Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Dear all— It is with mixed emotions that I write this post announcing I’m leaving the True/Slant fold. I’m sad to be leaving a great platform, but I’ll be taking a new job as Pakistan Bureau Chief for Thomson Reuters, so I’m pretty stoked about that.

Coates & Co. have been great to write for and this is a great forum. I hope it succeeds beyond reason because I want to see communities such as True/Slant for talented writers like Stephan Faris and Mark Dery. And the fact that they’re getting paid is bonus! There is today such a race to the bottom in rates paid to writers and shooters, so it’s great to see a site doing its best to avoid that. No one’s getting rich here, and as Dr. Ben Johnson once probably said, “Only a fool writes for free.” There are no fools on True/Slant.

Maybe I’ll be able to continue contributing somewhere down the road but for now, I want to concentrate on the position here in Islamabad and all the challenges that come from being the new guy.

Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba has acquired more than 50 para-gliding equipment from Europe, setting off alarm bells in the government that these could be used to carry out air-borne suicide attacks in the country.

India on high alert as LeT buys para-gliding equipment.

Is the war on terror now involving COBRA? Should we be worried about SPECTRE?

Well, guess what? Hakimullah Mehsud is apparently alive! And I’ll bet you didn’t even know he might have been dead.

The Pakistani Taliban, or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) released two audiotapes this weekend, each purportedly by Hakimullah, the leader of that not-so-merry band of outlaws. A series of drone attacks targeted him after his group claimed credit for the attack on the CIA base in Khost in Afghanist, which killed seven agency employees. Hakimullah even had the stones to sit in a martyrdom video the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, made.

Well, you can imagine this upset the CIA a bit. So they dropped some Hellfire missiles on him. Or where they thought he was, anyway. The first strike on Thursday killed about 12 militants, according to various intelligence and military sources, and there was a lot of speculation that Hakimullah was enjoying himself some virgins in paradise. Indeed, among the press corps here in Islamabad, the overwhelming opinion was that the successor to Baitullah Mehsud — killed in a drone strike in August last year — had been smoked. I was a lonely voice saying I had a hunch he was alive, but there was no way to confirm without observing him. In short, he became sort of a Schrödinger’s Terrorist, neither alive nor dead, but existing in both states simultaneously. Or something like that.

Anyway, the TTP countered with all the sophistication of a three-year-old, taunting the world with essentially a “Missed me!” claim. Hakimullah had exited the madrassa  a few minutes before the attack, TTP spokesman Azam Tariq said. But he allowed that perhaps he had been injured. Adding to the confusion, the group released a tape on Friday containing what other reporters identified as Hakimullah’s voice, but it made no mention of a date. A second tape, released today, does mention a date.

“Let me say this briefly, that I, Hakimullah Mehsud, today, on the 16th of January, with central spokesman Azam Tariq and Umar Khittab, want to give this message to all mujahedeen: that by the grace of Allah, I, Hakimullah Mehsud, am alive and in good health. Neither have I been martyred in a drone attack nor injured,” the voice says on Saturday’s tape.

Well, rats.

All joking aside, it seems pretty clear he had a close call, which will probably drive him further underground. At least that might make it a little more difficult for the group to plan more spectacular attacks for a while, after they realize how close the CIA got. One can only hope.

The author complains:

But what did we find as we read the Allbritton article? The 3rd paragraph begins with the sentence:

“The Gandhara kingdom and its art are important because it shows the impact of Hellenistic influence brought by Alexander the Great and his Macedonians (emphasis ours).”

Here it is in plain English. The importance of Gandhar derives from and only from the influence of Alexander and the Greek influence he brought with him. This is the definition of cultural supremacism, in our opinion. The deep roots of Gandhar in Indian history and its rich contribution to culture and education in pre-Alexander period seem to be completely irrelevant to Mr. Allbritton.

Now, I will take the hit that perhaps I did put too much emphasis on the Hellenistic influence as a way of illustrating the civilization’s importance. But the authors of the blog — who seem to be writing from an Indian perspective — should realize that my primary audience is a Western one, and the parts of Gandhar’s history that would most interest them or they might be most familiar with would likely include Alexander the Great. No disrespect was intended; I was just trying to root the story in a context Time’s audience might relate to more.

