The secret life of a doomed hotel
SYDNEY – Mark Corcoran, ABC Australia’s foreign correspondent has written a fine piece on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, where a weekend terrorist attack killed about 60 people, including the Czech ambassador to Pakistan.
Corcoran recalls his time working in Pakistan when the Marriott in Islamabad was his second home.
“For me all roads once led to the Marriott, in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan. For six years the hotel was like a second home – as I worked on assignments in Pakistan or stopped off in transit on my way back to Australia from the madness of neighbouring Afghanistan.
“What made this hotel special for the privileged few was the commodity being traded day and night in the foyer, cafes and restaurant: information.
“Information, as they say, is power, and in Pakistan, power is a life and death struggle.
“It often seemed that Pakistan was run from this hotel to the strains of the incessant hotel muzak.
“This was a neutral ground for competing politicians, diplomats, warlords, drug lords, peddlers of nuclear weapons technology, and perhaps a few who fell into all those categories.
“In a single day, I could exchange nods across the foyer with military strongman General Pervez Musharraf, who’d tried to convince me that his coup overthrowing civilian rule was necessary, or observe charismatic cricket star turned politician Imran Khan glide in to work the room, never failing to charm visiting Western journalists – despite the fact that so many of his countrymen had written him off as a political failure.â€
Read Corcoran’s article in full at
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/22/2370953.htm?section=world
Ian Jarrett
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