At the center of that spit of land above is Gwadar, Pakistan. I spend a lot of time with my head pressed against the glass while flying, and see lots of places I’d like to go. But few sights have grabbed me as as much as that view, and Robert Kaplan’s new article in the Atlantic does nothing but increase my desire to go to Gwadar:
Whether Gwadar becomes a new silk-route nexus or not is tied to Pakistan’s own struggle against becoming a failed state. Pakistan, with its “Islamic†nuclear bomb, Taliban- and al-Qaeda-infested northwestern borderlands, dysfunctional cities, and territorially based ethnic groups for whom Islam could never provide adequate glue, is commonly referred to as the most dangerous country in the world, a nuclear Yugoslavia-in-the-making. And so Gwadar is a litmus test, not just for roads and energy routes but for the stability of the entire Arabian Sea region.
One day.