On the day he was leaving Pakistan and came to the airport, he was asked by intelligence operatives as to 'how many terrorists he had met with' during his stay in the country. Schmidle learnt Urdu and got himself accustomed as best as he could to familiarise himself with the Pakistani way of life so he could do 'truthful' reporting.
In an interview to rediff India Abroad Senior Editor Suman Guha Mozumder in New York, he said it was most likely that the Pakistan government did not quite like his travels to many far-flung areas and his dispatches focusing on the increasing Talibalisation in Pakistan.
I am sure you had apprehensions about Pakistan before you went there. Now that you have returned what is your impression of the country?
I found the people of Pakistan to be incredibly kind, incredibly hospitable. Despite all the State Department travel warnings -- when I arrived there in the February of 2006, there were all kinds of protests going on and I had this terrible nightmare that our flight was going to be ripped apart by Islamists -- but the people in Pakistan turned out to be most hospitable and friendly.
I became more interested in learning about the culture, history and the society. They opened up their homes, their mosques, their madrassas to me to learn and to study (about Pakistan) and it was an incredibly good experience. Also, the society is much more diverse, dynamic and complex than the mainstream Western media gives it credit for.
So what you saw there in the past 23 months did not quite match what you had in mind about Pakistan before going there?
For sure. I was pleasantly surprised. I think anyone who goes anywhere in the world always finds that life on the ground is always different from what they have heard. In Pakistan, it is more significant, the differences I mean, because (of) the way Pakistan is portrayed in the Western media.
Image: Women in Peshawar. Photograph: Tariq Mahmood/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: Pakistan and the 'minus 2 formula'
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