When they arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday for a five-day tour, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge entered a country in which many foreign sports teams still refuse to play and few tourists dare put on their itinerary. The Foreign Office, while acknowledging things have improved in Pakistan, still advises against all travel to some parts of the country, including the southern city of Peshawar. Pakistan’s image in the West as a lawless place in which no westerner is safe was illustrated by President Trump’s infamous tweet in early 2018, in which he described the country as an unreliable ally that has ‘given the United States nothing but lies and deceit’ when it comes to the Global War on Terror.
But that is not the country I recognised when I recently visited, after a ten year hiatus. What I saw was a nation which has transformed its internal security. Kensington Palace is right to describe the Cambridges’ visit as ‘showcasing Pakistan as it is today’.
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