Police, levies and local tribesmen have reportedly searched the whole area up to the Afghan border.
Security forces said on Thursday that they had no clue to the whereabouts of two Czech women abducted in Balochistan despite an extensive search, a senior official said.
The women, who apparently crossed into Pakistan from Iran on holiday, were taken at gunpoint on Wednesday, around 550 kilometres west of Quetta.
“The whole administration, including police and law enforcement agencies have been on high alert since the kidnapping took place,” provincial home secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani told AFP.
“The hunt is continuing. Police, levies and local tribesmen have searched the whole area up to the Afghan border but we still have no clue about their whereabouts,” he said.
Durrani said it would be “premature” to determine who was involved. “They could be typical kidnappers or any militant group,” he added.
Kidnappings plague parts of Balochistan and northwest Pakistan, where criminals looking for ransom snatch foreigners and locals, sometimes passing their hostages on to Taliban and al Qaeda-linked groups. A Swiss couple, also apparently on holiday, were held captive by the Pakistani Taliban for more than eight months after being abducted in 2011 in Balochistan. They were recovered safely in March 2012 in circumstances that remain unclear.
The following month, British Red Cross worker Khalil Dale, 60, was found dead nearly four months after he was abducted on the outskirts of Quetta.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 15th, 2013.
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During question answer session of the recently held Karachi Literature Festival, with three foreign journalists, and Cyril Almeida (from Dawn) as moderator, one of the foreign journalists was told to write something positive about Pakistan by someone in the establishment, his question was exactly what, so the man replied, that you can mention Pakistan has the tallest mountain ranges in world, it is the fifth largest milk producing country in the world, after that nothing.... and this was a day after the Quetta bomb blast, one of the foreign journalist immediately said, that if this had happened in his country (Germany) or any other normal country, the whole country would have been shut down for three days, and here we are chatting as if nothing has happened. This could be reported in the newspapers as Pakistani's being resilient, it could also be reported as Pakistan being a nation which does not care, The above article is further proof of why the foreign journalists was quite correct in his assessment of Pakistan of how others view Pakistan. If Pakistan wishes to improve its image as the journalist said it has to do something, why be so concerned about what others write about Pakistan, if it is not the guilty conscience that is not bothering Pakistani's so much.
One more reason, ( if there ever was a need to show ) why Pakistan is a leading tourist destination. The Pakistan government should be honest, and advise people from abroad not to visit this country. Why play with other people's lives, if the government is well aware, as it should be, that this is a lawless country, where the lives of the ordinary people is not safe, therefore please do not visit this country for your own good and safety. At least if we cannot save the lives of our own citizens, we can do something for others.