How an invisible country rocked the world

Glimpses of life backstage

AS I walk through the bazaars of Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, it is easy to think there is nothing wrong. I struggle through the crowds and pass mounds of spices in great brown sacks, birds trilling in pink cages and tiny old men struggling to restrain honking donkeys and whooping boys. Trade is brisk, and many of the shopkeepers, spotting a foreigner, grin and call out “How are you, Mister?” But round the next corner is a different scene: a large building has had its front blown out, littering the street with bricks and slabs of concrete. “Suicide bomb yesterday,” explains Kausar, a local. “Many died. The people are scared—every week there is a new attack. They slaughter us even in the bazaars now.” Their attacks have been unrelenting: on March 5th, in the Hangu district of the North-West Frontier Province, a convoy of Shiite pilgrims and paramilitary soldiers was attacked by a suicide bomber. Twelve people were killed and more than 300 injured.

Theories abound as to who Mr Kausar’s “they” are. “They are Blackwater operatives,” says Dr Naveed Irfan, a prominent psychiatrist whose house was damaged by one recent explosion. “That is why they never recover the body.” He is equally confident about Osama bin Laden. “I met him once. Al-Qaeda is not a terrorist network. It is a conspiracy by the Americans to destabilise our country.” Similar theories are aired regularly by Pakistan’s newspapers and TV channels. This is a country in denial. ...

Across the region, an array of tactics for keeping the peace

ON THE plane out of Lhasa, I sit next to a Nepali businessman who frequently visits Lhasa to buy shoes. He puts them in containers to be taken by lorry to Nepal, where most of them are re-exported to India. He has his complaints: about the duties he has to pay at the border, and the snow that sometimes blocks traffic. But of the road from Lhasa to Nepal, he is full of praise. It once took three days by lorry, he says. Now it is a day and a half. “China is so developed,” he says wistfully, looking out of the window at the ribbons of light marking highways and city streets below. He has little positive to say about Nepal and its roads.

China has been pouring money into its infrastructure in the past few years, and—from a business perspective at any rate—Tibet has been a big beneficiary. On my last visit to Lhasa, in 2008, I went by train. The railway line, Tibet’s first such link with the Chinese interior, had been opened just two years earlier and is one of the country’s most spectacular engineering accomplishments. Critics of Chinese rule in Tibet condemn its impact on the environment and the encouragement it gives to a flood of immigrants from the rest of China. But as a feat, it amazes: the $4.2 billion line crosses higher terrain than any other in the world, including permafrost—which requires elaborate ground-cooling measures to protect the rails from changes in temperature. ...

The Bella Centre grows crowded and tense

INSIDE the Bella Centre, the second week of talks feels subtly different from the first. Outside, it is very different indeed. In both cases, the difference is more people. Inside, that just means crowding; outside it means long queues of people failing to get in. ...

Gloom and doom in a very big room

Some 35,000 asked to get in, but the convention centre holds only 15,000. I am one of those lucky 15,000, here to cover the opening of the Copenhagen climate conference (COP15), which is supposed to hash out some sort of agreement to follow the Kyoto protocol. ...