R&R Redux

The Man Who Would Be King

I have three guards. Azad is a man of about 40, bearded and serious. He speaks a bit of English and between that and my broken Urdu we communicate with some degree of understanding. Saqib is the youngest guard and he too speaks a little English but, as he is highly excitable and borderline insane, we don't communicate so well. Then there is Sher Mohammad, the 'Lion of the Pathans'. Sher Mohammad is in his late 60s or early 70s and speaks only Pashto so communication with him is all but impossible. He takes his work very seriously and always carries himself with great dignity so it came as somewhat of a surprise to us all when he returned from his days off and a visit back to his village in the FATA with his grey hair dyed bright orange. This may have some cultural significance among Pathans of which we're unaware, but more likely it's a simple fashion statement gone badly awry. Sher Mohammad continued to behave with the same serious and dignified approach to his work that he's always shown so I became used to his orange hair curling out from under his Wackenhut Guards hat. Then I came home from work one day to discover that the 'Lion of the Pathans' was wearing mascara, eyeliner and makeup on his cheeks. The Pathans are fierce and proud warriors who have controlled the mountain passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan for centuries. They have occasionally been defeated in battle but never conquered and they always avenge any slight, real or imagined. I was, therefore, careful to continue to treat Sher Mohammad with all the respect and courtesy due a cross-dressing senior citizen Pathan carrying a gun. And I immediately put in for my second R&R.

I made reservations at a resort in the Maldive Islands that was reputed to have great food and an excellent dive center. My plan was to spend ten days lying in the sun, reading books, eating big meals, smoking cigars, and doing some scuba diving. The resort was called Herathera which means "Hideaway" in the local language. I would live in a beach villa that didn't have a 'safe' room, Phase 3 security, two-way radio or armed guards. When the mood struck me I would walk up and down the beach and I wouldn't ride in an armored vehicle for the whole ten days. It took me just over 24 hours to get from Islamabad to Herathera. I flew to Dubai where I had a sixteen hour layover but the airline gave me a complimentary hotel room and I managed to both get some rest and see a little of the city. Then I flew from Dubai to Male, the capitol of the Maldives. In Male I transferred to a small twin engined plane for another hour and a half flight down to Gan, the island with an airport on the atoll with Herathera. From Gan I took a 25 minute speedboat ride across the lagoon to Herathera and then I was there, one speedboat ride too far, in my opinion, to be summoned back to the Embassy for any perceived emergencies.

The first thing I noticed about Herathera was that it was no longer called Herathera. It had changed ownership since I made my reservation and is now called Han'dhufushi which means something other than Hideaway in the local language but I couldn't determine exactly what that might be. Under either name my villa was excellent and opened up right onto the lagoon so after a short nap I visited the dive center to pick up a mask, snorkel and fins. The day was overcast but warm and I swam around the reef for almost three hours. It may surprise you to learn that you can become pretty severely sunburned while snorkeling for three hours under an overcast sky; it did me. However, because the sunburn was on my back and calves and I couldn't see it, I decided to just ignore it and hoped it would go away. When that plan didn't work so well I bought some exorbitantly priced spray stuff that actually took the sting out. I snorkeled every day and went scuba diving every second day. There were reef fish of every imaginable shape and color, dolphins, turtles, moray eels, manta rays and sharks all over the lagoon. The underwater scenery was amazing!


Sartorial splendor on R&R


The staff decorated my bed on my birthday


My vllla

Three meals a day were included in the price of the room and the food was delicious. There was a salad table, a bread & cheese table, a row of serving dishes with a wide range of hot foods, a dessert table and two chefs who cooked at the grill. There was no limit to the number of times you could waddle back up to the buffet and I began to feel as if I were conducting an experiment in seeing how far the human skin will stretch.


The view from my dining room table

I brought along a stack of books and a box of cigars and spent much of each day lying in the shade relaxing. Every day, in the late afternoon, bats the size of flying monkeys came out and flew up and down the beach. In addition to their well known powers of sonar and echolocation they also seemed to be able to sense when a very sunburned man was trying to take a picture of them and would only come by when my camera was back in the room.


Dolphins played around the dive boat every day


One of the dive boats

Bats aside, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Han'dhufushi Resort to anyone interested in a quiet relaxing vacation in a remote idyllic spot. Bring suntan lotion and, if you're so inclined, bat repellent.


