Nicholas Schmidle Deported from Pakistan
By Kevin Morrissey
January 11th, 2008
Word comes to us early this morning that Nicholas Schmidle, a regular contributor to VQR, has been deported by the Pakistan government, in the wake of his reporting for VQR, the New York Times, Slate, and others. According to Schmidle, the government was most upset about his travels to Baluchistan (off-limits to journalists), one of which he detailed in “Waiting for the Worst” in our Spring 2007 issue.
Update: Steven Clemons has more info at The Washington Note.
The Virginia Quarterly Review
January 11th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Why are journalists restricted from being in Baluchistan?
January 11th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Because what’s going in Baluchistan, as outlined in Schmidle’s article, could be a matter of embarrassment for Pakistan if it became more widely known.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Baluchistan is in a state of low level civil war. The Punjabi led govt is not sharing natural gas revenue or the Gwadar port development booty with ethnic Baluchis, who are waging a nationalist (not Islamist) uprising. The Pakistani govt wants to keep this off-the-radar as the rest of nation is in turmoil. Every day the Baluchi insurgents knock off a soldier or three, bomb a pipeline, derail a train…I tried getting a visa to travel there in 2006 and was told I’d be killed if I went–by none other than the wife of a Pak ambassador!!! Poor Schmidle was doing great work but at great risk…