American U.N. Official Kidnapped In Pakistan

Terrible news: the Wall Street Journal reports that Pakistani insurgents have kidnapped John Solecki, an American national who heads the local office of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Insurgents took Solecki from Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province — Quetta may also be where Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammed Omar is — a place that according to the Journal has been largely exempt from Pakistan’s recent spate of foreign-national kidnappings. Baluchistan’s insurgency has been mostly a straightforward resistance to central-government control. If this is a sign of new breathing space for Islamist insurgents in Pakistan, that’s an alarming development.