… overland from Liverpool to Varanasi in India. From time to time, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we would stop and absorb the atmosphere and life as our journey moved us ever further east.

No more. It is unimaginable, 40 years on, to think of innocent young white men and scarved young European women even making such a journey. The satanic scenes out of Peshawar last night were a searing reminder that the world has turned in a devastating way.

The clatter and din of the market …

Permalink||(18) Comments

… eight years ago, many Afghan Talibs and al-Qaida fighters, including Osama bin Laden, moved to Pakistan’s tribal areas. Now the Pakistani military – which once sheltered these people and still has sympathy for them – is battling to clear them from their stronghold in Waziristan. As a result, many may be pushed back into Afghanistan.

In Pakistan, the militants take their revenge in daily bombing – this morning up to 90 were killed in Peshawar.

US Secretary of State Hillary …

Permalink||(18) Comments

… The only reason US troops were there was to try to stop insurgents crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan and in that task they were almost totally failing anyway.

Now they have to work out how to get out of the there without further casualites.

Permalink||(3) Comments

… actually bought chemicals he needed to make a bomb. He had attended an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan, and he had stored on his laptop nine pages of instructions for making bombs from the chemicals he had bought.

The fact that Zazi posed a real danger makes this story very different from dozens of other American terrorism cases in which the arrests are announced with great fanfare but on closer examination seem to contain almost no legitimate threats.

All too often it seems like …

Permalink||(0) Comments

… Monday. They spent time after the Security Council today, and obviously went into the Friends of Pakistan meeting together, on an issue that’s of great concern to both countries.

 

  So I think — I think this is a media-generated bunch of silliness.

 

Q Bunch of silliness?

 

MR. GIBBS: Bunch of silliness.

Q But why did we turn down the request for a bilateral?

 

MR. GIBBS: We have — because we’re talking to them …

Permalink||(1) Comment

… stormed through the outer office and marched out to chair a meeting of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan, leaving me and Adam Bolton of Sky News without getting our turn at an interview.

Adam will no doubt get one later – he’s travelling with the PM from here to Pittsburgh where we are all going to a G20 meeting tomorrow.

For us it was too late – our 7pm show came and went without me managing to grab even one word.

It’s a shame because I was the only journalist there …

Permalink||(2) Comments

… terrorist threat to the UK begins to crystallise. Where it exists, it is home grown and trained in Pakistan. Converts and young men who suddenly “find” their religion after particularly wayward adolescence are prevalent.

The common factors in all the cases have been young, mainly educated Muslim men, and resentment of UK foreign policy.

That said, the airline plot trial represents the last of the mega terror trials for the foreseeable future. The trials, as well as control orders …

Permalink||(10) Comments

… water is cold.

Nick Paton Walsh is embedded with the US military on the eastern Afghanistan / Pakistan border on the airbase F.O.B. Bostick.

Permalink||(3) Comments

… in Jalalabad, where we are en route to Kunar, near Afghanistan’s north-eastern border with Pakistan, the heat sits on you – a fiery blanket of discomfort. Dry and unforgiving. Sweat dries on your body, down the back of your ears. Dehydration is a constant, not the exception. Your contact lenses heave in your eyes. It’s not a place meant for people who wear contact lenses, I tell myself.

We’re here at what’s probably the peak of “fighting season”, in perhaps the most …

Permalink||(4) Comments