The Toronto Star, November 20, 2007
Sonya Fatah
LAHORE, Pakistan–A counter-coup from within the military puts President Gen. Pervez Musharraf under house arrest.
The country’s vice army chief has resigned.
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has been murdered by the country’s intelligence agencies.
With Pakistan’s rumour mill working in overdrive under emergency rule, it’s becoming harder than ever to separate fact from fiction. Draconian regulations imposed by the country’s military rulers have muzzled the media, forcing Pakistanis to rely on the word of mouth – and its modern equivalent, the cellphone text message – as a source of news.
The rumour mill has long been a font of information for Pakistan’s 160 million people, as it is in many developing countries where censorship restrains the media. But the latest strictures on Pakistan’s previously vigorous media have created an information vacuum that is perfect for wild rumour.
Musharraf was its first target. As police went about making mass arrests, a rumour swept through Pakistan’s urban centres that the general had been put under house arrest. “Musharraf has been toppled in a counter-coup,” read one mass mailing as word spread.
With no television media to confirm or deny the rumour and government officials keeping mum, the news quickly gained credibility.
The tall tale forced Musharraf to demonstrate he was in control and he called the rumour “a joke of the highest order.”
“It’s very confusing to glean what is true and what is not,” said Anam Anjum, 17, a student of graphic design at the University of Punjab.
And so, the rumour mill churns on.
“Musharraf flees country in an American plane,” was one message that made its rounds in the early days of emergency rule. Then, Gen. Kayani, the vice army chief, was said to have resigned.
When former cricket star Imran Khan escaped house arrest a week ago, news quickly spread that he hadn’t gotten free. Rather, he’d been murdered by the country’s ruthless intelligence agencies.
When, days later, he emerged, unscathed, at a student protest rally on the University of Punjab’s campus, that story was put to bed.
Rumour-mongering isn’t unusual in developing societies, says Dr. Gulzar Shah, an associate professor of sociology at Lahore University of Management Sciences.
It’s not just political news and conjecture that is passed on from person to person in developing societies, says Shah.
“People are reliant on informal institutions for everything. They borrow money from friends and family, not banks. Their parents and relatives babysit their children, not babysitters. Even news is preferred by word of mouth.”
Still, rumours aren’t always innocent by-products of a complicated political situation. Often, they are planted by the government itself or by opposition parties to create exactly that result.
Last September when Musharraf was on an overseas trip, a massive power outage set off rumours of a coup. Many Pakistanis saw him as masquerading a book tour in the United States and Canada as an official trip paid for by Pakistan’s not-so-healthy coffers. It was not difficult to believe that unhappy generals in the military’s top brass had unseated him.
“Rumours do very well when people have no reason to believe formal sources of information,” says Shah. “A rumour can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Its consequence can be very real and it can be used to shift the balance in someone else’s favour.”
Now that Pakistan’s most-watched news channel, GEO TV, has been shut down and the government’s most articulate critics are in police or intelligence custody, the rumour mill is likely to churn up plenty more good yarns.
“The name Musharraf makes my blood boil,” said a storeowner in Lahore’s busy Anarkali bazaar. “But anyway, it doesn’t matter any more. I have it from a top source that he is on his way out. The military had had it with him.”
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