The smear campaign was no accident. It soon became clear that my expulsion was a harbinger of a much wider crackdown targeting the Pakistani news media. Over the preceding years, Pakistan’s generals had endured serial humiliations – the Taliban uprising, the fall of Musharraf, the American raid that took out bin Laden under their noses. They urgently needed to re-establish their authority. But how? The traditional solution – a military coup – was no longer so easy, and being in charge would mean direct responsibility for the mess. So they set about quietening their critics. Foreign reporters
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