In 2013, after nine years in the country, New York Times reporter Declan Walsh was given 72 hours to leave Pakistan – even as it was on t...
In 2013, after nine years in the country, New York Times reporter Declan Walsh was given 72 hours to leave Pakistan – even as it was on the verge of the first peaceful transfer of power between civilian administrations in the nation’s history.
A few years later, in 2019, he was back in the news after it emerged that the US administration under President Donald Trump was unwilling to prevent his arrest by Egyptian authorities, forcing him to briefly leave the country with the help of his native Ireland.
Over some of that interim period, Walsh decided to put down his impressions of his time in Pakistan, choosing to tell the story through the portraits of nine remarkable individuals like human rights activist Asma Jahangir and Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.
I spoke to Walsh about the violent period that he was witness to in Pakistan, how foreign correspondence has changed and how he sees the country from the outside.
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If you had to summarise for the reader, what took you to Pakistan? And what eventually drove you to write this book?
Well, you know, I went...
