Shireen Mazari

Shireen M Mazari
(Urdu: شیرین مزاری‎)
MP
MP
Member of Parliament
Assumed office
11 May 2013
Personal details
Citizenship Pakistan
Nationality Pakistan
Residence Islamabad, Islamabad Capital Territory
Alma mater London School of Economics and Political Science
Columbia University

Central Information Secretary of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf
Assumed office
18 March 2013
Preceded by Shafqat Mahmood

Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf
In office
January 2002 – September 2012
Preceded by Position Established
Succeeded by Jalil Ahmad Sharkpuri

Director General of The Institute of Strategic Studies
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani
Succeeded by Ashraf Qazi
Personal details
Born Pakistan
Political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf
Profession Journalist, Politician
Religion Islam

Shireen Mehrunnisa Mazari PhD MP (Urdu: شیرین مہرالنساء مزاری‎) is a Pakistani politician, strategist and a nationalist conservative commenter[1] who serves as a Member of the National Assembly, where she serve's as a chief whip for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.[2][3][4]

Born into a Mazari family, Mazari studied political and military science at the London School of Economics and later received her doctorate from Columbia University. Mazari joined Quaid-e-Azam University as an associate professor and later moved to head the universities strategic studies department in the 1990s.[5] She became the head of the government-funded Institute of Strategic Studies in 2000, and remained until she was sacked in May 2008 after the return of democracy.

She moved to head the The Nation, a conservative English daily, in September 2009. She came under intensive criticism from the Committee to Protect Journalists after she publicly alleged an American journalist to be a CIA spy.[6][7] Her career as a journalist has been widely controversial due to her strong ties with the Pakistan Army.[8]

Mazari left the The Nation and joined PTI in November 2008 and has since then remained a close aide to Imran Khan. She left the party in September 2012, and re-joined it back on 18th March 2013.[9][10] Mazari was elected to the National Assembly in May 2013 as the most preferred nominee of her party.[11][12] Since 2013, Mazari has served as a frontbencher and the spokesperson of PTI.[13] Mazari has generally been a controversial figure in Pakistani intelligentsia, particularly known as a key crtic of Pakistan's role in the War on Terror.[14] She has been described by some analyst's as the 'Ann Coulter of Pakistan'.[15]

Education

Mazari attended the London School of Economics and Political Science where she gained a B.Sc.(Hons), followed by double M.Sc. in Military Science and Political science from the same institution. Mazari then traveled to the United States where she gained a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. Her PH.D. dissertation contained studies on military history, geostrategy, and the foreign policy of Pakistan.[16]

Career

Academic career

Mazari was an associate professor and then chairperson of the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. She served as the director general of The Institute of Strategic Studies, a research think-tank based in Islamabad until 2008. She was removed from this position in May 2008 before the end of her contract in August 2009, supposedly at the insistence of the United States, a point Mazari maintains despite United States denials. Former Foreign Secretary Ambassador Tanvir Ahmad Khan replaced her.[17]

Journalist and editor

Mazari was the publisher and editor-in-chief of Weekly Pulse, from 1993 to 1999. She also remained a regular columnist for The News International newspaper, writing for it as recently as 3 September 2009. She left the paper claiming American intrusion. Addressing a news conference, Mazari said that the US is poking its nose in all affairs of Pakistan, and when she started writing columns critical of US policies in the region, the US Ambassador exerted pressure on the newspaper's management to suspend her writing.[18] The News International team, however, denied this allegation, and issued a clarification.[19] Barely four days after leaving The News, she was offered editorship of The Nation. She took this position on 7 September 2009 vice Arif Nizami who was earlier sacked by his uncle and the Waqt Media Group editor-in-chief Majid Nizami.[20]

Controversies

The Nation published a front page article ("Journalists as spies in FATA?"[21]) on 5 November 2009, accusing the South Asian correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Rosenberg, of working for the CIA, Israeli intelligence, and the U.S. military contractor Blackwater. Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert James Thomson wrote to Mazari[22] soon after the Rosenberg article appeared. Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl, kidnapped and killed in 2002, was labelled a Jewish spy in a similar manner by some sections of Pakistani media. Twenty-one international news editors from Islamabad’s foreign correspondent community also signed a letter[23] of protest, criticizing the unsubstantiated article for compromising Matt Rosenberg's security.