Caped Crusader, where art thou?

It took another full day to fly back to Pak where I did my laundry, slept for a few hours, repacked my bag and headed back out to the airport for a flight to Skardu in Kashmir. I had reservations at a hotel near K2 and was looking forward to seeing that famous mountain and taking some pictures of it. While I was sleeping Musharraf resigned. The country didn't explode so I didn't cancel my trip.

The first thing you notice when you fly on Pakistan International Airlines is that the flight attendants recite a prayer before takeoff. "Bismillah heerachman neeraheem" or "We begin with the name of God". Prior to descent they say, "We will be landing, Inshallah (God willing), at Skardu Airport in ten minutes". The next thing that strikes you on the flight to Skardu is that after climbing for 40 minutes out of Islamabad and negotiating narrow mountain passes that seem to be only marginally wider than the plane's wingspan, you land. You don't actually descend to land, you just land. Inshallah! Skardu is well over a mile high and at that altitude it is still the lowest point in the entire surrounding area.


This ruffian was spotted near the warning sign.

I stayed in a 17th century fort that's been converted into a very nice hotel called Shigar Fort. It's in the next valley over from Skardu and involves an interesting drive across one of the passes and along a very narrow two lane road that, in typically quaint Pakistani fashion, has no barriers or guardrails along the drop-off side. "Bismillah heerachman neeraheem" indeed! Upon checking in at Shigar Fort I asked the Manager if it was possible to have a room with a view of K2. He thought about it for a minute and then said, "No, not from this hotel." I asked him which hotel had rooms with views of K2 and he said, "Well, to see K2 we can rent you a jeep and you drive eight hours north until the road ends and then you hike for seven days and if the weather is clear you can see K2 from that spot." Which explains why I haven't seen K2 to date.


Shigar Fort Hotel


The hallway to my room in Shigar Fort


The doorway to the hallway to my room in Shigar Fort


A 'charpai' on the grounds of Shigar Fort

Instead of going to K2 I hired a car and driver to take me to the Deosai Plateau which has views of lots of very tall mountains, although none of them are famous. The car picked me up at the hotel and drove back along the narrow mountain road towards Skardu then south to the Plateau. It was an old Toyota Corolla with no shocks, bald tires, loose steering and bad brakes but the driver managed to hammer it along at just under the speed of sound and gave a whole new meaning to the word "careening" as we rounded the turns. Looking down into the river valleys thousands of feet below us as we rocketed along the road I didn't want to distract the driver so I whimpered softly instead of screaming out loud. The situation became marginally more terrifying when the driver received a call on his cell phone and proceeded to have a long animated conversation while sliding around the gravel strewn mountain road. Then, as if to prove that it can always get worse, he began to use his non-essential hand (the one doing the steering not the one holding the cell phone) to fiddle with his tape deck. Although not many things worked on this small decrepit juggernaut of a vehicle, I'm happy to report that the tape deck functioned perfectly and for the next several hours I was treated to very very loud music. It was atonal, repetitive, wailing and each song lasted approximately seven hundred hours. The driver continued to shout into his cell phone and, from time to time, would use his non-essential steering hand to see if he could boost a bit more volume from the tape deck. Flying off the road into one of the river valleys below began to look like an appealing option to me.


This isn't K2, seen from the PIA flight into Skardu.


Satpara Lake seen in the distance


Satpara Village as seen from a very high mountain road

I had decided to visit the Deosai Plateau National Park because the hotel manager had assured me that there were more types of wild flowers found there than could be seen anywhere else in the country. I was no longer a novice at this so I made him guarantee that I could see this wild mosaic of color from the jeep on the road and wouldn't have to hike for days in order to do so. No, the flowers grew everywhere and the road across the Plateau cut straight through them.



The Plateau looked like a lunar landscape, dry, featureless and brown. When I returned to the hotel and told him that I hadn't seen so much as a green leaf the hotel manager explained patiently and slowly, as if he finally realized that I was a bit dim, that the wild flowers grew in great abundance...in the Spring...and that I really should choose my time to visit more carefully. The absence of flowers didn't really bother me too much because the drive through the mountains was spectacular and the views from the Plateau were incredible.


