Trouble in Pakistan

"NEW YORK TIMES
December 28, 2007

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated near the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday..."

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My memories of Pakistan are of an unsettled nation. In October 1989 I visited the largest city, Karachi, for a day and met with leaders of Christian churches at Holy Trinity Anglican cathedral. I had arrived in the previous evening from Dhaka, Bangladesh and recall that the taxi I took to my downtown hotel did not move slower than 60 mph through the city streets; it was a memorable ride. After the meeting the next morning my host showed me some of the city before dropping me off at the airport for an internal Pakistan Interational Airlines (PIA) flight to Lahore in the north. In Lahore I met with the Anglican bishop (The Very Right Reverend Dr.....) the next day who was also hosting a conference. I made a presentation at the conference and then left for Karachi that evening and flew on to London the next day via a stop in Kuwait. I remember that when I checked in for my flight to Minneapolis at London's Gatwick Airport the next day I was "randomly selected" for a thorough search after the security agent noted the Pakistani visa in my passport. That visa was to raise other questions occasionally by security staff at other airports.

In early 1990 I found myself assigned to projects on two continents, in Africa and Asia. This resulted in my flying from Kinshasa, Zaire (now Dem. Rep. of Congo) to Dhaka, Bangladesh via Nairobi and Karachi. My flight from Nairobi to Karachi was a PIA Boeing 707, one of the last 707's to fly passengers, I imagine. We had an intermediate stop in Abu Dhabi and arrived in Karachi at about 2:00 a.m. I had booked a hotel room near the airport to make my morning connection to Dhaka later that morning a little less painful. Unfortunately, upon checking in I was advised that I had no reservation. I showed the hotel clerk the pink confirmation slip from my travel agent but it had no effect - no room at this inn. After pressing a bit the clerk finally told me that they had a room but it was not up to my standard. At 3:00 a.m. my standard had fallen considerably and I challenged him to try me. I was shown to a small room with two beds, a sink, and a shower...and a towel. The rate was $20; I slept well, had a shower, and was glad to have saved my employer quite a bit of money.

I later discovered that the reason my reservation had "disappeared" was that there had been riots in the city center the previous day and the airlines had moved their crews out to airport hotels to avoid being caught up in the unrest. Later on that trip I was scheduled to return to Karachi following a visit to Sri Lanka to follow up my previous visit. While I was in Colombo I became aware of further unrest in Karachi and was advised by my director, who was in Taiwan, to change my itinerary and head straight home. So I bought a ticket on UTA, a French airline later merged with Air France, and flew overnight to Paris with a stop in Muscat on the Arabian peninsula.

I recently read a very good account of the development of Pakistan's nuclear capabilities titled DECEPTION: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark.

rpk