Qaisar Khan/Commissioned for The
Guardian
Since 2013, Shaikh has been a prominent target for the TTP. The
threat to his life is so serious that he lives at the police station, leaving
once or twice a month to visit his family. He showed me a recent text message
from an Afghan phone number. “This is the last warning for you. If you don’t
stop killing our workers, you are finished.” He took another drag from his
cigarette. The power cut out and we were plunged momentarily into complete
darkness. As the generator kicked in and the lights flickered back on, I looked
around the room. Among the heaps of papers were small signs of a life lived here:
a box of cornflakes, a bottle of Gaviscon. Mounted on the wall was a screen
showing CCTV footage from outside, so Shaikh could spot intruders from his bed.
Faced with the threat of death at the hands of the Taliban, many
people – police officers, journalists, politicians – quietly leave the country.
But Shaikh is defiant. When I asked if he would give up, his entire demeanour
changed, his eyes flashing, his body tense and combative. “I will fight the war
on terrorists, against the criminals. They say they are fighting a jihad, but
this is not a jihad. Pakistan has good people, and Islam is a good religion.
These people show only the evil face. I’m happy to die, because it is good
work.”
Another officer ran into the room to say that two criminals had
been arrested. Hyder translated for me: “They were snatching phones, and the
public beat them.” Minutes later, the two men, small and thin, were marched
into the room, eyes blindfolded, bloodied bandages around their heads. The
blood-stained collars of their shalwar kameez had been hastily washed. I
wondered whether it was the public who beat them.
Shaikh reached for a clipboard and began to ask questions. They
answered obediently; one was at school, the other a mechanic. They were both
17. They confessed to stealing phones and cash. One admitted to owning a 9mm
pistol. They were marched out of the room.
Zille Hyder with a suspected robber
at a police station in Sohrab Goth, a Taliban stronghold in Karachi.
Photograph: Qaisar Khan/Commissioned for the Guardian
“Nine millimetre is a very famous pistol. It’s used by target
killers,” said Hyder.
Shaikh leaned over and reached under his pillow. He pulled out a
gun and handed it to me. “Like this.”
On the drive home, Hyder was thoughtful. “Everybody wants to
enjoy the outside with family and friends, but if you’re on the hitlist, you
can’t move.” Sometimes he
and Shaikh drive out to the sea for an evening, under cover of darkness, to
escape from the limits of their daily lives.
Crime in Karachi entangles the most unexpected areas in its
web. In late May, the New York
Times published an investigation into the Pakistani technology
company Axact, which funded Bol TV. (The exact size of its stake is unclear.)
The report uncovered evidence that Axact was selling fake university degrees
online. Journalists alleged there were more than 370 fake American schools and
universities. These institutions had glossy websites offering degrees in dozens
of disciplines, video testimonials, and staff lists. But the report alleged
that these institutions were completely fictional, existing only as a
collection of stock photos on Axact’s websites.
The company’s CEO, Shoaib Shaikh (who coincidentally shares a
name with the Sohrab Goth police officer), was arrested, and Bol’s broadcasting
license revoked. Shaikh and four other Axact officials were charged with fraud,
forgery and illegal electronic money transfers. The charges were later expanded
to include money laundering and violating Pakistan’s Electronic Crimes Act.
Shaikh and those allegedly involved deny any wrongdoing, and the case is yet to
go to trial. In an online statement, Shaikh alleged that this was a conspiracy
“to break our resolve, to derail Bol, to shut down Axact”.
Pakistan’s broadcast media relished the chance to bring this new
rival down to size. There were allegations of money laundering, of servers
being used to air porn films. Prominent journalists hired by the channel began
to jump ship. The brand new media titan was crippled before it had even
launched. In some photographs of Shaikh being led away in handcuffs, Hyder,
reporting on the case, stands at his side.
For Hyder, who has made a career of delicately balancing
relationships with law enforcement and criminals, Bol’s fall from grace was
devastating. On Facebook, he posted messages and links calling for his
followers to stand with Bol. Privately, he felt differently. “I was reporting
on the scandal, but working for Bol, so I had to stand with another face,” he
told me over the phone in September. “My friends and family members were asking
me: what about the porn films? What about the fake degrees? What about the
money laundering? My father asked me why I had a job there when they are
involved in porn films. I had no answer.”
With the criminal charges against Bol in process, the government
refused to grant a broadcasting licence. Staff continued to go into the office,
even going out to film news items, despite having no channel to air them on.
Some videos went online, but in a country where only 10% of the population has
internet access, this felt futile. Hyder wrote to me: “These are very difficult
days in my life. My news is not going on air. I cannot send tickers. I am
disturbed, I am mentally disturbed. My family is facing financial difficulties
and for me to not be on air, on screen, it’s very difficult.”
In September 2015, as the Karachi operation marked its second
anniversary, Hyder left Bol and started a new job as senior crime reporter at
another new venture, Channel 24. It was a homecoming – he had an audience and a
renewed sense of purpose. He is now turning his attention to the times when the
police get it wrong. He spent much of his time off speaking to the families of
people wrongfully killed in encounters. As police killings of militants stepped
up in mid-2013, many terrorists fled Karachi. Police began to victimise their
families, demanding bribes. Some of those who refused to pay were killed. Hyder
gathered evidence of 50 such deaths. His “best friends” in the police force are
not happy. “I am doing my work,” Hyder said, firmly. “I am not a servant of
police officers.”
The police claim that they have halted the Talibanisation of
Karachi. Bombings have been less frequent in 2015, though targeted killings of
police and media workers continue. I asked Hyder if he was still on the Taliban
hitlist, or if six quiet months without regular television appearances had
reduced the threat to his life. “Yes, I’m still in the fourth position on the
hitlist.” He burst out laughing. “I am very proud.” He paused. “When you are on
a terrorist hitlist, everybody knows that you’re a real journalist.”