This patch of lichen represents the riotous spray of colors seen when the wildflowers bloom in Spring

The Deosai Plateau, Skardu and Kashmir are amazing places to visit with magnificent views of the Karakoram Mountains, the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. The shopkeepers and businessmen in Skardu are suffering because there is virtually no tourism any more and tourism is the foundation of their economy. They repeatedly asked me to "tell Americans to come here" and assured me that Osama was nowhere near Skardu (and if he's up at K2 it'll take him seven days to hike to a road to hitchhike into town!). Unfortunately, after a period of relative calm, Kashmir seems to be on the verge of erupting into sectarian violence again. It's truly a shame that Kashmir isn't safe for tourists now because Americans would flock to this part of the world and they'd spend more money than we currently give to the Government of Pakistan. Tourist dollars put directly into the hands of shopkeepers, hotels, restaurants and local businesses would do more to reduce Pakistan's crushing poverty than all our well-intentioned government supplied aid put into the hands (pockets) of the politicians and military.


Town meeting in Skardu


Skardu's main shopping district

I flew back into Islamabad on Sunday and realized that I was completely rested and ready to get back to the job. I like the people I work with here, I enjoy the work I do and, in spite of our security restrictions, I like living in Pakistan. When the car bringing me back from the airport pulled into my driveway, Sher 'The Lion of the Pathans' Mohammad opened my gate, saluted touching his fingertips to his silver grey hair and smiled a make-up free smile. Everything seems to be back to normal (by Pakistan standards anyway) again and it's good to be home.


Last evening at Han'dhufushi

The Khyber Pass

The entrance to the Khyber Pass, seen from the open door of a Huey gunship.


I flew over the Khyber Pass in a helicopter gunship the other day. I'm not quite certain why I was given this highly sought after opportunity but when it was offered to me I jumped at the chance. A very senior State Department official and his Staff Assistant were here on an official visit and his program included a tour of Peshawar with a flyover of the FATA and the Khyber Pass.

The FATA is the Federally Administered Tribal Area and it's the place in Pakistan where most of the Taliban and other righteous militants gather, plot mayhem and hide from the light of day. The Khyber Pass is the historic route into the Indian Subcontinent and its military significance has been recognized and exploited by invading armies from Alexander the Great to the British Army of the Indus.

While it would be truly interesting to drive through the Khyber Pass and you'd gain a still greater appreciation for it if you hiked through it like an invading army, it's far safer and much easier to simply fly over it in a helicopter. The Government of Pakistan recently tried trucking a couple of helicopters over the Pass but, sadly, they were stolen by brigands along the way. No, it's much better to actually fly the darn things in the manner in which they were intended.

So we, the senior State Department official, his assistant, his Embassy supplied Control Officer and I, piled into two armored Land Cruisers and drove up to Peshawar from Islamabad. The senior State Department official (aka the Principal) and his Control Officer rode in the front car and I, as is my habit, rode in the back car (aka the Straggler). His bodyguard rode shotgun in his vehicle which meant that his Staff Assistant had to either ride three across in the back seat with him and the Control Officer or could ride in relative comfort with me. It is the nature of Staff Assistants to prefer to be close to power and I use the word 'prefer' in the sense that they would eat their own children for a chance to sit behind the Principal and whisper in his ear at a meeting. So the Staff Assistant had to be ordered into the Straggler and we set off for Peshawar, the Birthplace of Al Qaeda and current Home of the Taliban who, by the way, are the creature come into being with the full aid and support of the ISI, Pakistan's version of the CIA.


The Frontier Corps is responsible for maintaining control of this region.

Peshawar is now and ever was the gateway to the Pass. It has been fought over and occupied again and again throughout recorded history and is currently under the nominal control of the Government of Pakistan. Coming into Pakistan from Afghanistan, once past Peshawar, you are in the heart of the Punjab, the rich fertile Indus River valley. It's a two hour drive from Islamabad to Peshawar on a very modern and beautifully maintained motorway through a lush and green countryside and by the second hour the Staff Assistant had relaxed enough to begin to enjoy the scenery. Prior to that she had been very busy identifying every bearded man on a motorcycle as a potential suicide bomber. There are a lot of bearded men on motorcycles in Pakistan. Before she left the States someone told her that Pakistan is a 'dangerous' place and she, bless her heart, was certain that everyone we saw was poised to attack. I pointed out that anyone attacking us would certainly go for the front car, which we refer to as the 'Target', and that seemed to reassure her a bit.


