The NYT has an interesting piece on “invisible refugees” in Pakistan, Pashtun families who’ve fled south to escape the fighting between Pakistani forces and militants. They’re “invisible” because instead of taking refuge in camps, they’re turning to their fellow Pashtun for support. The result is families of 10, 20, 40 and more cramped into unbelievably tight quarters, sometimes displacing their own hosts, and stretching the limits of both Pashtun hospitality and local infrastructure: 

Pakistan is experiencing its worst refugee crisis since partition from India in 1947, and while the world may be familiar with the tent camps that have rolled out like carpets since its operation against the Taliban started in April, the overwhelming majority of the nearly three million people who have fled live unseen in houses and schools, according to aid agencies.

They are the invisible refugees, and their numbers have swollen the populations of towns like this one northwest of the capital, Islamabad, multiplying burdens on already sagging roads, schools, sewers and water supplies, and, not least, on their host families.

I remember reading somewhere about Pashtun waging economic warfare on their own by resorting to squatting – taking advantage of codes of hospitality, essentially, thereby placing an untenable burden on their hosts. This is obviously different, but it’s also the same. The portrait it draws suggests – or at least insinuates – a point of cultural collapse and adaptation. I’ll probably get in trouble for a comment like that, but I’m curious what the experts have to say about it.

Some terrorists come up with the best names…

ATHENS — Masked gunmen on Wednesday ambushed and killed an undercover police officer who was guarding a key witness in a terror trial in what the authorities said was an escalation in attacks by domestic terrorists. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the police said that some of the bullets used in the killing matched those used in a shooting carried out by a far-left militant group called the Sect of Revolutionaries.

Read the full report.

Pheeew. Holbrooke strikes again – almost:

SHAIKH SHAHZAID CAMP, Pakistan — U.S. envoy Richard C. Holbrooke, red-faced and sweaty, sat on the dirt floor of a stifling tent as Aslam Khan, a 38-year-old laborer, spoke haltingly of his family’s panicked flight from a Pakistani army offensive against Taliban forces in their mountain village, three hours north of here.

Holbrooke asked some questions about the Taliban but got few answers. “Are these all your children?” he asked with a smile. Yes, Khan said, he had nine.

“Your daughter is beautiful,” Holbrooke continued, nodding toward a young woman who sat quietly at the edge of the family. Her head was covered in a royal-blue scarf that revealed only her stunningly dark eyes.

“That’s not my daughter,” Khan said abruptly. After an awkward silence, the woman explained that she was a Pakistani police officer. It was unclear whether she was there to protect Holbrooke from the refugees, or to monitor what they told him.

Something tells me that explaining away near-gaffes like this one as a problem of implementation won’t be any easier than it was last time.

H/t Chris.

I guess things were getting a little dull:

More than 100 Romanians forced from their homes by racist attacks are likely to abandon Northern Ireland.

They were forced to take shelter in a church overnight, are currently taking refuge in a leisure centre and will offered temporary homes in student accommodation.

A mother of two, who said she only wanted to be known by her first name Maria, said everyone was now adamant that they wanted to return to Romania.

Maria said that attacks on their homes, mostly the smashing of windows, had been intensifying over the last two weeks but came to a head on Tuesday when racist thugs broke in and threatening her and her children.

Read the full article.

Check out ex-spook Bob Baer on power politics in Iran, in TNR:

Iran is not a theocracy. It is a military dictatorship headed by Khamenei and advised by a coterie of generals from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Army, as well as hard-liners in the secret police. Ahmadinejad is little more than the spokesman for this group. He may have a say in the day-to-day management of the economy and other parts of Iranian administration–but all important decisions, particularly those related to Iran’s national security, including rigging presidential elections, are made by Khamenei.

Read the full article.