Sophisticated Attack by Gunmen in Lahore
When things happen in Lahore, I can usually comfort people with, “Oh that was on the other side of the city. People don’t protest in my area.”
Well today I don’t have any excuses, as the sophisticated attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team happened just a mile from where I work. Twelve highly organized gunmen came at the cricket team from four different directions as they moved towards Qaddafi Stadium. The stadium is in central Lahore, and one of the entrances is on Ferozepur Road. It’s a place I’ve gone several times for different events, and the stadium’s location near the Daewoo bus station makes it somewhere that we often find ourselves driving past. Qaddafi stadium is smack in the middle of busy areas of Lahore; it is not located in some out of the way place. At least five policemen were killed in the attack and several players were injured. Two players from Sri Lanka are in the hospital, and the rest were evacuated by military helicopter from Qaddafi Stadium.
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Wonder What Bride Price He Paid…
What was Mr. Taylor doing in Waziristan? His story is that he had four wives, and that they all died, so he was on his way to Wana to marry a tribal woman. At least, this is what he shared with the local police at Tank station.
Quite honestly, that story strikes me as a bit odd, but it would be ever stranger if he made up a story like that as a cover. It’s not like foreigners marry tribal women on the Afghan border every day, and I’ve never met another foreigner who converted to Islam and had four wives to prove it. This way of living used to be quite popular in the days of the British Raj, but foreign men and their harems were based mainly in cities in the Punjab, not remote areas like Waziristan. With the rise of evangelical Christian missions in the subcontinent and the end of the Mughal reign, these culturally assimilated men became hard to find. Besides that, for a foreigner, traveling or living in Waziristan nowadays stops just short of suicidal.
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New Zealand Man Arrested in South Waziristan is Suspected of Links to Al-Qaeda
My Take on the Bombing and Security in Pakistan
From an American expatriate living in Lahore, Pakistan
Saturday Pakistan’s capital city was rocked by one of the deadliest suicide attacks in its history. At least 43 people are confirmed dead and 250 injured after a large blast at the Marriott Hotel. The blast left a 20-foot crater and a fiery inferno that blazed for six hours.
Internal Security in Pakistan
Unfortunately, this attack and its aftermath do not come as a surprise. Having lived in Pakistan for over two years now, I have come to expect this type of news. Most Pakistanis are desensitized to the terror attacks that plague their country. When an attack happens, news tends to spread rapidly via SMS and word of mouth. Then within 24 hours people are back to business as usual. In the case of this blast, my husband and I did not even find out about it until Sunday morning when we checked the news headlines. None of our many friends in Lahore thought it newsworthy enough to send us a message or let us know about it. In the past, we’ve received multiple text messages about news like Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. People are just not shocked by bomb blasts anymore. In a way, they are expected and accepted as part of the daily life of this country. That doesn’t mean people like them or agree with the bombers, but the general public does not seem to see any course of action to take in response to these attacks.
Expat Heather 
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