Haystacks in a farm field on the Islamabad-Peshawar road.


Public transportation on the Islamabad-Peshawar road.


Public transportation in Peshawar.

When we arrived at the Consulate in Peshawar, the official party went off to have official meetings and I spent the morning with my counterpart, the GSO. He's a man about my own age, I know him well and we have a lot in common so I was able to "read between the lines" when he asked in perfectly phrased diplomatic terms, "How the f**k did you get a ride over the Pass, you a*****e?". The man's a poet.


This somewhat disturbing replica of a small plane going down in flames is at the entrance to the 11th Corps airfield.

After lunch he and I drove out to the 11th Corps military airfield to meet up with the official party and board the helicopters. We were driven out to the waiting aircraft and were told to board. The Principal and Control Officer were directed to the first helo which was painted in very military looking camouflage colors and the Staff Assistant and I were asked to get into the second machine which was painted olive drab. The Staff Assistant had had enough and stated most emphatically, "I'm going in that one!" and clambered into the camouflaged helicopter. As she was crawling into it she turned, saw me point at it and mouth the word "Target" and then I watched her knees buckle as I walked to my now private and personal aircraft.



The Khyber Pass!


The flyover was incredible! In the Khyber Pass we flew below the mountain peaks on either side and over forts, gun emplacements, rivers and roads. The doors were left open and I sat beside the door gunner on the left hand side. The winds were gusting with some strength through the Pass that day and we were batted around like a bingo ball in a mixer. At first it was a little unnerving to be flying in a narrow canyon, seemingly close enough to touch the rocks on either side, but I became so busy taking video and still pictures that I forgot to be nervous. The pilots, who do this regularly, were steering with their feet and eating peanuts from a bag with their hands. We spent an hour flying through and around the Pass before turning back towards home. The helicopters took us all the way back to Islamabad and we had an excellent view of the Punjab in all its splendor.



A fort in the Pass. Every time I asked the crew what this building was they looked down and said, "What Building?"


This is the beginning of the two lane road through the Khyber Pass. If ever a road needed a 'Don't Pick Up Hitchhikers' sign, this is that road.



This town may or may not have been in the FATA. If it wasn't, it was pretty damn close.



These fields are definitely positively in the Punjab. I think.


This is a Huey 2, a Vietnam era helicopter that's been refitted with new avionics, engine and rotors. It was my personal aircraft for over two hours.



The 'Target'.

One of my colleagues told this story of her encounter with the Islamabad traffic police. She ran a red light and was pulled over by the cop on the corner.

"Madam, you ran through the red light."
"Yes, I did."
"No, Madam, you ran through the red light."
"Yes, you're right, I did."
"Yes, you did!"
"That's right, I did. So you can just give me my ticket."
"I can't give you a ticket. We don't have any paper."

If that doesn't sum up Pakistan for you then consider that several of my colleagues have opened tabs with the traffic police. They put down money on account at the police station and the cops just deduct from it for each violation.

So, remember...Don't walk through the Pass, don't ride in the 'Target' and never leave your helicopter parked on a truck!

The Holy Grail

I like a cup of coffee in the morning. I almost never have more than just the one cup, but I really enjoy that cup. Our cafeteria doesn't open until 7:00am and I am often on the compound before then and am forced to wait for my coffee. Many of my colleagues have those insulated coffee mugs made for commuters and bring a cup with them from home. This seemed to be a good idea to me, but I couldn't find one. I kept going to the commissary hoping to find one but, because they don't carry them, I never found one. Nonetheless, I looked for one each and every time I shopped at the commissary sometimes even making a special trip down to that end of the compound just to see if one had magically materialized.

Then one day before we destroyed my fleet of beat up vehicles and I lost my car to the vagaries of the Diplomatic Security Driver Training course I came up with a plan, I'd go to the market and buy my insulated coffee mug there! It's brilliance like this that has seen me become the successful Foreign Service Officer I am today. So I fired up my metallic pink KIA and headed for Khosar Market and a very nicely stocked kitchen supplies store. You can well imagine my disappointment upon discovering that this very nicely stocked kitchen supplies store carried everything from French coffee presses to Italian espresso machines but not a single insulated coffee mug.

