Disclaimer: This post is based on my personal research and understanding of the military establishment’s strategies and tactics in Pakistani media, which I am publishing for the information and well being of the Pakistani nation. However, the post does not represent an official policy of the LUBP.
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While in his post titled “The ISI media’s two pronged strategy: From Ahmed Quraishi to Azhar Abbas”, Abdul Nishapuri refrained from providing a detailed list of operatives in the ISI media network, the present post clearly identifies the individuals who in my honest assessment are currently providing wonderful services to Pakistan’s almighty military establishment.
In principle, I agree that the ISI media network carefully operates at two levels, front end and back end, however, in my view there are further categories within each level which must be considered. The ISI media roll of (dis)honour is described below:
Front End
Level 1(a) – Visible First-Line Operatives
Level 1(b) – Invisible First-Line Operatives
Mohsin Baig
Moin Ansari
Dr Shahid Qureshi
Syed Adeeb
International Professor Earthman
Level 2 – Senior Experts
General Hamid Gul
General Asad Durrani
General Aslam Beg
Ikram Sehgal
Level 3 – Professional Journalists
Shaheen Sehbai
Dr Shahid Masood
Dr Shireen Mazari
Haroon-ur-Rasheed
Kamran Khan
Hamid Mir
Javed Chaudhry
Orya Maqbool Jan
Mushtaq Minhas
Saleem Bukhari
Irfan Siddiqi
Ansar Abbasi
Tariq Butt
Muhammad Saleh Zaafir
Mohammad Ahmed Noorani
Back End
Level 4 – Refined
Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman
Majeed Nizami
Syed Talat Hussain
Syed Mushahid Hussain
Syed Iqbal Haider
Dr Mubashir Hasan
Azhar Abbas
Dr Moeed Pirzada
Roedad Khan
Level 5 – Better Camouflaged
Mosharraf Zaidi
Ejaz Haider
Zafar Hilaly
Tahira Abdullah
Adil Najam
Some minor ‘civil society’ blogs
Level X – Aspiring Operatives (currently undefined)
Meher Bokhari
Atiqa Odho
Maria B
Ali K Chishti
Update: I tend to agree with Omar (see comments section below) that some people in this list may not be receiving actual instructions or orders or paychecks from the ISI, but may be a part of the same socio-economic and ideological bandwagon, i.e., “Pakistani establishment”. In other words, most of them may be enjoying material or/and non-monetary benefits of their links with the military establishment.