In a television interview[24] regarding the incident, Mazari strongly defended her story. On 20 November 2009, "The Nation" published yet another front page story[25] with a photograph of what it described as "Mysterious US nationals". "According to a source in another investigation agency, the foreigners seemingly belonged to the US spy agency CIA. It was evident from the fact that two police commandos were escorting them, the source added. "However, it turned out that this "Mysterious US National" was in fact the Australian photojournalist Daniel Berehulak, working for Getty Images. Hugh Pinney, Getty’s senior director of photography, wrote[26] to Shireen Mazari on 21 November 2009. Both Rosenberg and Berahulak have left Pakistan.[27]

Political career

Mazari's views are considered to be a form of Pakistani nationalism and a strong voice of the Two-Nation Theory. Outspoken on Pakistani Foreign policy, she remains one of the academics openly criticizing Drone attacks and continues to criticize U.S.-Pakistan relations. She joined Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on 25 November 2008 after a meeting with the chairman of the party, Imran Khan. She resigned from PTI on 26 September 2012, on political differences.[28] She rejoined the party in March 2013.

Views

She is a vocal critic of United States policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mazari has said her life has been under threat and that the Minister of Interior and US diplomats will be responsible if anything happens to her.[29]

Family

She is the daughter of former bureaucrat turned politician Ashiq Mohammad Khan Mazari, known as AMK Mazari. Her uncles are Sherbaz Khan Mazari, prominent Pakistani politician, and Safdar H. Mazari, former chief medical officer of Rush University Medical Center. She has two children. She is married to Tabish Aitbar Hazir, Associate Professor of pediatrics and head of the department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital, Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad.

Books

References

  1. ↑ Markey, Daniel S. (2013-10-07). No Exit from Pakistan: America's Tortured Relationship with Islamabad. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107436060.
  2. ↑ PTI Chairman appoints Shireen as his Spokesperson
  3. ↑ "Shireen Mazari quits PTI - The Express Tribune". The Express Tribune. 2012-09-26. Retrieved 2016-06-08.
  4. ↑ Dawn.com (2016-04-22). "PTI's Mazari questions ISPR silence on army sackings". DAWN.COM. Retrieved 2016-10-23.
  5. ↑ tkiadmin. "Chairman Imran Khan appoints Dr. Shireen Mazari as Secretary Information". Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  6. ↑ "Nation article about Wall Street Journal reporter" (PDF).
  7. ↑ "Imran Khan's Shireen Mazari and her shoddy journalism", Retrieved 23 May 2010
  8. ↑ "Shireen Mazari's "Shoddy" Journalism Condemned! | Pak Tea House". pakteahouse.net. Retrieved 2016-10-23.
  9. ↑ Shireen Mazari rejoins PTI
  10. ↑ Hassan, Ahmad (2012-09-26). "Shireen Mazari quits PTI". Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  11. ↑ "National Assembly of Pakistan". na.gov.pk. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  12. ↑ Dawn.com (2012-09-26). "Shireen Mazari resigns, alleges PTI hijacked by 'big money'". www.dawn.com. Retrieved 2016-06-08.
  13. ↑ "Ruckus in NA as defence minister calls Shireen Mazari 'tractor trolley' - The Express Tribune". 2016-06-08. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  14. ↑ "A fatal intolerance - The Express Tribune". 2011-03-04. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  15. ↑ Schmidle, Nicholas (2010-01-08). "Slander". New Republic. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  16. ↑ Dr.Shireen Mazari
  17. ↑ "ISSI DG Shireen Mazari removed" Daily Times, 15 May 2008
  18. ↑ "http://pakistanmediawatch.com/tag/shireen-mazari/". http://pakistanmediawatch.com/. External link in |website=, |title= (help)
  19. ↑ "Clarification by The News group" "The News", 7 September 2009
  20. ↑ "Shireen Mazari replaces Arif Nizami as Editor The Nation" Daily Times, 8 September 2009
  21. ↑ "Journalists as spies in FATA?" The Nation, 5 November 2009
  22. ↑ "Letter from WSJ to Mazari", "Committee to Protect Journalists", 6 November 2009
  23. ↑ "Letter about The Nation article" "Committee to Protect Journalists", 16 November 2009
  24. ↑ "Dawn News TV Interview" "Youtube" 17 Nov 2009
  25. ↑ "Mysterious US Nationals" "The Nation" 20 November 2009
  26. ↑ "Letter from Getty Images to The Nation" "Committee to Protect Journalists", 21 November 2009
  27. ↑ "CIA slur has chilling parallel with Daniel Pearl" "The Australian" 26 November 2009
  28. ↑ "Mazari resigns from PTI". Daily Times. Pakistan. 27 September 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  29. ↑ http://www.sananews.com.pk/english/2009/09/02/us-base-being-built-in-sindh-mazari/
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.