Nonetheless I had come all this way and I felt fairly certain that the mug would appear if I put a little more effort into the looking for it, so I prowled the aisles, moved sundries, peered into gaps and spaces on the shelves and in general made a nuisance of myself. Then, quite reasonably, I got mad at the owner and clerks who were following me around and basically accused them of hiding the mugs from me. The Urdu word for "get out!" is "Jao!" but I didn't quite catch the correct pronunciation of the word for "lunatic".

The grocery store I frequent is right next door to the inadequately stocked kitchen supplies store and they carry Hagen Daz in limited flavors which would help take the sting out of my unsuccessful search for a mug. While paying for the ice cream I remembered that the grocery store had a small drug store type section upstairs and I climbed the stairs without any real hope of actually finding a mug. However, on a shelf directly opposite the top of the stairs was the last commuter's insulated coffee mug available for sale, quite possibly, in Pakistan. Between me and the mug were two Swedish diplomats, women who were looking at the mug, but, and I stress this point in my defense, they had not actually touched it yet. Using every inch of my reach I managed to wedge myself in between them and grabbed the mug. Diplomacy be damned, the mug was mine.

I paid for the mug and took it home. It was only several days later when I did the math that I realized I'd paid just over $35 for a mug that the Marriott Hotel routinely gives away as a promotional item. Of course, my mug doesn't have the Marriott logo printed tackily on the side. It has SIGG printed on the side, which turns out to be a Swiss company that manufactures mugs, water bottles and other promotional giveaways. All I can say is that my coffee has never tasted so good.

This week was a holiday week, someone left the doors of Congress unlocked and we had a surge in congressional delegations. Members of both Houses of Congress visit Pakistan with great regularity, never more so than over a holiday, to confer with various senior Pakistani officials including the President, the Prime Minister and the heads of the other two major political parties. That these Members are Honorable men is an indisputable fact, for it says so on their business cards, and they come in an honest attempt to educate themselves on the situation here to help them formulate our policy towards Pakistan in a way that best reflects our national interests.

A week when five separate delegations descend on us 'en masse' means two things to me; first, I will get very little sleep and second, my motor pool will be given every opportunity to shine. This week, between Monday at 3:00am when the fun began and Saturday at 10:00am when the last delegation boarded their military transport for home, we staged fifty-one separate motorcades and moved the five delegations around like pieces on a chessboard. Every vehicle was where it was supposed to be, when it was supposed to be there. Every Honorable Member was transported in safety and security, often at high speed, without incident. Our drivers did an outstanding job! I rode the Control Vehicle or Straggler in most of these movements. When the principal delegate and his/her party are strapped in, the motorcade moves out whether all of our embassy officers are in vehicles or not. The Straggler is there to make sure that anyone missing the move gets brought along to the next stop.

President Musharraf has a beautiful compound in Rawalpindi known as the Camp Office and the drivers, security people and I often sit there enjoying a cup of tea while the Honorable Members meet with him to discuss policy and have their pictures taken. The Prime Minister's residence is in Islamabad on a hill with a glorious view of the city and the Margalla Hills and he prefers to meet with our delegations there rather than in his office, leaving those of us who don't make policy in either Pakistan or America to sit outside and admire that view while hoping that the Honorable Members, against all odds, get it right. It is fairly evident to the committee of us who sit outside the meetings and don't take part in the photo opportunities that the problems here are huge and complex and won't begin to be solved until the grinding poverty in this country is addressed. Pakistan is a nation that needs schools and hospitals, an adequate power supply, a massive infrastructure building project, jobs and food. It has a nuclear weapon, a corrupt bureaucracy and an army that is 0 for 5 since 1947.

High speed motorcades out to the airport and the government offices in Rawalpindi with police escorts front and back and all traffic pulled aside to let us pass were very exciting when I first did them. Now I bring a book and my iPod along. I really enjoy sitting in the Straggler, reading my book, listening to music, sipping my coffee and looking out the window at this very green and beautiful city. It's quite similar to working for a living.


Standing on a hill overlooking the NWFP (Northwest Frontier Provinces).


The fabled NWFP, land of brigands, bandits, terrorists and a whole bunch of people just trying to eke a living out of rock and dirt.