The author then proceeds to give a long and detailed (but interesting) history of Gandhar and its impact on the sub-continent. Fair enough. They have the room to do that, and I did not. As the author points out, “But Mr. Allbritton’s article is about Archaeological Treasures and not about history.” Well, it was specifically about the current threat to archaeological treasures, but no matter. However, the author of the post goes on to accuse me of deliberately ignoring the history of Taxila. That was not the case at all. I was fully aware of its importance, both to the Middle East and to the immediate region, but again, journalism is not history. It’s about cramming as much information into a limited word count. Some things inevitably get left out.

I guess what irks me the most is the idea that I exhibited “a deep-seated cultural supremacism” and engaged in “a deliberate attempt to rewrite history according to his own biases. Based on our analysis above, we also opine that his ignorance of the Gandhar history is not accidental but deliberate. It reminds us of the perversion of Indian history practiced by many British Historians of the 19th & 20th century.” Quite the contrary, and email from archaeologists who specialize in the Gandhar excavations wrote me to praise the article. I don’t think they saw a “deliberate attempt to rewrite history.”

Finally, the author says he reached out to Time Magazine for a response, and was rebuffed. That’s unfortunate, and I regret that. However, I have no control over that as I’m a freelancer. But I will say I never received an email from anyone on this subject. A simple Google search would have turned up many ways to contact me, if they really wished to discuss this. I would have welcomed that feedback.

So let this blog post be an opportunity for them to respond and engage. And anyone else who thinks I deliberately neglected India.

But no matter! Time for a bit of self-promotion: Sonic Diplomacy: American Jazz in Pakistan – Video – TIME.com. It’s my latest and last for the year for TIME Magazine but, interestingly, it was the first story I did in Pakistan. I started it way back in July and shipped the tapes to New York for editing. Due to a hard drive catastrophe, TIME.com took some time getting it up, but better late than never I usually say.

What’s interesting to me is that everyone involved knows the limitations of such cultural diplomacy programs. This isn’t the 1950s when Dizzy Gillespie went around Pakistan blown’ his horn for the locals. Today, these programs are much more proscribed and discrete. They make folks feel pretty good, but in a security environment as precarious as Pakistan’s, I’m not sure how much good they actually do. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

TIME Magazine just posted my latest, a story on the impact of Pakistan’s deteriorating security situation on the archaeology of Pakistan. Dig it:

In the mountains and valleys of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, palace ruins and crumbling Buddhist monasteries dot the hills above war-torn locations such as Mingora, Peshawar and the Swat Valley. These magnificent ruins are all that’s left of the Gandhara kingdom, which flourished from the 6th century B.C. to the 11th century A.D. It vanished under the pressure of war and conquest, re-emerging only in 1848 when relics and ruins were re-discovered by the British archaeologist, Sir Alexander Cunningham.

Now, Gandhara is in danger of vanishing a second time from the same old threats. Just as the Afghan Taliban destroyed the 1,500-year-old statues of the Buddha in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in 2001, militants in Pakistan have attacked the Buddhist heritage in Pakistan, driving away foreign research teams and tourists, forcing the closure of museums and threatening the integrity of valuable digs. “Militants are the enemies of culture,” says Abdul Nasir Khan, curator of the museum at Taxila, one of the country’s premier archaeological sites and a former capital of the Gandhara civilization. “It is very clear that if the situation carries on like this, it will destroy our cultural heritage.”

…

The lack of archaeologists at many sites has led militants and vandals to close in. Kashmir Smast, about 70 miles northwest of Islamabad, is a Hindu site, not Buddhist, and thus unusual for the area. “But there’s no preservation, no one to look after the site,” says Dr. Nasim Khan, professor of archaeology at the University of Peshawar. “The local people are damaging the site because of illegal diggings.” In Swat, the Taliban have long attempted to destroy the Buddhist heritage of the region. In October 2007, as militants cemented their hold on the former tourist area, the Taliban dynamited the face of the Jehanabad Buddha into oblivion. The 23-foot-high carving of the seated Buddha, dating from the 7th century, is regarded as the second most important Gandhara monument after the Taliban-eradicated Bamiyan Buddhas.

