Despite its size, the Pakistan military is ill prepared for the kind of war it faces in Swat Valley or the other boundary areas of Pakistan.  For sixty years, all of Pakistan has sacrificed to reinforce its military for the purpose of defeating India in Kashmir, and, if necessary on the Punjabi plain.  To complement this overwhelming focus, the Pakistan military sought to defeat its enemies on its west frontier like the Soviets and the Soviet successors in Afghanistan through proxy armies and guerilla forces unified under the label “Taliban.” 

This past week, we twice debated traveling to Peshawar then decided against doing so.  On one day, the car in which I may have travelled to Peshawar passed an exploded roadside bomb just as rescuers were pulling surviving victims from the debris and taking them to Peshawar hospitals.  At 10:30 on 9 June, seventeen people died when a 500-pound truck bomb exploded at the five star hotel in Peshawar, the Pearl Continental.

I really need to remember Pentecost this year in Pakistan where the friction of divisive convictions, some devoid of a single thread of compromise, threaten neighbourhoods, villages, cities, and nations.  I am in a place where local military forces and a big imperial army with faceless weapons and intelligence operatives are poised to make things come out right.

May 29, 2009
This morning I travelled to Rawalpindi, the partner city to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.  Near the city center, we noted Liaquat National Bagh, the park where Benazir Bhutto, the leading candidate for Prime Minister, was gunned down in Dec. 2007.  At the moment that I passed the Park with its history of blood, a massive explosion was occurring in Lahore several hours further south.