We're in the Monsoon season now, it's come early this year. It's hot and humid and it rains nearly every day but the rain doesn't cool anything down. When the rain stops, the humidity in the air builds up until it rains again in a constant cycle of humid mugginess and torrential downpours. Surprisingly, I don't mind this at all. I find that I like the monsoons and that the heat doesn't bother me. It makes me feel like I'm living in a W. Somerset Maugham/Joseph Conrad sort of foreign place and I should be smoking cigarettes in long holders and drinking gin and tonics on a bamboo porch cooled by slow moving ceiling fans while complaining about the lack of 'good help'. This is also the beginning of the mango season and mango milkshakes are available at the restaurant on the compound, as are mango pies, mango ice cream, mango smoothies, mango ala mode, mango tea and mango smothered in fresh berries. Fresh mangos make the monsoons all the more bearable.

My blue aluminum commuter's insulated coffee mug works very well with mango smoothies and is, therefore, almost worth what it cost me. By the way, it turns out that the Swedish phrase, "alltfor dyr" translates as "too expensive", not "look, Sally, there's the mug we've been searching high and low for!".

Mule Thief!

There are only a couple of things that annoy me about Islamabad, which really isn't too bad because this is, potentially, a pretty annoying place. Because the government can't produce enough power to meet demand, they shut power off to different parts of the city at different times of the day. This is known as 'load shedding' and no matter where you live or work, you share in the regularly scheduled power outages. These outages, set up to last for about an hour at a time, would be very annoying if we didn't have generators at our homes.

Fortunately, we do have generators so when the city turns off the power in our neighborhoods, our generators kick on and the lights, appliances and (most importantly) air conditioners turn back on. So load shedding itself doesn't particularly annoy me. I recognize how fortunate I am to have a generator and I know that life is pretty miserable for people who do not have them.

No, the annoying thing about load shedding is that my dvd player shuts down when the power goes off and forgets where it is in the movie. It seems to be impossible to time it so that I can watch a movie in between power outages, so any movie I try to watch quits twice and I have to search for the spot I was watching when the power died. Trivial, I know, but annoying none the less.

The other annoying thing, to me at least, are the bombs. I confess, even if it's culturally inappropriate, that I don't like people who set off bombs around innocent civilians. I find it especially irksome when they target diplomats. The most recent bomb was detonated in front of the Danish Embassy to express displeasure with some political cartoons that ran in Danish newspapers several years ago. No Danes were injured in the attack but many local people on the street including a young boy were killed or badly injured. The brave souls at Al Qaeda, who immediately took credit for this latest bombing of an unarmed unsuspecting populace, were fairly dribbling spittle into their beards in excitement over their 'great victory'. I was at the Embassy at the time of the blast and learned about it through the grapevine at work. The Danish Embassy is not located with us on the secure diplomatic enclave. Many nations have established their embassies, missions and representatives in the spacious and elegant housing found throughout Islamabad. The Danes are in a very nice residential neighborhood about fifteen minutes from the enclave. To be specific, they are in my neighborhood. In fact, they are one street behind me.

I got home that night to find that my back door, the one facing the street with the Danish Embassy, had been blown in off its hinges by the pressure wave from the blast. The wave then went through my house and blew every single window outwards. Not a single other thing was damaged and, much more importantly, none of my guards were injured. The guards said that the blast was quite loud but not so bad that it hurt their ears. In all, we had eight houses damaged to more or less the same extent and our maintenance people worked all night to get them boarded up and secured. Glass and doors can be replaced and we're fortunate that none of our folks were hurt.

So, for the week it took to replace the glass and door it was a bit like camping out. The mosquitos certainly believed that was the case. Replacing the glass was a more complex task than measuring, cutting and plugging-in because of the security grills covering every single window opening. All the grills had to be cut off then re-welded into place after the glass was installed. However, all the work's been completed, all the mosquitos have been evicted and we're operating under heightened security rules...again. Ironically, this bombing came on the heels of the current Government of Pakistan's insistence that negotiating with the terrorists was effectively bringing peace to the country. If you can't trust the word of people who use suicide bombers to kill children, you could begin to lose your faith in diplomacy altogether.


This is how all my windows looked immediately after the blast.


When all your windows are boarded up, it's a little like living in a cave.

