Politics, open government, and safe streets. And the constant incursion of cycling.

Tag: Pakistan

Bombing in Lahore

More death and destruction in Pakistan, today:

Gunmen detonated a car bomb near police and intelligence agency offices on Lahore’s Fatima Jinnah road Wednesday, killing 23 people and wounding more than 100, officials said.

At least four men with rifles stepped out from the car and opened fire on the intelligence agency building, then set off a massive blast when security guards returned fire, officials said.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik suggested the attack could be retaliation for the government’s military offensive to rout Taliban militants from the northwestern Swat Valley.

It’s heartbreaking, what this country has gone through.  What it seems to be destined to go through.  Like any other people, most folks there just want to live their lives in a quiet peace.  And like any other people, there is a tiny segment of sociopaths that seem willing to use death and destruction to achieve their own narrow interests.  I really hope Pakistan can find a way to limit the damage they can do.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjaNQFChkCY[/youtube]

Robert Kaplan on Gwadar

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.

Clifton Beach, Karachi

Clifton Beach, Karachi, Pakistan

Clifton Beach, Karachi, Pakistan

Click to view large.  Photo taken here.

The New Pakistan . . .

same as the old:

Police detained the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, at his house in Lahore early Sunday morning hours before his address to a planned demonstration here, and arrested supporters protesting outside his home.

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