The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

Product Information

All those interested in South Asia and its complex politics and culture should read this book' - Pankaj Mishra It is quite common for statesmen to display three qualities: mixed motives, ambiguous character and abnormal drive. Cold and impenetrable, Jinnah, as Walsh shows, was no exception. He was however, committed to the idea of a secular and democratic Pakistan which is at peace with its neighbours. The ideal soon wilted as Pakistan was beset- right from the start- by issues of faith and identity, which were later exploited by military dictators to prolong their stay in power although the price which the country has paid is heavy. Walsh’s book suffers from minor factual mistakes: Zia had passed away nearly a year before the Tiananmen Square killings in China, so he could not have sent Beijing a message of support in 1989. Intelligence Bureau reports directly to the Prime Minister and not to the interior ministry; former foreign secretary Shaharyar M. Khan never served as Ambassador to India; although the author cites Dilip Hiro’s book on Partition as a source about the meeting between Jinnah and Chaudhry Rahmat Ali in New York’s swanky hotel, it probably happened in London instead of New York as there is no record of Jinnah visiting the United States in 1933.

DECLAN WALSH: When I started to write the book, I thought, of course, about the big characters, the Pervez Musharrafs, the Benazir Bhuttos, the people that I had really covered intensively over the years. But then I realized that I had learned most, actually, in a way from what I called the sort of second-tier characters of the country's dramas - police chiefs, spies, a tribal chief. These were people who lived dramatic lives and were willing to open up those lives to a stranger like me. Many extremist groups looked on western journalists as legitimate targets, for kidnapping at least, and at one point Walsh is saved by the man he has hired a car from. Overhearing a group of men discussing the logistics of grabbing Walsh, the rental man bundled the Irish journalist into the vehicle and sped away. Islam or the army were supposed to be the glue holding the place together. Yet both seemed to be tearing it apart Declan WalshSHAPIRO: Declan Walsh told me he happened to be in Pakistan during a particularly explosive period. But then, the entire history of the country is a parade of fragile episodes. He goes into the details of these individuals’ lives and their work. Some of them he met in person and directly observed, including Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf, while others, like Quaid-e-Azam, passed away long ago. Chapter by chapter, he attempts to break down the religious extremism, terrorism, and parochialism Pakistan has long been plagued by. WALSH: There have been these questions about Pakistan and its survival really right from the very beginning. The country, of course, was formed in 1947 when then-British India was cleaved in two. And so Pakistan ever since then has faced one crisis after another. And the crises have been the product of identity issues, problems about the role of religion in the country, power struggles between the military and civilian leaders. So Pakistan has really struggled since its creation to have one long period of stability and calm. And for better and for worse, the period that I was there was really one of the most turbulent periods.

By the end of Walsh’s time in Pakistan, the winner in this epic struggle is clear: the ISI and the military machine that stands behind it. “It seemed to boil down to one hard truth: the military always wins,” his realises as he prepares to leave, never to return. “When the ISI men come to the door, the illusion of a democratic state melts away.”One of the most problematic chapters for me was the portrayal of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. A stoic, enigmatic figure compared to his flashy contemporaries Nehru and Gandhi, Jinnah’s legacy had suffered the repercussions of his reticence, leading his countrymen to recast everything from his attire to his speeches for self-serving motives. The common denominators in the chaotic events that Walsh recounts are also what constitutes the Achilles' heel of Pakistan – religion and army. This book charts the trajectory of the creeping post-9/11 radicalisation and the rising Deep State, “the semi-visible iceberg of army garrisons, military spies and their political satraps”. Exocitism over nuance Blending journalism, history and travelogue, Walsh, who has covered Pakistan for over a decade for The Guardian and The New York Times, has penned a riveting account of the tumultuous but memorable time he spent in Pakistan, ending in his dramatic expulsion on the election day in 2013 on the basis of “undesirable activities.” Walsh is an accomplished story-teller who keeps the reader spellbound with well-crafted pen-portraits and fast-paced narrative, embellished with interesting anecdotes and pithy judgments. Although mostly anecdotal, the book offers a potted history of the country and its historical figures. A country long viewed globally as terribly volatile and ever on the brink of collapse, Pakistan is, in fact, despite all odds, incredibly resilient and has proved much tougher to disintegrate than was believed. This is the idea Declan Walsh attempts to drive home in the Nine Lives of Pakistan. The People of Pakistan Walsh found Pakistan perplexing and fascinating: crowded with places of unmatched natural beauty, inhabited by people with whom he formed deep friendships and yet pierced with danger. Navigating through the labyrinth, he came across various faultiness in Pakistan’s body politic: faith and identity, praetorianism and the oversized role of intelligence agencies, underdevelopment and ethnic nationalism, corruption and tax evasion culture, a self-serving and hypocritical elite which flouts law, violence fueled by religious extremism, and unscrupulous and compromised political parties, mostly dynastic and dependent upon state patronage.

On the eve of the 2013 national election, Irish journalist Declan Walsh was unceremoniously expelled from Pakistan, after spending a decade there, on suspicion of “undesirable activities”. The New York Times’s Pakistan bureau chief logs his intimate account of that tumultuous period in this book. Lastly, can you share any memories of the senorita, as you call her in her profile, the prominent human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir who called spade a spade? After she passed away following a stroke in 2018, how big a vacuum did her death create in Pakistani civil society? Do you think new geopolitical alignments and Pakistan’s inclination toward China and the enmity for India will bring more oppression for ethnic minorities in Pakistan amid the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)?The terrifying wave of Islamist militancy — suicide bombings and many thousands of deaths — that threatened to rip Pakistan apart for about a decade following the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in 2007 has thankfully receded. But the issues that gave rise to the militant explosion remain unresolved. Much evidence suggests that Pakistan’s generals have not renounced their ardor for the Islamist proxy fighters who have wreaked so much havoc. But they have, for expedient political and financial reasons, forced many of these groups underground for now. And the rivalry with India, which has driven that policy for decades, has only gotten worse, in part as a result of the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi. So while things have quieted in Pakistan there is little reason to believe, alas, that they will stay like that. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Nine_Lives_of_Pakistan_-_Declan_WALSH.pdf, The_Nine_Lives_of_Pakistan_-_Declan_WALSH.epub A highlight for me was the profile of Chaudary Aslam Khan, notorious as Karachi’s toughest cop. In a career spanning almost three decades, Khan targeted the dark underbelly of the “brooding megalopolis” dominated by crime lords and undercover spies. Having survived eight assassination attempts, he used to joke that one day his trademark white shalwar kameez would become his funeral shroud. This prophecy came true in 2014 when he was killed in a bomb targeting his convoy. But despite the rhetoric about a boundless China-Pakistan relationship — “higher than the mountains, deeper than the seas” — I suspect there are limits, and I think they are becoming more apparent. Chinese loans and other financial assistance can carry a high cost, and as the coronavirus pandemic exacts a stiff economic price in the coming years, we may see China call in its chips with countries like Pakistan. China’s harsh treatment of its own Muslim citizens in western Xinjiang province is likely to strain relations, no matter how much Prime Minister Imran Khan tries to glass over the story (or pretend he hasn’t read the reports of those abuses).