The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

by Declan Walsh

The Pakistani Taliban had been arriving quietly since about 2008, hiding amid a flood of Pashtun civilians fleeing the military’s anti-Taliban operations in Swat, Waziristan, and other corners of the tribal belt. After a spate of bank robberies, police investigators reviewing surveillance footage noticed that the robbers often wore shalwar trousers that were hitched above the ankle, and handled their guns with practised ease. Then the militants became more brazen, kidnapping businessmen for ransom, extorting money from Pashtun haulage companies, and – in a sure sign they had arrived – becoming players in the property rackets. In Sohrab Goth, a labyrinthine Pashtun shanty town on the outskirts of Karachi, Taliban clerics established informal sharia courts to settle disputes; the Awami National Party, a secular party that had traditionally represented Pashtuns in Karachi, was drummed out of town.