The Reports of Pakistan’s collapse have been greatly exaggerated
The situation in Pakistan is not nearly as bad as the more hysterical sections of the Western media would have it. The country is still a very long way indeed from collapse or revolution. I was warned before setting off for Peshawar that the city was “under siege from the militants,” and far too dangerous for Westerners to visit. A couple of nights ago, as I tucked into my eighth piece of tikka with Pakistani hosts at Green’s Hut, a delightful outdoor restaurant in the Peshawar, I reflected that so far—insha’allah, as one must say here—the biggest threat to long-term health in the city remains what it has always been, a combination of Pashtun hospitality and wonderfully rich local food. There have been a couple of bombs since my arrival, but this is a sprawling city of almost four million people. There is trouble not far from Peshawar, but the city itself is in no real sense “under siege.”