It’s a sad story, but an important one. Destroying the past of a place is the surest way of destroying its future.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Yesterday’s attack in Multan may not seem significant to outsiders looking at the steady drumbeat of bombings that have rocked Pakistan. It seems like another insurgent attack on a government installation with a double-digit body count. And there’s a numbing familiarity to the attack by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which used their now familiar methods of a coordinated assault and suicide bomb. (In this case, a truck bomb.) The target was the Inter-Services Intelligence building in Multan, a town of 1.4 million people in central Punjab.

But it was the location that gives me pause. In five days, we’ve had five bombings in Pakistan, stretching from Peshawar to Lahore and now further south to Multan. More than 100 people have been killed. This indicates the Taliban insurgency has not only survived the Pak Army’s assault on South Waziristan, but has expanded its operations to the Punjab heartland again after being hobbled by Operation Path to Salvation, launched in October.

Yesterday’s attack was the third on an ISI facility in six months, and it’s intended to show that the frontline defense of the state against internal threats can be hit, too. Twelve people died in Multan yesterday, and 47 were injured. But it’s also the first attack in Multan and the furthest south the Taliban have ever managed to strike to date. Previously, they’ve limited their attacks to the NWFP (Peshawar) and the northern part of Punjab (Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Lahore.) Attacking Multan shows the expanding reach of the insurgency.

This means that the Pakistani Taliban—after a November lull—can now project power deep into the country’s heartland. Their command and control capabilities have not been diminished. Given that the Pak Army claims about 75o militants killed in South Waziristan, out of an estimated 10,000, there is now every indication that the Pakistan Taliban did indeed relocate the bulk of its fighting resources and leadership out of the conflict zone months before the army ever went in. And it does seem to indicate that the alliance between Pashtun and Punjabi militant groups is alive and well.

So what does all this mean for the future? Well, Multan is a symbolic hit, being the home of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. It’s also the last major town heading south before you hit Sindh. While there’s yet to be a militant attack in Karachi, Pakistan’s financial capital and largest city, that doesn’t mean there will never be one.

So, the Multan attack was a signal that the Taliban can hit where they want, and that Karachi is within their sights. There is a major Pashtun population in Karachi, too, providing a population that might be sympathetic to the largely Pashtun insurgency’s aims of autonomy for their tribal homelands. If the TTP were able to spark major ethnic clashes between Pashtuns and the Muhajirs in Karachi, the resources of the state could be overwhelmed. Perhaps that’s the idea: To stretch out the Pakistani Army’s resources all over NWFP, FATA, Punjab and even Sindh in an incoherent counter-insurgency strategy to create a state of anarchy so that they can operate freely. Washington has even suggested the TTP and its al Qaeda allies want to spark a war between India and Pakistan.

One thing’s clear: As the United States pours troops into Afghanistan, more militants from there likely will wind up on this side of the Durrand Line, leading to an increase in violence in Pakistan. Combined with a political, financial and energy crisis, Pakistan is in for a bumpy winter.

This is a bit much.

Director-General of Pakistan Meteorological Department Dr Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry … said the presence of [the] Indian army in the region was causing rapid melting, damaging the glaciers. He said Pakistan’s agriculture was dependant on Himalayan glaciers and global warming and military presence could pose risk to the country’s food security.

via DAWN.COM | Sci-Tech | Indians’ presence at Siachen causes rapid glacier melting.

He goes on to say the Indians are “cutting glacial ice using chemicals” which is speeding up the melting of the ice while glaciers on the Pakistani side of the Line of Control in Kashmir are “not only stable but moderately growing.”

A visiting scholar at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute said global warming wasn’t a factor. “This is a deceptive and false impression which is deliberately being conveyed to [the] international community by New Delhi to save [the] Indian army from this serious and catastrophic environmental crime.”

