Pakistan, Sept. 7 -- Pakistan has spent years discovering that it owns Gandhara, usually at conferences where everyone already knows. The monasteries are still there. The stupas have survived empires, neglect, weather and our talent for forming committees. Taxila and Takht-i-Bahi sit on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Buddhist monks keep coming, and we keep hearing promises. What has remained stubbornly elusive is the ordinary business of making a pilgrimage easy.

That is the problem Imran Shauket, coordinator of the Prime Minister's Task Force on the Gandhara-Cradle of Buddhism Strategy, says he has been asked to solve. Not to excavate another monastery or invent another slogan, but to persuade the ministries that issue visas, the provi...