The Trouble with The Economist

In it's issue of July 6th, The Economist carried an article titled The Trouble with Pakistan, soft copies of which were was widely circulated by many via email.

While the title clearly conveys that the trouble lies with Pakistan, the article's first para ends with "it is clear why what happens in those two places is of huge importance to the rest of the world. From neither place is there much good news."

Strangely, too, while the para is itself headed A country that everyone should worry about - we discover, within the first three lines, that the country referred to means areas that cover "northern Pakistan and south-eastern Afghanistan".

Trouble with Language, I guess.

"My country, Right or Wrong" is not a philosophy I subcribe to, so I'd happily admit that many of the criticisms of the current government are valid. But it is the tone of the whole piece that is astounding. Placing itself at a higher level that many would grant it, the magazine - speaking of Pakistan's President - declares, rather arrogantly, "This newspaper was prepared to give him a chance on condition that ..."

 Huh? Excuse me.

Are we to believe that, had The Economist not been so magnanimous, the people of Pakistan would have had another President?

The article maintains that "none of General Musharraf's protestations can hide the fact that Osama bin Laden is generally reckoned to be holed up on Pakistani soil" — although one reads just as many reports from several (non-Pakistani) sources generally reckoning that Osama is dead!

A whole paragraph, under the heading, And then there's Afghanistan, quickly shifts to a discussion of Pakistan's contribution to the crises that country is undergoing. Despite the author's feelings (expressed later in the piece) that "Afghanistan may now, thanks to Pakistani meddling and Western neglect, gradually revert to what it was before September 2001", the trouble - for some reason - is deemed to lie with Pakistan.


The Economist, as happens frequently, is economical with the truth. While stating "The Taliban, after all, were in part a creation of Pakistan's ISI", it conveniently forgets to mention that the ISI role was nowhere comparable to that of the USA in setting up, training, arming, and supporting this group and its leader (then known here as USAma Bin Laden).

Once a fairly respectable magazine, The Economist has long sunk to the depths of biased reporting and attitudes that are nothing short of disgusting and, often, downright crude. Consider this sentence, bundling together several groups, that appeared in its Oct 27, 2001, piece, All we are saying: "Buddhists, vegans, pro-Palestinian activists and other radicals of all stripes ..."


That's when I cancelled my subscription.