The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [100]
The militants exploited the government’s many distractions. Two suicide bombers killed at least sixty-seven people during a shift change at the Pakistani army’s main weapons factory outside Islamabad. The insurgents also spread their control in the tribal areas, where the government had never held any sway. This time the Pakistani army tried to push back, moving into the Bajaur tribal agency and even bombing homes. As many as 260,000 civilians, or almost half the residents, fled Bajaur. Shoddy relief camps were set up, where children died of diarrhea and families slept on the ground. In some areas the militants did a better job of providing relief than the government. At a meeting with top UN refugee agency officials, Zardari offered his own creative solution to the insurgency in the tribal areas: Build a cement factory, where people could work, and build bulletproof homes, where they could live. He had even drawn up the plans for such houses himself, demanding that his minions hand them over to the UN.
Capping the chaos, Nawaz Sharif then dropped out of the government. This shocked me—he had repeatedly threatened to end his party’s support for the coalition, but I didn’t think he would, as this chess move would in effect checkmate himself, eliminating any power he had. I called Sharif for the first time in months, and he invited me over to the Punjab House in Islamabad. He had always been unfailingly polite and soft-spoken with me. He seemed old-fashioned, speaking my name as a full sentence and rarely using contractions.
This time, in a large banquet hall filled with folding chairs and a long table, Sharif told his aides that he would talk to me alone. At the time, I barely noticed. We talked about Zardari, but he spoke carefully and said little of interest, constantly glancing at my tape recorder like it was radioactive. Eventually, he nodded toward it.
“Can you turn that off?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, figuring he wanted to tell me something off the record.
“So. Do you have a friend, Kim?” Sharif asked.
I was unsure what he meant.
“I have a lot of friends,” I replied.
“No. Do you have a friend?”
I figured it out.
“You mean a boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Sharif. I had two options—lie, or tell the truth. And because I wanted to see where this line of questioning was going, I told the truth.
“I had a boyfriend. We recently broke up.” I nodded my head stupidly, as if to punctuate this thought.
“Why?” Sharif asked. “Was he too boring for you? Not fun enough?”
“Um. No. It just didn’t work out.”
“Oh. I cannot believe you do not have a friend,” Sharif countered.
“No. Nope. I don’t. I did.”
“Do you want me to find one for you?” Sharif asked.
To recap: The militants were gaining strength along the border with Afghanistan and staging increasingly bold attacks in the country’s cities. The famed Khyber Pass, linking Pakistan and Afghanistan, was now too dangerous to drive. The country appeared as unmoored and directionless as a headless chicken. And here was Sharif, offering to find me a friend. Thank God the leaders of Pakistan had their priorities straight.
“Sure. Why not?” I said.
The thought of being fixed up on a date by the former prime minister of Pakistan, one of the most powerful men in the country and, at certain points, the world, proved irresistible. It had true train-wreck potential.
“What qualities are you looking for in a friend?” he asked.
“Tall. Funny. Smart.”
I envisioned a blind date at a restaurant in Lahore over kebabs and watermelon juice with one of Sharif’s sidekicks, some man with a mustache, Sharif lurking in the background as chaperone.
“Hmmm. Tall may be tough. You are very tall, and most Pakistanis are not.” Sharif stood, walked past the banquet table toward the windows, and looked