Word: islamabad
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With the most popular big hotel now destroyed and local restaurants frequented by westerners the target of extremists - Luna Caprese, one of the few places in this Islamic country where you could have a glass of wine with a meal, was bombed in March - Islamabad's sleepy night life has slipped into a veritable coma. Throw in regular power cuts, soaring food inflation and an economy teetering on recession and the citizens of Pakistan's capital are pretty stressed...
Over the past few years, Pakistan's government and generous foreign donors have spent tens of millions of dollars building roads and widening existing ones across Islamabad. The canyon-like underpasses and grand boulevards are meant to help traffic flow around the capital. But since a truck packed with 600 kg of high-grade explosives rammed into the Marriott hotel on Sept. 20, city officials have scrambled to reverse the plan, hoisting in concrete barriers to slow traffic, setting up police checkpoints, and seriously beefing up the "red-zone" security area around parliament, the prime minister's house, other government...
Call it the Baghdad effect. The colorful moniker may differ slightly from the "green-zone" U.S. forces carved out of central Baghdad, but Islamabad is beginning to feel a little like the Iraqi capital these days, especially since the devastating Marriott bombing that killed 54 people. True, Islamabad is not tattered by years of economic sanctions, nor pockmarked by days of aerial bombardment. And it is not occupied by a foreign army. But on my first trip here in six months, I'm struck by all the ways - small and big, physical and mental - Islamabad has become Baghdad circa...
...reefs (and which were being taken down in one part of the Iraqi capital last week). But big or small, the effect on traffic is the same: huge jams, boiling frustrations and growing chunks of the city off limits to ordinary citizens. The most visible no-go area in Islamabad today is the high end of Constitution Avenue (there's a moral in that somewhere), but security forces are also closing off smaller roads, remaking traffic flows...
That's not going to help people like Laeeq Quereshi, 53, who owns a shop selling plastic kitchenware in Kohsar market, where Islamabad's wealthier local residents and foreigners used to flock for imported foods and other goodies. "It's very slow," says Quereshi of recent trade. "The economy is down but security is the big problem: bombings, thieves. Pakistan is falling." Quereshi was robbed at gunpoint on his way to work recently. The three men took 70 rupees in cash (just under $1) as well as his beloved Nokia cell phone "with camera." Grimacing as he talks, he forms...