I still remember the chill I felt when I first heard of Bahawalpur. It was late January 2002. My dear friend and colleague, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, had just left a home I had rented on Zamzama Street in Karachi for an interview from which he never returned. We soon learned terrorists in Pakistan had kidnapped Danny. As we tried to trace Danny’s steps, one name kept surfacing: the dusty city of Bahawalpur.
In the days that followed, we learned terrorists had murdered Danny, brutally beheading him and cutting him into pieces. Twenty-three years have passed, but the chain of events that led to Danny’s murder continues to haunt us—and it runs straight through Bahawalpur.
This week, India’s Operation Sindoor launched an airstrike on Bahawalpur and other terrorist targets, killing terrorist chief Abdul Rauf Azhar. To be clear, Abdul Rauf did not kidnap or murder Danny. But in 1999, he masterminded the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814, which forced India to release three terrorists - including his brother, Masood Azhar, and a British Pakistani, Omar Sheikh, who would go on to lure Danny into captivity. Another brother, Ibrahim Azhar, was a hijacker on Flight 814.
Abdul Rauf opened the prison door that allowed a kidnapper to walk free. His killing is a reminder that those who enable terror must answer for their actions.
Bahawalpur, where Abdul Rauf enjoyed a safe haven, is more than just a city. Since the 1990s, it has been a hub for a state-sponsored terrorism industry that has enabled global violence—killing innocents in India, Pakistan and around the world. It’s where the story of Danny’s murder began.
In late December 2001, Danny travelled to Bahawalpur to investigate the militant groups that Pakistan’s leaders claimed to be cracking down on. What he found was the opposite: active recruitment, open bank accounts soliciting jihadist donations, and posters glorifying holy war still plastered on office walls. On recruitment day, he walked into the offices of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the very group founded by Abdul Rauf’s brother, Masood Azhar, after being released. On January 2, 2002, Danny published a prescient article from Bahawalpur. His headline could just as easily be written today: ‘Militant groups in Pakistan thrive despite crackdown’.
Danny discovered the truth: the crackdown was a lie. “A nearby Jaish-e-Mohammed regional centre was still operating Thursday, its traditional recruiting day,” Danny wrote. “The group’s name had been painted over, but the posters praising holy war were still hung inside.” A Jaish official, he reported, was “waiting for people to show up to register for jihad”.
Danny was no cowboy. His trip was calculated and low-risk—at the time, no foreign journalist had ever been kidnapped in Pakistan. In an email, Danny told me: “I’m anxious to go to Afghanistan, but I’m not anxious to die.” He shared the article with his mother, worried about her son’s safety like any parent would be, and added this warning: “Don’t freak out too much about my story in today’s paper.”
What he wrote from Bahawalpur was prophetic—the militant infrastructure was alive, well-funded and protected by the state. He warned the world of Pakistan’s terrorism industry. And then it destroyed him.
Two of the men involved in Danny’s kidnapping were also from Bahawalpur. Arif, or Hashim Qadeer, who arranged the meeting with Omar Sheikh that set Danny up for abduction, and Salman Saqib, who picked up photos of Danny in captivity in chains with a gun to his head. These were not abstract extremists. They were foot soldiers raised in the very soil where India struck this week.
I’ve lived this story as a friend and a colleague, studying every step of Danny—and the militants. And it’s clear: Bahawalpur was not a backdrop. It was a base.
The killing of Abdul Rauf does not bring Danny back. It does deliver some justice. And it brings the world a step closer to recognising the deadly consequences of appeasing extremism. Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment have long used men like Abdul Rauf, Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh as strategic assets against India—only to see them bring ruin to Pakistan itself: to schoolchildren, civil society leaders and journalists.
What India did this week was not only a military action. It was a strike on impunity. It was a historical reckoning. Bahawalpur is a symbol of the terror infrastructure that the Pakistani state has harboured, protected and exported.
Danny’s father, Judea Pearl, continues to call for accountability for the men who kidnapped and murdered Danny. In 2021, despite protests from Danny’s parents, the Pakistani Supreme Court freed from jail the only four men convicted in Danny’s kidnapping—Omar Sheikh, Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib and Shaikh Muhammad Adil—and the Pakistani state today protects Omar Sheikh. Another Pakistani, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, confessed to beheading Danny after orchestrating the 9/11 attacks out of safe houses in Pakistan, and he sits in Guantanamo Bay without trial for Danny’s murder.
There’s a deeper pattern of impunity here. The same moral inversion used by Pakistani terrorists—where they kill across a border and then claim to be victims—is now used by others: Hamas, Iran and their defenders in the West. They hijack not just planes, lives and nations—but the truth.
Danny saw through the deception. He gave us the reporting to understand the truth. And now, 23 years later, we must pay attention to his reporting—and we must finish the story he couldn’t. Danny’s life represented truth, courage and humanity. His reporting and his murder was a warning to us about the homegrown terrorism industry in Pakistan. We must continue to listen.
Asra Q Nomani
Former Wall Street Journal reporter, an author and editor-in-chief of the Pearl Project
Follow her on X @AsraNomani
(Views are personal)
