The young MK Gandhi enjoyed his cricket and is on record as having watched a game between the town of Rajkot (Indians) and the local military cantonment (British) while a schoolboy in the late 1880s.
Breaking off into working groups, Tuareg, Arab, Songhai, Fulani and Bambara dignitaries pondered sticking points, such as cantonment and the return of basic services to the country's north.
Arif Hasan, chairman of the Urban Resource Centre in Karachi, notes among several examples that the city's municipal government will not apply to army cantonment areas, which account for nearly half of the area and a fifth of the population.
Locals point out several villas in the city's leafy colonial cantonment that are occupied by mysterious Chinese businessmen.
Meanwhile, a string of bigwigs, from the British prime minister to the German chancellor, as well as the American secretary of state, have been trooping in and out of General Musharraf's house in Rawalpindi cantonment.
And, at the same time, goodbye Bangalore, boring colonial cantonment whose name failed to honour the kind old woman who plumped up a hungry 14th-century king with a small bean feast.
They are at present held in seven cantonment sites around the country, pending the "integration" of some of them into the army proper.
Today's shabby military cantonment is a nature park.
All this, and the abduction and killing of Ram Shrestha, a Kathmandu-based businessman, who was beaten to death last month inside a cantonment by Maoist cadres, has put Prachanda on the defensive.The UN, too, has faced its share of criticism, but overall can claim its mission in Nepal as a success.
Enter its noisy plant, which stands opposite the walls of the army chief's home in the cantonment, and workmen bustle happily amid pallets groaning with crates of beer and vodka.In one steamy warehouse, clanking machines churn out 14,000 cans of lager every hour.
The thanks go mainly to the personal vendetta of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, one of the two leaders, against the other, Khaleda Zia.On November 13th Mrs Zia was evicted from her home of nearly 30 years in Dhaka's cantonment area.
