islamabad, pakistan —
Islamabad is a pending city that has come into the limelight with its own successes and is host to something potentially historic, but it remains unclear how far that will go.
Five-star hotels in Pakistan’s capital remain empty, awaiting diplomatic delegations for the next round of negotiations between Iran and the United States this week. Bougie restaurants have closed their kitchens, and their usual well-heeled patrons are unable to pass through military and police checkpoints strategically located at nearly every major intersection in the city.
And on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said he would extend the ceasefire until Iran submits a proposal to permanently end the conflict, raising the possibility of a longer wait.
Too often Islamabad makes headlines for the wrong reasons. As recently as February, the city was targeted by a suicide bomber by Islamic extremists, who killed more than 60 people in an attack on a mosque.
Officials here see the planned talks as an opportunity to rebuild the country’s international image, perhaps from its tarnished legacy as a former sanctuary for the Taliban who attacked U.S. forces in Afghanistan and a place where top terrorist Osama bin Laden long hid.
If Pakistan can broker peace between the US and Iran, a path out of its international wilderness still beckons. That’s at least the hope.
Police officers guarding the city’s road closures appeared relaxed and relaxed on stationary bikes, only to get agitated – as this reporter witnessed – when a senior police officer drove up with instructions to chase down the boy, who was sleeping under a nearby sapling.
The only people willing to attack the police and military roaming around with machine guns are the Islamists insurgents along the border with Afghanistan. They will not be able to even enter Afghanistan, though, due to a ring of road closures radiating out for dozens of miles from the meeting site.
Much of Islamabad’s vast road network is eerily silent. Dogs weave down six-lane highways, and eccentric, weary workers trudge down silent thoroughfares. On a normal day, any injury sustained in high-speed traffic would have been a close call.
Government employees have been instructed to work from home. Schools are closed, markets are empty, and produce is stuck outside the city. The beautiful forested Margalla Hills promenade is off-limits and a small finger of the majestic Himalayas leads to this majestic city.
Government offices, ministries and, most importantly, the venue for the planned US-Iranian talks, a luxury hotel surrounded by glittering gardens, have been left at the center of all circles and security posts.
If the talks finally take place here and history is made, Islamabad’s place in the pantheon of humble and noble places that hosted great leaders to mend differences and save their people from bloodshed will be immortalized.
The Dayton Peace Accords come to mind, named after the city that hosted talks in early 1990 to end three years of bloodshed and civil war in Bosnia. I witnessed the war firsthand, saw the peace, and knew the lives saved.
Not all peace negotiations are successful. In Minsk in 2014, we witnessed a hasty and incomplete peace deal imposed on the Ukrainian people by Russia and the international community in the wake of Moscow’s first invasion of Ukraine. It didn’t work because it wasn’t balanced.
For several years, I covered the nuclear deal negotiations between Iran and the United States during the Obama administration. The stakes weren’t that high at the time, with Switzerland being the favorite to host the event. The two countries were not at war, and the world economy was not dependent on sea control of the Strait of Hormuz.
The scale and ambition of these talks was small, as was the venue, and the lockdown was limited to a few streets.
In 2015, negotiations finally reached Vienna, the home of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This was the final logical step for the complex and the hotly contested 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal.
Today, the ambition for talks is even greater. In addition to curbing its nuclear program, the United States wants to limit ties between Iran and its terrorist proxies, curb its deadly and growing arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles, and open the Strait of Hormuz.
If a European city hosted such a complex and large-scale consultation, it is hard to imagine that its citizens would endure in silence what the residents of Islamabad experienced.
But if the United States and Iran can revive peace talks, Islamabad and its patient people and tireless diplomats may have a chance not only to lift the country in a positive direction in the world, but also to immortalize its capital as a place of hope for others.