Blah blah. It’s more than a bit much to blame something as complex as glacial melting on a single country. And it obviously begs credulity that the Indians are the only ones up on the “highest battleground in the world” causing environmental damage.

But this is what the Pakistani media are full of on any given day. Pick a problem and it’s someone else’s fault. Usually it’s India, but just to mix things up, they often blame the U.S., Israel or “the West.”

Until Pakistan comes to grips that there are serious internal problems here, things will never get better.

Every morning, Sarim Zaidi, 17, puts on his school uniform, straightens his tie and hops into the car his parents provide for him to go to the Imperial International School and College in Islamabad, an upscale private institution. After his driver drops him off, he goes through metal detectors, winds his way around barbed wire, glances nervously at the armed guard on the roof and flashes his ID badge before finally entering a classroom.

Across town, in a poorer section of Islamabad, Hamza Baig, 14, also smartens up his school uniform, but at the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation Boys College, a government school, there are no armed guards. There is only a lonely doorman behind a flimsily padlocked gate. He is armed with a stick.

These are how kids go to school in Pakistan nowadays, thanks to a ferocious campaign of violence by the Pakistani Taliban against schools all over the country that has left parents panicked, students uneasy and educators worried about whether they’re doing enough to protect kids in the middle of a war. Schools have been turned into fortresses, and some students have made attending class an act of defiance.

via Pakistani Taliban Targets Both Boys’ and Girls’ Schools – TIME.

It’s truly scandalous to drive by some of the private schools on Nazim-ud-Din Road in Islamabad and see the levels of security while government schools have barely one chowkidar to guard the place. Yes, private schools are more likely to be targeted, but don’t all kids deserve to feel safe when they’re learning their maths?

A model shows off Pakistani designs Wednesday night at Fashion Pakistan Week in Karachi. (© 2009 Christopher Allbritton)

I’m in Karachi for a couple of stories and though I’d drop in on Karachi’s fashion show, which is being heralded as a blow against the Taliban. Here’s the story I filed for the Daily Telegraph. Pictures, all © 2009 Christopher Allbritton, are below.

KARACHI, Pakistan–In the midst of a terror campaign by Islamic militants and a military push by the army into their strongholds, Karachi’s elite came out to celebrate their home-grown fashion designers with off-the-shoulder numbers and midriff-baring outfits reflecting the conflict within Pakistan.

Wednesday night marked the kickoff of the awkwardly named Fashion Pakistan Week, and the designs by Sonya Battla, the first showing, celebrated strong women and the conflict they’re facing in the country, she said.

“It’s a very eastern collection,” said the 38-year-old designer backstage as models in various stages of makup rushed around in a frenzy of eyelashes and rogue brushes. “It’s about something like we’re feeling.”

Her designs are a mishmash of smooth and rough fabrics, contrasting layers of velvelt and silk, flowing lines accented by faux armor with spikes rather than jewelry. Some designs look shredded. Others look smooth as a pearl’s surface.

She wanted to showcase the conflicting worlds that Pakistani women live in, she said, with some in the all-enveloping burqa that reduces them to a conical sillouette and others in sleeveless and revealing outlines.

But what about the Taliban? And their mysognistic worldview to put women away behind closed doors? And a fashion show? In the high-profile Marriott Hotel? Which last year burned in Islamabad? Is she concerned about what militants might do? Or is the show and her line a stand against extremism?

“I’m a very brave woman,” she said with a laugh when confronted with these concerns. “I’m not going to be scared and no one’s going to judge me.”

Likewise, another young designer, Samar Mehdi, 35, hoped that the vision of Pakistan as a creative, fashionable place would overcome the negative images so often portrayed.

“Life has to go on,” she said. “And this is a way to tell the people want our lives to stop that no, we won’t let you.”

Mehdi attained her fashion degree at Bristol University, and was one of 18 students—and the only Pakistani—to show at Graduate Fashion Week in 1997, a companion event to London’s annual Fashion Week.

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