Landmark Met: 100th Muslim Partnership

On Tuesday, Sister Cities International celebrated its 100th partnership in a Muslim-majority country with the city signing of Houston, Texas with Karachi, Pakistan. Take a listen to NPR’s coverage.

Houston Mayor Bill White and Mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal of Karachi signed the official Memo of Understanding at City Hall. As the largest city in Pakistan, Karachi hopes to focus city-to-city exchanges on business and trade opportunities between the cities, joint learning about how the cities manage terrorism threats, promoting tourism, and sharing cultural understanding programs. Houston, the fourth largest city in the U.S., has more than 80,000 people of Pakistani origin living in Houston and expects a great deal of support for the new relationship.

After 9/11 Sister Cities International's leadership created the Muslim World Partnership Initiative, a program area dedicated to advance long-term partnerships throughout the Muslim World and raise public awareness at the municipal level in the United States.

Karachi represents Houston’s 17th sister city partnership. With the addition of Karachi, Houston’s local program is now distinguished within the sister city network as the U.S. city with the most partnerships in the Muslim World - Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Baku (Azerbaijan), Istanbul (Turkey), and Karachi (Pakistan).

There is a driving interest among U.S. cities to establish partnerships in the Muslim world. There's a gap to bridge and our network sees its role to play, just as we have in the past. There were sister cities in the Soviet Union long before the fall of the Wall (now, we have 80 partnerships in Russia and many more in Eurasia and other former Soviet states). We were in Iraq when Saddam was in power (now, we have 9 partnerships and growing thanks to the PRTs), we have a presence in Cuba, Iran, and so on.

The point being, sister city programs don't shy away from zones of conflict, places where democracy doesn't flourish, and regions where people tend to disagree with America more than they agree. I'm regularly impressed by the "average" citizens in our network who roll up their sleeves and directly engage people from around the world with no political motivation except to work collaboratively on a project, to better understand each other, and ultimately to advance world peace.

So, bravo to Houston for helping us reach 100, but I'm eager for 101 and beyond. Our work continues.

(Photo Credit: NPR's website)