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Summary
Summary
Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world. It is the only Islamic state to have nuclear weapons. Its border with Afghanistan extends over one thousand miles and is the likely hideout of Osama bin Laden. It has been under military dictatorship for thirty-three of its fiftyyear existence. Yet it is the linchpin in the United States' war on terror, receiving over $10 billion of American aid since 2001 and purchasing more than $5 billion of U.S. weaponry in 2006 alone.These days, relations between the two countries are never less than tense. Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf reported that U.S. deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage threatened to "bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age" if it did not commit fully to the alliance in the wake of 9/11. Presidential hopeful Barack Obama said he would have no hesitation in bombing Al Qaeda inside the country, "with or without" approval of the Pakistani government. Recent surveys show that more than 70 percent of Pakistanis fear the United States as a military threat to their country.The Bush administration spent much of 2007 promoting a "dream ticket" of Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to run Pakistan together. That strategy, with Bhutto assassinated and the general's party winning less than 15 percent of the contested seats in the 2008 election, is now in tatters.With increasingly bold attacks by Taliban supporters in the border regions threatening to split the Pakistan army, with the only political alternatives -- Nawaz Sharif and Benazir's widower Asif Ali Zardari -- being as corrupt as the regime they seek to replace, and with a newly radicalized movement of lawyers testing its strength as championsof the rule of law, the chances of sustained stability in Pakistan look slim.The scion of a famous Punjabi political family, with extraordinary contacts inside the country and internationally, Tariq Ali has long been acknowledged as a leading commentator on Pakistan. In these pages he combines deep understanding of the country's history with extensive firsthand research and unsparing political judgment to weigh the prospects of those contending for power today. The labyrinthine path between a secure world and global conflagration runs right through Pakistan. No one is better placed to trace its contours.
Author Notes
Tariq Ali is an English Pakistaki author who will be featured at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival 2015.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Booklist Review
A veteran journalist on Pakistan, Ali reviews the country's six-decade political history critically, indicting the leadership class and its ties to the U.S. Viewing the country as in neocolonial thrall to U.S. strategic interests, Ali comments freely in a narrative that acquaints readers with the country's main political events, from Pakistan's creation in 1947 to its situation in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007. The military being the dominant feature of Pakistani politics, Ali applies his caustic pen to descriptions of its leaders, particularly those in command during Pakistan's 1971 debacle of losing what is now Bangladesh. As for civilian leaders such as Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his late daughter, Benazir, Ali regards them as corrupt and no more interested in, and certainly no more effective at, alleviating the appalling poverty and illiteracy in which most Pakistanis live. Imparting personal detail about his visits to Pakistan and interviews with political figures, Ali offers strongly argued opinions on the past, and his preferred future, of Pakistani politics.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Two analyses of the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan weigh the pros and cons of continuing and escalating. ONE lesson from Vietnam was that the United States should not go to war without broad public support. One lesson from Iraq might be that we should not go to war without a vigorous public debate in which an administration's claims are carefully examined and challenged. Yet we are on the verge of significantly expanding the war in Afghanistan, which will inevitably affect Pakistan as well. Unfortunately, there has been little or no debate about President-elect Barack Obama's plan to send in more troops. The pros and cons of continuing or escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be gleaned from two recent books, "The Search for Al Qaeda," by Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and adviser to three presidents, and "The Duel," by the Pakistani writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali. One thing they agree on - and which was underscored by the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai - is that Pakistan is going to be at the forefront of foreign policy concerns for the Obama administration. It's hard to get more apocalyptic than Riedel. "Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world today, where every nightmare of the 21st century - terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the danger of nuclear war, dictatorship, poverty and drugs - come together in one place." It is, he adds, the country most critical to the development and survival of Al Qaeda. The importance Ali attaches to Pakistan can be found in his subtitle: "Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power." The United States thinks it needs Pakistan now, he says, in order to fight Al Qaeda and the insurgents who are carrying out attacks on the NATO troops in Afghanistan (a recent attack on a 100-vehicle convoy was launched from Peshawar), just as it needed Pakistan as a base for fighting the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The two men also agree that the threat presented by Al Qaeda has been exaggerated. " Its importance in the general scheme of things is greatly overstated by the West," Ali writes. "It unleashes sporadic terror attacks and kills innocents, but it does not pose any serious threat to U.S. power." Although Riedel calls Al Qaeda "the first truly global terrorist organization in history," he also says that it does not have "a mass following in the Muslim world" and that it is "not on the verge of taking over even a single Muslim country." Where the authors part company is over what to do now. Expand NATO forces in Afghanistan, Riedel says. Withdraw all NATO forces from Afghanistan, Ali counters. Riedel manages to distill the essence of Al Qaeda in just 150 pages. Among other things, he notes that the Islamic fundamentalists do not hate America's values, only its policies. For Al Qaeda theorists like Ayman al-Zawahiri, "the goal of the West today is virtually identical to that of the original Crusades a thousand years ago, which is to dominate the Islamic world." But Riedel's analysis creates something of a problem for him. He acknowledges that enlarging the war in Afghanistan is exactly what Al Qaeda wants, just as it wants the conflict in Iraq to continue. "In its view, the 'bleeding wars' offer the best opportunity to defeat the United States." Ali's book is more uneven than Riedel's. He argues that Afghans recoil against the presence of foreigners and that even Afghans who have no truck with the Taliban will support Islamic fundamentalists over NATO. But Ali's writing ranges from the poetic to polemical left-wing rant, and his detailed history of Pakistan will be hard for a non-Pakistani reader to follow. That said, his discussion of Afghanistan is highly valuable because of the questions it raises. If the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, would that present a security threat to the United States? What if the Taliban were in power but did not allow Al Qaeda to operate in their country? (Both books make clear that they are not natural allies.) And what about the ill treatment of women? Liberating the women of Afghanistan was a justification that Cherie Blair and Laura Bush gave when the war was launched in 2001. Had this been true, Ali says sarcastically, the American invasion of Afghanistan would have been a "pathbreaking conflict: the first imperial war in human history to liberate women." Ali and Riedel agree that the United States wants and needs a stable and democratic Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's called nation building. This is a laudable goal, of course, but is it achievable? Not, they say, unless the United States is prepared for a lengthy commitment. It cannot abandon the project halfway through as it did with Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Soviets were routed. America may have succeeded in nation-building in Germany and Japan after World War II, but the task in Afghanistan and Pakistan is herculean, if not Sisyphean. Ali describes Pakistan as a "dysfunctional state," adding that it "has been for almost four decades." Predictably, given his left-wing views, he says the United States "bears direct responsibility." At the same time, he notes that Pakistan's elite and political leaders, past and present, have done almost nothing for the country's poor. Almost a third of the population live below the poverty level. The educational system is appalling, which often means that parents send their children to madrasas, where they are indoctrinated by extremist clerics. "Corruption," he says, "envelops Pakistan like a sheet of water." Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with one of the lowest literacy rates. It is riven by ethnic divisions that make Iraq look like a rainbow coalition - just over half are Pashtuns (including the Taliban), about a quarter are Tajiks, with Uzbeks and Hazaras making up most of the rest. Warlords have led them all. These groups fight over control of the drug trade as much as they do over religion. After seven years and billions of dollars in aid, Ali argues, nation-building in Afghanistan has produced "a puppet president dependent for his survival on foreign mercenaries" - Ali's language for NATO troops - "a corrupt and abusive police force, a 'nonfunctioning' judiciary, a burgeoning criminal layer and a deepening social and economic crisis." Even allowing for hyperbole, the picture in Afghanistan is not pretty. "It beggars belief to argue that more of the same will be the answer to Afghanistan's problems," he writes. Riedel, on the other hand, wants an enhanced American commitment to Afghanistan on many fronts - "military, political and economic." And while urging NATO to remain, he also calls for bringing in troops from Muslim countries, "especially Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco." Which man is right, which one wrong? Whatever the case, their books are a starting point for a much-needed debate. Roy Bonner is a Times correspondent who writes frequently on Central Asia.
