Grand Trunk Road

I heard this BBC report by Barbara Plett on Swat today on the radio. I can’t really say enough good things about it. In the short time the report was aired (it couldn’t have been longer than 5 minutes) she managed to fit in interviews with 2 female students who had had their schooling interrupted for almost a year but were now back but without any desks to sit at; their concerned father; the chief government negotiator, Bashir Bilour; a local lawyer who was against the concessions made by the government; and a female schoolteacher concerned about the effect of Taliban-style Shariah on her career. In the radio version, she even interviewed a Talib who was very nonchalant about crossing the border to help out. (He said something like “why can’t we go across the border to aid our brothers?”).