Pearl’s former colleague at WSJ Asra Nomani recalled these events in a statement reacting to Operation Sindoor.
“For the 23 years since, I have reported on how Pakistani intelligence and military leaders have used that city — Bahawalpur — in the southern province of Punjab as a base for its homegrown domestic terrorists,” Nomani wrote.
“When I heard India bombed training camps in Pakistan this week in Operation Sindoor, in response to a Pakistani terrorist rampage in India’s Kashmir state, I had one city’s name on my lips: Bahawalpur.”
“They used them as weapons against India. But in fact these domestic terrorists have waged war against innocents in Pakistan, like civil society activists, Benazir Bhutto, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, schoolchildren and countless others. Their extremism has ruined Pakistan,” she says.
She adds that Pakistan has had a duty to dismantle those terrorist bases — for even the safety of its own people.
Defence Minister Khwaja Asif told the BBC in May that Pakistan does not shelter active terrorists or terrorist outfits, and those living in its territory "do not indulge in terror activities, either in Pak or across the border in India'.
Pearl’s case reflects that of Amanda Lindhout, Nigel Brennan and Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi in Mogadishu, Somalia, in August 2008.
Lindhout, a Canadian freelance reporter, Brennan, a freelance Australian photojournalist, and Elmi from Somalia were kidnapped by al Shabaab as they travelled to camps outside Mogadishu for Somalis displaced by insecurity and terrorism.
In October 2023, al Shabaab at a restaurant in Mogadishu killed Abdifatah Moalim Nur in a suicide attack.
On March 14, Dalsan TV journalist Ibrahim Mohamed Mayow survived an al Shabaab attack in Awdheegle district, Lower Shabelle, while covering a military operation.
In the same month, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged Somalia authorities to investigate the killing of journalist Mohamed Abukar Dabashe in a March 18 bombing by al Shabaab in Mogadishu.
“Mohamed Abukar Dabashe’s death is devastating. Unfortunately, he joins a long list of Somali journalists killed in Al-Shabaab attacks with impunity. Somali authorities should investigate the killing of Mohamed Abukar Dabashe and desist from further intimidation and censorship of journalists who are already operating under difficult circumstances,” CPJ Africa programme coordinator Muthoki Mumo.
The cases of these journalists are just few among many other people who have been killed and maimed by terrorists across the world.
