Who messed up Afghanistan? - Times of India
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Who messed up Afghanistan? - Newspaper
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When an ordinary gypsy wanders, they do so to tap sources to sustain them on nature’s booty and bounty. But when it’s a glorified gypsy who goes around under the euphemism of a diplomat trotting the globe, they gather a bag full of reminiscences and memories.
Ambassador Arif Kamal is one such modern-day gypsy. As a career diplomat, he roamed the world, representing his country with élan from Kuwait to Tokyo, Moscow to Ottawa, and Jeddah to Doha, in a career spanning 34 years.
Kamal’s initial thrust into the arcane world of diplomacy was daunting and disappointing for him. He had been recruited into the elite Pakistan Foreign Service under what was former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s brainchild policy of ‘lateral entry’. But when Bhutto was toppled by Gen Ziaul Haq, the Bonaparte took exception to those hired under lateral entry. Kamal bore the brunt of Gen Zia’s culling of Bhutto’s recruits; he was unceremoniously uprooted from his maiden diplomatic ass
Photo courtesy Murtaza Ali/ White Star
Many renowned writers, including George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ernest Hemingway, started their writing careers as journalists and then achieved fame in the world of literature.
Marquez, in an interview with the literary magazine The Paris Review, said, “I’ve always been convinced that my true profession is that of a journalist. What I didn’t like about journalism before were the working conditions.” He had expressed his joy at any chance of doing “a great piece of journalism” even when he had become a famous novelist. One of his most famous works, Love in the Time of Cholera, was based on a news story that he had read about two old American lovers who would have annual trysts in Mexico until they were killed at the age of 80. Marquez spoke about it in his interview published in The New York Times in 1988.