I stole a mule today. In an incredible lapse of good judgement I purloined the DCM's mule. All I can say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Before I'm hanged as a mule thief, a word or two of explanation is in order. 'Mules' are Kawasaki all terrain vehicles that are used on the compound like golf carts. GSO (my section) has one mule for sure and another who's ownership is debated. We feel it's ours and the DCM insists that it's his. For those of you unfamiliar with the hierarchy of an Embassy, the DCM is the Deputy Chief of Mission, second in command only to the Ambassador herself. So, our 'debate' has, up until today, consisted of us muttering under our breath and never in his presence, "it's really our mule" and him stating emphatically, out loud and directly to us, "keep your damn hands off my mule!". He took both the keys to the mule called Paco (all the mules have names) and that would have been that if we didn't have the ability to make duplicate keys. Reasoning that sometimes he's away and we might need Paco, we had a set of keys made just as a precaution.

Today, Saturday, the temperature and the humidity were climbing and Chuck and I needed to go from Post 2 down to the commissary. It's a long walk on a hot day and Luci, our undisputed GSO mule, was being used so we looked for Paco and couldn't find him. Chuck is our Housing Coordinator, an ex-marine and a fellow about my age so he and I hiked down to the commissary grumbling every step of the way. On the way we passed the Facilities Maintenance building and spotted Paco parked neatly by the barber shop. One of us suggested that since we had the spare key with us we should just take 'our' mule back especially since it was unlikely that the DCM was on the compound anyway. Chuck agreed. Just to be safe, we peeked into the barber shop and determined that DCM Bodde wasn't there. We hopped onto Paco and drove to the commissary.

As we exited the commissary loaded down with groceries we ran smack dab into the DCM looking exactly like a man who's mule has been stolen on a very hot day. He saw us and said very quietly and with great purpose, "who stole my mule?". Chuck and I immediately pointed to each other. The commissary is right next to the Maintenance building (where the DCM had been in a meeting...who knew?) and the fact that we hadn't actually left yet for Post 2 probably explains why I am still a Foreign Service Officer. He confiscated our spare keys and left us to walk back to Post 2.


Lita asked me to wear a shalwar qamees to her "Outta Here" party.


Cricket and baseball have some similarities, apparently this batting stance is not one of them!


This is a Punjabi grain chest. The farmers in the Punjab used these chests to store their winter grain. This one is about eighty years old and has been refinished and converted into a wine cabinet.

Chuck and I have agreed that the next time we steal Paco we'll have a spare license plate along to switch its identity.

It's All About Cars

"A démarche is a formal diplomatic representation of one government’s official position, views, or wishes on a given subject to an appropriate official in another government or international organization. Démarches generally seek to persuade, inform, or gather information from a foreign government. Governments may also use a démarche to protest or object to actions by a foreign government." State Department Diplopedia

Démarche can also be used as a verb, as in "I have to démarche the GOP (Government of Pakistan) today regarding our dissatisfaction with...". It is almost never used familiarly, as in "after de soldiers line up, demarche".

Back in November I put on my best suit and delivered our notification to "persuade" the GOP to release a small number of vehicles they were holding in Customs impound and to "inform" the GOP that these vehicles were needed, urgently, by the U.S. Mission in Pakistan for the security of our people. The vehicles which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was dragging its heels on releasing were all 'hard' cars or fully armored vehicles. I delivered my notice by hand to the Deputy Chief of Protocol, had a very nice cup of tea with her, chatted with her about her years as an undergraduate student at MIT and received her assurance that she completely understood our request and would act on it promptly. Then she left to go on Hajj for three weeks, during which time no one was empowered to act on her behalf.

I became aware of her return when I received a notice from the GOP which stated that our vehicles could not be released because it was against GOP rules to "sell these vehicles on the open market". I assured her that we would never dispose of our armored vehicles on the open market and was informed, via an official diplomatic note, that "the French had recently tried to sell an armored vehicle on the local economy". Excusé Moi! I immediately wrote, in reply, that under U.S. law we can only dispose of our 'hard' cars by a) sending them back to the U.S., b) dropping them into the ocean, or c) blowing them up. Pakistan, a nation notorious for selling nuclear weapons to the highest bidder, is concerned that a few armored Toyotas will end up in the hands of ruffians.

I was next asked to provide "proof" that we had disposed of our older vehicles appropriately. You can imagine my shock and disappointment when I learned that my word as a gentleman was not sufficient. We are given permission by the State Department to destroy these vehicles and we blow them up. We happen to videotape this process and I was able to give the Deputy Chief of Protocol a copy of the cd.