Guardian Review
In the introduction to his third book on Pakistan, Tariq Ali quotes a friend who asked if it wasn't reckless to start a book about the country when the dice were still in the air. Ali's reply: he would never have been able to write anything about Pakistan if he had waited for the dice to fall. Ali has had an uncanny record of foreseeing the way things are going. In his 1969 book Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power he foretold the imminent break-up of Pakistan, a shocking prediction at the time which came true within two years. In the 80s, Can Pakistan Survive? caused outrage within the Pakistani establishment, but two decades later, on the cover of every current affairs magazine and in every TV talk show, not only is Pakistan being branded the most dangerous place on earth but it has even been suggested that the world's end is being planned there. The Duel is less concerned with the trajectory of the dice than with why they've been in the air for more than 60 years and who threw them. When I heard the title of the book earlier this year, I thought it had a certain poetic flourish. As American drones started pounding the tribal areas of Pakistan and its ruling elite tried to convince their people that it's for their own good, it turned out to be devastatingly literal. But The Duel is not the familiar quick round-up of recycled headlines peppered with inane quotes from anonymous intelligence sources rattling off their theories about jihadists taking over Pakistan's nuclear devices, the jihadists taking over Pakistan, and then Pakistan destroying western civilisation as we know it. Not since Ayesha Siddiqa's groundbreaking work Military Inc has there been such a well-informed and articulate account of the country's history. Ali has a simple advantage: he knows his subject. He can turn many of the lazy assumptions about Pakistan on their heads merely by providing context. In the opening chapter he gives a detailed account of the Lal Mosque debacle, a week-long televised siege of the militant hideout in the heart of the Pakistani capital, which brought all the factions of the Pakistani Taliban together and resulted in a wave of suicide attacks that culminated in the horrific bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel. According to Ali, jihadists are no more likely to take over Pakistan's nuclear weapons than Hindu hardliners or extremist Jews. He also reveals how Tableeghi Jamaat, the largest non-political congregation of Muslims in Pakistan, which many western intellectuals regard as the peaceful and acceptable face of Islamists, is not as innocuous as it looks. Its million-strong gatherings provide fertile recruitment grounds for future suicide squads. Ali is unabashedly sentimental about his reasons for continuing to write about Pakistan. "Something of me stayed behind in the soil and the trees and the people . . . " And although his analysis is razor sharp and his logic always ice cold, his passion seeps through when he chronicles the struggles of Pakistan's common people to take their fate into their own hands. From the student movement that forced Pakistan's military ruler Ayub Khan out of power in the late 1960s to the lawyers' movement that brought Musharraf down last year, The Duel offers a detailed and impassioned history. Ali also does what no thinktank wallah would ever do: he intersperses his narrative with quotes from writers who have never waited for the dice to fall before speaking their minds. Poets such as Sahir Ludhianvi, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Ustad Daman provide an alternative perspective on the state of the nation, a view from the street. According to Ali, the real threat to Pakistan, and as a consequence to the world, emerges from the appalling economic inequity and the dangerous complicity among Pakistan's corrupt-to-its-core military, its civilian elite and their American counterparts, which goes way back: the founder of the nation Muhammad Ali Jinnah tried to sell his own house to the US ambassador. He was politely refused but got four ceiling fans as a consolation present. The Duel also proves that you don't need to rely on those anonymous sources in the defence establishments in Islamabad and Washington to write a well-informed, compelling narrative about Pakistan. Most of the information comes from on-the-record interviews, declassified documents and thinktank papers. Ali uses his own encounters with historical figures - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto - sparingly but they add an urgent, intimate layer to the narrative. One of the very few times Ali quotes an anonymous source he adds another theory to the two-decades-old speculation as to who might have killed General Zia, Pakistan's military dictator and America's partner in its last war in the region. As someone who has indulged in speculation myself in fictional form, I found it only too plausible. Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Cape) is on the longlist of the Guardian first book award. To order The Duel for pounds 16.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875. Caption: article-pakistan.1 In the introduction to his third book on Pakistan, Tariq Ali quotes a friend who asked if it wasn't reckless to start a book about the country when the dice were still in the air. Ali's reply: he would never have been able to write anything about Pakistan if he had waited for the dice to fall. Ali has had an uncanny record of foreseeing the way things are going. In his 1969 book Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power he foretold the imminent break-up of Pakistan, a shocking prediction at the time which came true within two years. In the 80s, Can Pakistan Survive? caused outrage within the Pakistani establishment, but two decades later, on the cover of every current affairs magazine and in every TV talk show, not only is Pakistan being branded the most dangerous place on earth but it has even been suggested that the world's end is being planned there. The Duel is less concerned with the trajectory of the dice than with why they've been in the air for more than 60 years and who threw them. - Mohammed Hanif.
