Kevin Newman’s Pakistan Blog

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Flying over Northern Pakistan as the sun rises, the ground below twinkles where there is light. Not every home has electricity. It is only when you reach the capital of Islamabad that the bright lights of a modern city are recognizable.

The distinction between the First and Third World is literally a road that separates Islamabad from Rawalpindi, the much older neighbouring community where Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

This is my first time in Pakistan, and it has taken two days to get here from Canada. It is New Year’s Eve, but most of the parties have been cancelled.

Even in private homes few are in the mood to celebrate the beginning of a new year, or even the passingof one which has been so difficult for this country.

Newsweek is calling this the most dangerous country on the planet right now – a place where 150-million people are having trouble seeing ahead to what might happen tomorrow, let alone next year. I’m going to try to catch a few hours sleep before heading out to the cafe’s for dinner to get a better sense of the mood.

There are some who roll their eyes every time an anchor puts himself/herself in the middle of a story like this. I suppose it is grandstanding. But what happens here over the next few weeks will largely determine whether Pakistan holds together, or whether the rising Islamist threat destabilizes the only nuclear nation where the military has sole control of the weapons.

That’s something worth drawing attention to.

On top of that, I’ve always been a little haunted by something I overheard almost nine years ago when Pakistan detonated its first atomic weapon. Peter Jennings was arguing with his colleagues at ABC World News Tonight (I was a reporter there at the time) that Pakistan was where everything could begin to unravel for the civilized world.

He knew, and understood, the tribal rivalries and difficulties in governing Pakistan, and felt it was not astable-enough nation to be in possession of multiple nuclear warheads. Right now, Pakistan is in the midst of incredible instability.

And for me to be able to talk about what comes next, I need to smell and taste and see it for myself, if even for a brief moment. And hopefully ease my fears.