Time passed. More vehicles arrived at the port in Karachi and joined the original batch in impound.

I had several more meetings with the Deputy Chief of Protocol and her assistant and was assured each time that they were completely sympathetic and were working diligently to get our vehicles released. More vehicles arrived. I received a very strange note requiring us to declare the type of weaponry installed in these vehicles. We issued a diplomatic note in reply assuring the GOP that these were "unarmed armored" vehicles and received a demand to describe the level of protection offered by the armoring down to the NATO calibre of bullet the armor would stop. And when they had run out of absurd questions to ask, they did what any self-respecting bureaucracy would do...they passed the paperwork to another ministry. All they needed, they explained, was a No Objection letter from the Ministry of the Interior and they would immediately issue the needed approvals.

It took me almost a month to track down the desk in the Ministry of the Interior where the paperwork for our now thirty-three vehicles was being ignored, another couple of weeks to get an appointment with the Joint Secretary for Security and a one hour meeting to convince him to release the vehicles. Smiles, handshakes all around and a small Happy Dance in the parking lot. A week later, after phoning the Joint Secretary every day, I was told that he had passed the paperwork up the chain of command to the Additional Secretary and had recommended that "everything be approved".

From there it went to the Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, who declined to meet with me but assured me, through an intermediary, that he had forwarded our request to his superior, Rehman Malik, the Advisor to the Minister of the Interior, and as soon as Malik returned from London he would "quite probably" approve our request and let us have our vehicles. After all, hadn't we recently given the Ministry of the Interior 600 brand new Toyota double cab pick-ups (which, incidentally, never spent a single day in impound)?

Mr. Malik is described in Wikipedia as "the person responsible for the security of Benazir Bhutto" so I hoped he'd be somewhat sympathetic to our request to allow us to protect ourselves since the whole Bhutto thing didn't work real well. His level of concern and sympathy was expressed by stating that, "if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will issue me a No Objection letter to your request then I will issue them a No Objection letter to your request". Huh?

And so it goes.

A team is coming out from DC in June to give the motor pool drivers a two day course in security awareness driving. We use older unarmored vehicles for this course and treat them harshly. In my motor pool inventory I have six or so cars that have long since outlived their usefulness and are perfect for this course. The only concern over using these cars is that they haven't been driven for quite some time. So, one by one I've been driving them home at night and the next day I bring them to the auto shop and let the mechanics work on them. The other day I was driving home in an old Honda and I was within sight of my house when I got pulled over for speeding. The officer asked to see my license and I gave it to him. He asked me if I knew how fast I was going and I told him that I wasn't paying attention, but I guessed I was going too fast since he had stopped me. Then he asked me where I lived and I pointed to my house. "Awwww," he said, "you almost made it home!" He was so moved by my bad luck that he just gave me a warning and drove away.



Among the old beaters that I'm trying to get into shape for the Security Course are several Hondas, a Mitsubishi and my personal favorite, a KIA Spectra. The KIA is metallic pink and looks like the car awarded to Mary Kay's least successful salesperson.

An acquaintance from the Peace Corps showed up in Islamabad yesterday. He left Bulgaria last Fall, traveled overland through your various 'Stans and arrived in Pakistan through the mountain passes from China. He has traveled through parts of the country that we are not allowed to go into with armored vehicles in convoys. As one of my friends put it, "he's hitchhiked through Hunza and I can't go to the KFC". However, to be fair, by tradition the KFC in Islamabad is the first thing burned to the ground during riots. Traditions are important in every culture.

Inspired by this example of adventurism and being the rebel that I am, I ordered up an armored vehicle and drove across the street from my house to Said Pur Village. There are three things that are interesting about Said Pur Village. First, it is currently being renovated as a 'model' village for tourists to visit; second, it has the mosque that calls me to prayer at times when I am least inclined to pray; third, it has a fully functional goat market.







As you can see, Said Pur Village will be a charming little place to visit once it's finished. Depending on your own personal perspective, the Goat Market may or may not add to that charm.






The government buildings along Constitution Avenue are truly impressive and, when the army isn't out in force, it's possible to grab a shot or two of them.


The Supreme Court of Pakistan


The Prime Minister's Palace

My expedition to the Said Pur tourist village has left me feeling so adventurous that I am thinking of swinging by KFC for dinner. I'll be sure to wear my "Free the I'bad 33" tee shirt.