U.S. Journalist Is Ordered to Leave Pakistan

U.S. Journalist Is Ordered to Leave Pakistan
By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post

An American freelance journalist and scholar based in Pakistan was ordered to leave the country this week after writing an article that might have been deemed unflattering to the Pakistani government, according to friends, colleagues and a U.S.-based media rights group. Nicholas Schmidle, a frequent contributor to Slate magazine and a fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs in Washington, was served with a deportation notice at his Islamabad home Tuesday night and left Pakistan on Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement. Under an arrangement hammered out with Pakistani officials, his departure would not be recorded as a deportation if he agreed to leave the country, according to a colleague familiar with the deal. His wife, an American student studying in Islamabad, was asked to leave with him.