U.S. Detains Voice of America Journalist Fleeing Threats at Home in Pakistan

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 14, 2009

U.S. immigration officials have detained a Pakistani journalist employed by the U.S.-sponsored Voice of America news service who was hoping to find refuge in the United States after Islamic militants in Pakistan destroyed his house and threatened his life.

Rahman Bunairee, 33, was taken into custody Sunday afternoon upon arriving at Dulles International Airport, according to VOA officials.

It is not clear why Bunairee was detained.

Joan Mower, a spokeswoman for VOA, declined to comment on the particulars of Bunairee's detention other than to say: "VOA is obviously extremely concerned. We're really upset about what's happened to this guy."

Cori Bassett, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, confirmed that Bunairee is in the agency's custody but said she could not release further details because of privacy reasons.

Bunairee, in addition to filing reports for VOA's Pashto-language radio service, is a popular reporter with the privately owned Pakistani broadcaster Khyber TV. He is usually based in the southern port city of Karachi, but he is originally from the Buner district of Pakistan's embattled North-West Frontier Province near the Afghanistan border, where the Taliban and other Islamic militant groups are active. He recently returned to that region to cover a series of major offensives against the militants by the Pakistani military.

In the past, the militants enjoyed a measure of support, or at least tolerance, among many Pakistanis. But the public mood shifted markedly against the militants this spring, partly because of local media reports about their cruel practices in Buner and other districts then under their control.

On July 7, Bunairee participated in a VOA call-in radio show in which he discussed the Taliban's continued presence in Buner despite a major campaign by the Pakistani military to oust them last May, Mower said.

Two nights later, several dozen armed militants went to Bunairee's family compound in Buner.

Bunairee was not there. The militants told his father that because Bunairee was "speaking against them," they had orders to destroy the house. The men allowed Bunairee's family, including his wife and four children, to leave, then ransacked the house and leveled it with explosives.

That night in the Buner district, militants bombed the home of another journalist, Behroz Khan, a reporter for Pakistan's English daily, the News.

Most recently, Taliban militants flattened the houses of at least six journalists in the neighboring district of Swat before fleeing advancing Pakistani forces, according to Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Soon after Bunairee's home was destroyed, gunmen scaled the wall surrounding Khyber TV's bureau in Karachi, several hundred miles south of Buner, and announced that they were looking for him, Dietz said.

Alarmed, officials at VOA arranged to bring Bunairee to the United States on a J-1 visa, often used by research institutions to bring in scholars and experts on temporary visits.

"We're expanding our Pashto broadcasting, and he was going to be working on that," Mower said.

Dietz stressed that Bunairee was not seeking to relocate to the United States but wanted to spend some time outside Pakistan until matters cooled.

He added that he was particularly concerned about the message that Bunairee's detention sends.

"It's mortifying," he said. "Here's a journalist who has performed a valuable service by reporting from an area critical to U.S. security. And our country is slamming the door in his face."

As Violence Hurts Commerce, Pakistanis Doubt Value of U.S. Textile Bill

By Joshua Partlow and Haq Nawaz Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 28, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A concrete wall already encircles Mohsin Aziz's office, but workers are making it higher brick by brick. Kalashnikov-wielding guards shadow the industrialist everywhere he goes. A chase car tracks his black sedan through thick city traffic.

Even with such precautions, Aziz said, his family considers him a "madman" for keeping his business in Peshawar, the violent capital of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Military-imposed curfews keep laborers from his factories, and he sometimes has to beg his managers to come to work.

"I tell them, 'I am here with you. I will not leave you behind, dead or alive,' " said Aziz, who manufactures matches, textiles, laminates and particleboard. "We will die together."

Bombings and kidnappings by the Taliban and criminal gangs are strangling the economic life of this metropolis adjacent to the tribal territory along the Afghan border. Businessmen have fled south to safer provinces or left the country, slashed production, laid off employees, and closed down offices.

Government statistics show that large-scale manufacturing has contracted 7.6 percent across Pakistan in the past year, while a survey by the Industrialists Association of Peshawar found a 37 percent plunge in the industrial sector here. Business associations estimate that the number of industrial jobs, the main economic lifeline, has already fallen from more than 100,000 to about 25,000. Factories that ran round-the-clock now scrape by with a single shift.

