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It was to Chandoo’s home turf in Karachi that Obama traveled next on his summer Asian tour. After graduating, Chandoo had returned to Pakistan for a few months before heading off to London, where he would work at an uncle’s office in the family shipping business, writing telexes and taking letters of credit. Their Oxy classmate and friend Wahid Hamid was also in Karachi, and Obama had arranged to split time between their two homes, spending a week and a half at Chandoo’s, then a week and a half at Hamid’s. In chief martial law administrator, saying he would not abrogate the Pakistani Constitution and that national elections would be forthcoming. Now, four years into his reign, he was calling himself president, but martial law was still in place and opposition parties were banned. Much as in Indonesia, foreign policy considerations brought the United States into an alliance with a military regime in the cold war struggle against Soviet communism. Zia was an anticommunist, and along with the United States was instrumental in supplying arms to the mujahedeen in neighboring Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1980.
During his three weeks in Pakistan, Obama was nowhere near the Afghan action. He spent most of his time in Karachi, a sprawling city built amid the desert and wetlands on the coast of the Arabian Sea. Every morning during the first week and a half, he went for a run in Chandoo’s neighborhood, alone, but stayed safe and managed to find his way back. They also played basketball, went to the seashore to swim and lounge around at the Sandspit and Hawke’s Bay beaches, and roamed the streets of the largest and most cosmopolitan city in Pakistan. Maraniss, David. 2012:972 The Making of the Man.