Terrorists affiliated with the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan likely kidnapped John Solecki, the senior UNHCR official in Balochistan, and murdered his Pakistani driver, Syed Hashim Raza.

Solecki dedicated his life to helping the world’s dispossessed.  Compare that to “Maulana” Fazlullah of Swat who, after dropping out from school and becoming a chairlift operator, is now on a campaign to destroy schools and murder.  The contrast is clear: one person builds, the other destroys;  one came from thousands of miles away to aid people not his own, the other has made his own vicinity (the Switzerland of Pakistan) hell on earth.

Columbia Univeristy Professor Richard Bulliet writes on Solecki, his former student, in the International Herald Tribune. A key passage:

“When he was in New York City recently he told me a bit about his job in Quetta. He said that the Baluch nationalists that sometimes agitate for autonomy from Pakistan are not suspicious of him and his work. The Afghan Taliban, too, did not strike him as threatening. He said they were everywhere in Quetta. They set off from there on raids into Afghanistan. But for them Quetta is a quiet rear area, not a place to stage an international incident.

On the other hand, he spoke warily of the Pakistani Taliban. These, he explained, are Pakistanis who share the religious dedication and militant determination of their Afghan counterparts. But their objective is undermining Pakistan’s government, not Afghanistan’s.”

Our prayers are with Solecki, Hashim Raza, and their families.