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Tag: security

I checked the headlines on China’s role in Afghanistan. This is what I found

After ten days of scanning the coverage of China’s potential role in Afghanistan, it’s clear that there is one voice missing from western media reports: the Afghans themselves. In no article did anyone consider the concerns of the Afghan people, what they might want or expect from a future where China will certainly play a prominent role. This only echoes the US led intervention, where, as always the local people only ever play a walk on part in a plot…

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The perils of American Airlines for the seasoned traveller

A cautionary tale for transit flights via the United States

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The forgotten tourist hot-spot, Swat Valley and NW Pakistan

“So when did you last see a tourist”? I asked the man, a resident of Battagram, a Pashtun town in NW Pakistan. “Ummm….” he pondered, eyes to the sky, deep in thought, “15…..17,18 years ago, when I was at school”. His answer probably explains the slack jawed gawping from just about everybody l passed in the street. Needless to say, those who managed to stop staring were incredibly friendly. A few days earlier in the small Swat Valley town of…

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Egypt’s VIP police taxi service

Taking tourist security to that extra level in Egypt Deep in misty dreams of sumptuous temptations, something knocked on the doors of my subconscious, cruelly beckoning me back to the world of daylight. The unwarranted intrusion into my reverie metamorphosed into the insistent clatter of fist against the shoddy carpentry claiming to be my door. Some words of arabic had little trouble piercing the feeble woodwork, “hokouma” was the only word I needed to understand, government. “Yeah,yeah, yeah”, I grumbled…

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Park life in Xinjiang

The niggling possibility of getting hacked to death by axe wielding terrorists has, for some strange reason deterred some tourists from coming to Xinjiang, so the streets of the region’s capital Urumqi were hardly awash with foreign faces. Locals are obviously made of stern enough stuff to not let such a trifling matter interfere with their daily routine and for many this means going to the park. In Urumqi the security concerns for patrons of the People’s Park were subtly…

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