Blog

Can the United Nations do anything right? The surprising answer, in light of the U.N.’s failures in Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda during the 1990s, may be “yes.” East Timor’s new government takes over from the U.N. on Monday, and as The ...  (Read more)

Two years ago Sierra Leone was a symbol of everything that was wrong in Africa. It was suffering through a civil war that was notable, in its brutality, for the prevalance of men, women and children whose arms were chopped off by doped-up rebels wearing tutus and wigs. U.N. peacekeepers were nearly ...  (Read more)

The terrorists who killed 11 Frenchman in Karachi, using a car bomb outside the Sheraton Hotel, selected a target that could lead to their undoing. The Frenchmen were engineers overseeing construction of a submarine for ...  (Read more)

It’s got 16 basketball courts, a Cybex fitness center, a chess club, a motorcycle club, aerobics classes, recovery meetings for alcoholics, financial planning seminars, a coffeepot that dispenses 5,000 cups an hour, and 403 toilets. That’s right, it’s ...  (Read more)

From April 13 to May 4 I stayed at the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. The hotel is as ugly as a bunker, with unpainted cement as an exterior, and it feels like a bunker, too, because there’s no shortage of security around its perimeter. Private guards, police, paramilitary. Business was getting ...  (Read more)

Are placebos more powerful than drugs? Today’s Washington Post looks into the medication of America:

“After thousands of studies, hundreds of millions of prescriptions and tens of billions of dollars in sales, two things are certain about pills that treat depression: antidepressants ...  (Read more)

On the flight back to New York from Karachi, I continued reading Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections,” and I continue to be awed by it. Franzen can write and think, treating you to style wrapped around ideas. Reading his book is akin ...  (Read more)

For a dose of sensory overload, Karachi style, a visit to the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi is highly recommended. I stopped by it the other night and felt pity for the photographer who was with me; there was no way a picture could absorb and express its beauty and chaos. (I also realized that words ...  (Read more)

I am travelling with my digital camera, a Leica, but I tend to leave it in my hotel room on most outings; I’m not in Karachi to take pictures, and the presence of a camera can get in the way of things. But I shouldn’t ...  (Read more)

What do you do if the crowd at your rally is hoisting placards that bear the likeness of a political leader other than yourself? If you are General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, you ignore the pictures of Altaf Hussain, an exiled ...  (Read more)