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Pakistan has endured two tumultuous years, economically and politically. As a result, the press faced immense political tension and increased censorship.
Various incidents underscored the dangers for journalists operating in a tense political landscape, such as the death — under suspicious circumstances — of the prominent Pakistani journalist and television anchor Arshad Sharif in Kenya late 2022. Then, last year, the journalist, anchor, and YouTube creator Imran Riaz Khan disappeared following his arrest at an airport. Although the police told a court in Lahore the journalist was freed within 24 hours, he remained missing for four months until his return in September 2023.
Despite the challenging circumstances, it has been an eventful year, with foreign media tackling primary political issues and local journalists proceeding to go further where they can.
At the heart of Pakistan’s recent political crisis is the overthrow of Imran Khan’s government in April 2022. During the resulting instability, Khan has consistently claimed that he was forced to resign due to collusion between opposition parties and the U. S. government. He based his claims on a figure (a diplomatic cable) that purportedly outlined the main points of a meeting between U. S. State Department officials and Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, in which U. S. officials reportedly indicated that they would welcome Khan’s removal from his workplace at the event. of a vote of no confidence.
The cable has been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate and has dominated Pakistan’s political landscape for more than two years. The Intercept received the document, it claims from a senior military source, and published a portion of it, something no journalist in Pakistan had ever had. It is still hotly debated whether the published text of the cable corroborates Khan’s claims, but it is one of the major political stories to come out of Pakistan this year, as Khan and his supporters have cited the cable as the main driving force behind the crusade that ousted him. . .
In February 2023, it emerged that three bodies had been discovered in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The dead were reportedly killed in a personal crime owned by a former member of parliament and local tribal chief, known as Sardar. The allegations stem from a video circulating online that showed one of the deceased women begging for her life.
Muhammad Akbar Noteai’s account in Dawn examines: Who were the other people whose bodies were discovered?Was the woman found dead the same user in the video?In doing so, she also managed to delve into a factor that has been incredibly difficult to report on: the prevalence of user prisons owned by local tribal leaders in Balochistan, as well as the horrors that other people experience in those prisons and impunity. of those who run them. Time and again, local leaders (including political leaders) in the province have denied life in those prisons, but Noteai’s account systematically examines the evidence, backed up by other people’s testimonies.
Using spreadsheets, maps, and charts, this story tallies how much money the Sindh provincial government has spent on activities related to climate change over more than a decade. Sindh was one of the provinces most impacted when Pakistan suffered massive flooding due to unprecedented rainfall in 2022. At the time, the government shrugged off responsibility for the devastation, placing the blame squarely on climate change.
Policy expert Sadiya Siddiqui and reporter Oonib Azam teamed up for this story for The Citizenry — tracking Sindh government expenditures under the various names and forms the environment department has taken since 2007 — to explain how the Sindh government has consistently underspent money allocated to mitigate the impact of climate change, while consistently spending more money on development projects that actively harm the natural environment.
With Pakistan on the brink of default in the first months of 2023 and in the grip of a political crisis, the country’s media is worried about what would happen if Pakistan failed to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). ). A month before the deadline expired, Pakistan managed to secure a bailout. Two articles – one in the foreign media and the other in the local press – investigated this important last-minute deal.
The Intercept claimed that the ransom was subsidized through an agreement between the U. S. and Pakistani governments to supply weapons to Ukraine. The Intercept reports cite leaked documents from an Army source describing the deal. (Pakistani officials have categorically and continuously denied any movement of weapons into Ukraine conflict. )
This story, by the Pakistan-based nonprofit organization Soch, builds on The Intercept investigation, using public documents to show how reporters believe the transfer of weapons took place. (“In short, arms were exported from Pakistan… and sold to the US Department of Defense, arms which the US government then sent to Ukraine.”) Their data came from declarations made by the State Bank of Pakistan and the website of the US government’s Federal Procurement Data System, among other public data sources. These stories combine to show how an international investigation can prompt local news outlets to explore and further explain a story for their own audience.
As COVID-19 spread in Pakistan, forcing consumers to remain confined to their homes, the State Bank of Pakistan introduced a special type of business loan. The Temporary Economic Relief Fund, or TERF, a low-interest loan intended to stimulate industries and allow them to invest in expansion at a time when business is slowing.
According to Pakistan Today’s The Profit, more than six hundred corporations have benefited from the loan and around PKR 398 billion (about $1. 4 billion) has been distributed. When the Pakistani government was replaced in 2022, accusations were made that the loans benefited wealthy industrialists at the expense of small and medium-sized enterprises, sparking a debatable debate over the TERF loan and potential corruption. In this story, Zain Naeem debunks the figures related to the task and gets rid of “slanders” to compare his merits and whether he has achieved his goal by examining the arguments of his supporters and critics.
Fact Focus, a relatively new independent news outlet in Pakistan, has quickly become known for exposés on the wealth of Pakistan’s elite, be they former military generals, political leaders, or real estate tycoons. This piece focuses on the properties in London, New York, and the United Arab Emirates acquired by a formal military general during his time serving as a corps commander in Lahore and after his retirement from service.
The story raises questions about how the general acquired these properties, based on tax returns filed in Pakistan during this time. The reporting also uses leaked documents from Pakistan’s Federal Bureau of Revenue, public documents from New York City’s municipal government, and documents released as part of the Panama Papers and other offshore leaks. Some of these properties were also only declared on tax returns filed in Pakistan after they were named in various offshore leaks. (The general denies any wrongdoing and stated that some of the properties were bought from income generated through employment in a tech company after retirement from the military.)
Rajanpur is one of the most underdeveloped districts in Pakistan’s Punjab province. A small health care center run and established by the government in the village of Fazilpur demonstrates why the district fares badly in comparison to others. Where a year ago most medicine prescribed was available to patients for free, now employees “have been instructed to issue only 30 medicines to patients per day,” one official said. This is despite the government investing money to modernize and upgrade the system used to allocate appointments. Most patients travel from other villages to reach the center and seek treatment, making finding the prescribed medicine even more complicated. According to officials, the lack of medicine is due to departmental budget cuts.
Over the past year, the Lok Sujag newspaper has focused its efforts on spreading hyperlocal stories like this one, which reveal the lack of functional infrastructure in some of the country’s poorest regions. This article by journalist Umair Akhtar is part of a long list of similar articles documenting the lack of functioning government services in the spaces that need them most.
Karachi’s water problems, such as shortages and distribution failures, are well known. A network of actors and teams, including, but not limited to, law enforcement officers, tanker owners, contractors, sewer workers, politicians, and military corps. Workers – controls the city’s water source. Many parties are profiting, according to Dawn journalists, from the “monumental rumble” of Karachi’s water source system.
For Dawn Investigations, Naziha Syed Ali and Aslam Shah took an in-depth look at the core of the political and criminal networks that govern the fire hydrants that supply the city with water, adding the procurement procedure and asymmetric regulation. Karachi’s water control formula went all the way to each and every factory, canal and hydrant, and showed how water is transported from one point to another. Her story, backed up by interviews with government officials, experts, and citizens struggling to get water to their homes, also shows how wealth inequality determines who has water and who doesn’t; How the political elite can use their connections to make sure their pools are protected. They remain complete while others in the poorest spaces struggle to get water for their daily use.
Amel Ghani is a Pakistan-based journalist who has reported on the situation of the country’s devoted political parties, the environment, labor rights, and technological and virtual rights. She is a Fulbright scholar and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she majored in investigative journalism.
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