I was due to go to Pakistan today. Right now, I should be getting ready to land in Islamabad. Instead, I am at home writing this.
On Monday morning our partners on the ground in Pakistan were still saying they thought we could go ahead with the visit. By mid-afternoon, I got a call from them saying that it was their very carefully considered view that we should postpone the trip "indefinitely". Bombs were going off regularly, not only in the North-West Frontier Province but also in major cities. There were also a lot of hoaxes, they said, though they never knew what was a hoax and what was for real. The country was on the verge of being declared a "war zone".
The warning signs have been building up. After the Marriott bombing, British Airways suspended its flights to Pakistan. The Foreign Office instructed UK staff in the British High Commission in Islamabad to send their children out of Pakistan.
In the kind of visits I do to different parts of the world, my own security is never a priority. But when our partners (one of whom is a former Pakistani fighter pilot and highly decorated war hero - so not someone who is easily alarmed) told me we should postpone, I took him seriously. He said that in addition to the security factor, he felt many of the people we were due to meet would not be able to see us in the current crisis - either because they would be focused on dealing with the crisis, or they would be too afraid or unable to move around.
Since Monday, there have been several incidents in the country. Yesterday, the Taliban bombed a Catholic school in North-West Frontier Province. Last night in Lahore, three bombs were detonated near some fruit juice stores in a shopping district. Pakistan's parliament is meeting today in a rare closed-door security briefing.
A British Muslim who is working on combating extremism here in the UK told me today that what is happening in Pakistan is of paramount concern to us here at home. So many British Muslims are of Pakistani origin, and they go back and forth between the UK and Pakistan. Many have families in Pakistan, some find wives or husbands in Pakistan for their British-born children, and some go and study in madrassas in Pakistan. The more the Taliban and related groups increase in Pakistan, the greater the spread of extremism in the UK.
Pakistan is on the verge of being a failed state. It is in a mess financially, as the Daily Telegraph reports - it could be bankrupt in a month. And politically, its fragile democracy is under unprecedented fire from the extremists. Pakistan is in grave danger of Talibanisation, and it is essential that the international community act to fight terrorism, and the ideology that underpins it, in Pakistan - in the interests of the people of Pakistan who are suffering day by day, and to stop it escalating on our streets too.