Kirkus Review
Harshly critical of the American-backed Pakistani military and deeply concerned with the plight of his native country's people, London-based filmmaker and novelist Ali (Dictatorship of Capital: Politics and Culture in the 21st Century, 2008, etc.) warns of an imminent "conflagration of despair." His narrative moves gradually through the sad morass of Pakistan's history: its bloody, ethnic-driven birth in 1947, repeated dictatorships, entrenched corruption and incipient Islamic radicalization. The fight against terrorism has renewed America's interest in the country, he notes; since 9/11 the United States has pressured President Musharraf to the tune of $10 billion to cease harboring tribal insurgents from neighboring Afghanistan. America's fear that Pakistan is flirting with the jihadists may precipitate more unwanted U.S. intervention, he warns. Ali carefully examines Pakistan's long, troubled relationship with America since U.S. support of the first military dictatorship by General Ayub Khan in 1958. Patrician political leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, father of Benazir, took power during the turbulent period that led to the violent creation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan in 1972; his five-year leadership saw the birth of Pakistan as a nuclear state in defiance of the United States. Bhutto's "removal," according to Ali, was deemed necessary, and his chief of staff Zia-ul-Haq became president. Because it was instrumental in routing the Soviets after their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the author comments bitterly, "General Zia's dictatorship thus became the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the region." Ali considers the tenures of Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf, denouncing both for "clientilism, patronage and corruption on a gigantic scale." The American-engineered political marriage of convenience between the two ended in disaster, and Musharraf's military dictatorship is compounding the country's misery rather than delivering stability. Sage and watchful, Ali considers how the "organic evolution of politics in Pakistan," wrecked by American intervention, might be salvaged. Intense, closely observed commentary on perilous developments in an unstable nation. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In his latest examination of Pakistan, Ali (Conversations with Edward Said) takes on the role of political storyteller. The turbulent Pakistani political landscape is both the setting and the protagonist in this study of a country in crisis. Spanning the rule of Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to the Bhutto dynasty and Pervez Musharraf's military control, this work is less an analysis of Pakistan-U.S. relations than a tale of the Pakistani people's struggle for political autonomy and representation. Much like an embedded reporter who becomes a part of his story, Ali is not simply a recorder of events. As an active participant in many of Pakistan's internal political struggles, he cannot separate himself from the living history of his home country. His incisive scholarship on Pakistan's inception and subsequent leadership is peppered with personal anecdotes, biting commentary, and forcefully opinionated prose, effectively demonstrating that objectivity is not a necessary precursor to insightful analysis. Although the storytelling sometimes suffers from chronological breaks and the occasional tangent, Ali's passion for Pakistan and its political future ultimately makes his book an engaging (and often enraging) political story. Recommended for academic libraries.--Veronica Arellano, Univ. of Houston Libs. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. IX |
| 1 Pakistan at Sixty: A Conflagration of Despair | p. 1 |
| 2 Rewinding Pakistan: Birth of Tragedy | p. 29 |
| 3 The Washington Quartet: The Man Who Would Be Field Marshal | p. 50 |
| 4 The Washington Quartet: The General Who Lost a Country | p. 70 |
| 5 The Washington Quartet: The Soldier of Islam | p. 97 |
| 6 The Washington Quartet: The General as Chief Executive | p. 134 |
| 7 The House of Bhutto: Daughter of the West | p. 159 |
| 8 On the Flight Path of American Power | p. 191 |
| 9 Operation Enduring Freedom: Mirage of the "Good" War | p. 217 |
| 10 Can Pakistan Be Recycled? | p. 249 |
| Index | p. 279 |
