The Problem of Pakistan -- The New Yorker
For a certain generation of India-based foreign correspondents, the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, formerly the Islamabad Holiday Inn, served as a second home. Elections, coups, wars, and threats of war summoned us to Pakistan from New Delhi for protracted stays, and in that era of untroubled newspaper-business models, we paid a little extra to stay on the front-facing side of the fifth floor, where the rooms had vaulted ceilings and views of the Margala Hills—small, morale-lifting aesthetic advantages that eased the blues that come while living in a hotel room for weeks at a time. The hotel’s lounges and restaurants were scenes of the sort of camaraderie peculiar to newspaper correspondents; here, the only palatable lubricant was bottled Murree beer, which is officially available in Pakistan’s hotels only to non-Muslim foreigners, provided they are willing to attest to their apostasy by signing their names in cloth-bound ledgers. In recent years, knowing that the hotel was a terrorist target, I stayed there less often, but nostalgia often tempted me back for at least a night or two; I shifted to the back side of the fifth floor, on the theory that any truck bomber would probably show up out front. (In fact, when he arrived last Saturday, the suicide trucker seems to have foiled the hotel’s security perimeter by approaching from the side of the building, and by packing a very heavy load of explosives.) Watching the news footage this weekend was like watching pictures of your college dormitory burning to the ground.
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My Comment: A good summary on the need to rasdically change our approach to giving aid to Pakistan.
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