Pakistan: Truth or lies?

By Janine Lazarus

My eyes opened in Pakistan.

I flew into Karachi last week with a mixture of emotions, not least of which was palpable unease.

Weeks before I left, reports of contact killings, bombing threats, riots and kidnapping had pebbled the press like automatic gunfire. My client in Karachi described the situation as “tense and fluid”, whatever that meant.

This was my third journey into Pakistan but it didn’t make me feel any easier. Three weeks before my first excursion into the country in 2009, the hotel I was booked to stay in got bombed. Add to this, the ominous security briefing I received on arrival.

The security guidelines, tucked into an inconspicuous medium-sized envelope, provided a gamut of emergency contact numbers from Vigilance Supervisors to Security Managers across the country. But the one criterion that gave me pause for thought was the instruction to travel “under requisite security cover.”

True to the security checklist, a designated driver whisked me away from Karachi International Airport with an armed policeman riding shotgun. The fact that neither of us could converse in a mutually understood language made things even more strained.

I lost count of the security checkpoints, booms and armed personnel – and that was just on exiting the terminal building. More of the same awaited us as we drove through the midnight streets of Karachi.

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