TORONTO – I have remarked in the past that the only thing that makes Pakistan’s incompetent politicians bearable to the average citizen there, is the sure knowledge the democratically elected legislators are entirely irrelevant to real life in the beleaguered nation. The Army runs the country and the Army, by and large, is competent. […]
TORONTO — I have written before about the strategic savoir faire of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saturday’s attack on the headquarters of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi may prove to be the single biggest strategic blunder by the Taliban’s wing in Pakistan.
Pakistan is the Army
And, the Army is Pakistan.
The government in Pakistan is inept, corrupt […]
ISLAMABAD — I returned last night from two and half days in Lahore, where I spent some time socially with a few well-educated business associates and asked their opinions on the war in Afghanistan, the one here in Pakistan and the political mindset of average Pakistanis.
But first, as I sit to eat a late afternoon […]
ISLAMABAD – On arrival in Islamabad I had to declare if I’d visited Africa or Europe in the past six days — just to make sure I was free of bird or swine flu, presumably. Naturally, I forgot that Egypt was in Africa… is it?
Now, if they’d asked me that question on arrival in Dubai […]
ISLAMABAD – Thus begins a primer used in some Pakistani private schools, according to the May 23 international edition of Time Magazine. How Pakistan failed itself by Aryn Baker alleges the primer goes on to teach: “T is for Thakrau, collision, which is illustrated with a drawing of the World Trade Center in flames… Z, […]
ISLAMABAD – On Friday, my laptop stopped connecting through it’s 53 layers of corporate IT endorsed security systems so I couldn’t receive any business emails from the great mother ship in the sky. So, I bundled it up in the little black bag and hiked into the local company office to connect directly to the […]
KHYBER PASS – Well, okay, I was actually about 3,000 feet above the Khyber pass when I noticed the sticker carefully applied to the tray on the seatback in front of me. It was cloudy, you see, so the infamous Khyber looked an awful lot like the prairies of Saskatchewan on a cloudy day. Hence […]
KABUL — I was up early today to check out the hotel in Islamabad, having managed to gain privileged access to precisely no Irish Pub facsimiles, and race to the airport anticipating the same heaving mass of humanity trying to squeeze through a single turnstile into the international departures area.
Last time through Islamabad, it took […]
ISLAMABAD — Perhaps the worst thing about being perpetually on the move and not belonging anywhere is the complete and utter absence of Irish Pubs. No doubt there are Irish Pubs in a lot of places I go (although there is some serious doubt about here in Pakistan), but metaphorically, an Irish Pub has taken […]
ISLAMABAD – I’m beginning to wonder if I’m bad luck. Just a few days after I left Lahore, a Pakistani police training centre was attacked this morning in a spectacular assault by a team of gunmen. The day after I left Lahore the last time, a team of gunmen (likely the same people, I think) […]