As someone covering the region, worrying as it is, all the more because two journalists were shot and killed, I am not inclined to accept the veracity of Sipah-i-Islami or the claim that it has made. I remember, receiving faxes every now and then when the U.s was about to launch its campaign in Afghanistan by this or that outfit, not heard of before. I think, we as journalists need to apply our minds before jumping to any conclusion and misleading our readers to come to wrong conclusion. No such organisation by the name of Sipah-i-Islami exists. Period. I think, and there are reasons to believe, that it was an attempt to hush up tribal journalists from reporting on the presence of foreign militants in South Waziristan and I think, going by an incident in North Waziritan and its reporting by tribal journalists who did not want to be named or datelined the story to N. Waziristan, those behind the murder achieved their objective.
bests
ismail khan