"This is a recipe for disaster," said Nauman Wazir, former president of the Industrialists Association. "This is going to have a spiraling effect into more unemployment and into more radicalism."

The Obama administration has pledged to bring economic relief to these border regions dominated by Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. In March, the president called on Congress to pass a bill that would create what are known as "reconstruction opportunity zones" to "develop the economy and bring hope to places plagued with violence."

That bill passed the House last month. It is intended to allow businesses in areas such as North-West Frontier Province, the tribal areas and a 100-mile border swath of Baluchistan in southern Pakistan to export textiles and apparel to the United States duty-free.

But Pakistani businessmen said limits on what textiles are covered -- sought by U.S. business lobbyists -- render the bill, and its pending Senate version, largely worthless.

Many products eligible for duty-free status are not items that Pakistan produces in large quantity, according to an analysis by the Citizens Voice, a Peshawar-based think tank of business and civic leaders.

"This is ridiculous, this is not going to work, this is a non-starter," said Aleema Khan, chairman of Cotton Connection, a Lahore-based firm that buys textiles for large American companies. "Everybody's rejecting it. Major industry is rejecting it. Buyers are rejecting it. This bill should not go through. The fact that they haven't done their homework is what's so scary."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), one of the sponsors, said that he would support expanding the scope of products eligible for duty-free status, "so long as that does not doom the prospects of the bill."

"I always worry about making the perfect the enemy of the good. It's important to get something started," Van Hollen said. "One thing the president's been clear about is that military force alone will not resolve the conflict in Afghanistan, you need to provide greater economic opportunities in these conflict-ridden regions. This is not something that happens overnight, and this is part of a sustained strategy."

Van Hollen, citing a report by the Congressional Research Service, said the 38 textile and apparel categories included in the bill account for $1.4 billion of the $2.7 billion worth of goods that Pakistan exports each year to the United States.

Businessmen in Pakistan dispute those figures. Muhammad Atif Hanif, a manager at Dubai Islamic Bank in Peshawar and a member of the Citizens Voice, said that Pakistani textile exports tend to fall into six categories -- including cotton pants, underwear, knit shirts and hosiery -- and all are excluded from the legislation. The current legislation would benefit only about $200 million of the export industry, he said.

Said Mohsin Aziz: "We are supposed to produce swimsuits, we are supposed to produce neckties, we are supposed to produce handkerchiefs, we are supposed to produce silk gowns, which we have never produced, which we do not have the raw material for, which we do not have the expertise for. It's just a game."

Most people concede that developing significant industry in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas remains a long-term goal because the region is largely ungoverned mountain territory devoid of modern property rights or legal infrastructure and on the verge of a Pakistani military invasion. But trying to encourage textile investment in North-West Frontier Province also has generated skepticism here, as those industries' hubs reside in Karachi and Faisalbad, outside this province.

"It's not something they've ever done. I'm not going to buy from there, and I'm one of the most aggressive buyers in this country," Khan said.

On the ground in Peshawar, debates over U.S. help that is potentially years away are overshadowed by the threats businessmen face each day. As many as 300 people a month, mostly businessmen, have been kidnapped for ransom in the province, said Muhammad Ishaq, vice president of the Frontier Chamber of Commerce. Two years ago, there were 2,254 industrial companies here. Today, 594 remain, the others driven out by war and power shortages, according to the chamber.

Earlier this year, anonymous letters believed to be from the Taliban, delivered to banks, insurance companies and other businesses, demanded that employees wear traditional Islamic baggy tunics and pants, known as a salwar-kameez.

"I am wearing this because bankers have been threatened not to wear suits," one Peshawar banker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said of his tunic.

Ilyas Bilour, a senator and owner of a vegetable oil business in Peshawar, said he has shed 10 to 20 percent of his workforce, and the factories now operate only half the month. He moved his children and grandchildren to Islamabad to keep them safe.

"The insurance people are not covering terrorism insurance. We are ready to pay them more, much more, but they are not ready to accept our high offers," he said.

Nauman Wazir, who owns companies that produce rebar, marble and hunting weapons, has a simple strategy to weather these violent times. "I travel fully armed. AK-47s. Pistols can't save you. An AK-47 can save you. Fully loaded. I don't take chances," he said. He knows what he's up against. A decade ago, kidnappers held him for 60 days.

"Either I'm going to kill him or I'm going to get killed. I'm not having any of this kidnapping business."