Wrong place at the wrong time could happen in many other areas, too.

In Iran, we got invited to stay with a family in Esfahan. We didn´t know these people beforehand, and they treated us like old friends, really a mind-blowing experience for me (especially because the media over here usually paints a very different picture of Iran!).... but anyway, the head of the family once said, that if we want, he would like to come with his car to be our “guide”, if we´d go to Tehran or Shiraz, for example. But that he would never, ever go anywhere east from Bam, and adviced us also to not go there, as it´s too dangerous.

In fact he wasn´t the only one. Several people in Iran thought that border areas close to Pakistan, and also the adjoining area in Pakistan are very dangerous. But we wanted to go overland to India, so we did go there, and got through there without any problems (only the police escorts were painfully slow at times). This was 5 years ago, and the reputation of those areas seems to have changed very little. I´m sure there is actually some truth behind that reputation, there´s drugs and arms smuggling, and tribal law areas. So the dangers should not be overlooked, that would be stupid. But regarding foreign travellers, have there lately been any real safety issues reported? Only the Swiss couple, who were abducted, comes to my mind. And I believe that even this incident had taken place east from Quetta, and these people had somehow gone into an area, that the police should not allow foreigners to go.