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.

This is my latest in TIME Magazine:

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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