A courageous, comprehensive and no-holds-barred account, by a veteran journalist, of a 66-year-old nation that is still trying to find its identity and fighting its own demons Beginning with the ‘genetic defect’ that Pakistan was born with, Babar Ayaz highlights the numerous problems faced by Pakistan today that have arisen as a result of the country’s foundation being based on religion. What Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah managed to achieve as a separate homeland in August 1947 is today being consumed by religious fanaticism. Ayaz attributes such a state of affairs to the Islamization of Pakistani laws, which are in conflict with the twenty-first century value systems. The author next pinpoints how Jinnah failed to recognize the ethno-linguistic diversity of the Pakistan he had created, which needed proper distribution of power between the Centre and the states in the then-existent West Pakistan and East Pakistan. He describes how the centralization of power and the imposition of a single language for both wings of the country led to the dismemberment of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. The book also analyzes the ‘unwritten national security policy’ of Pakistan and how it has dictated its foreign policy. Relations with the US, India, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan are discussed vis-à-vis the overall national security policy. The author contends that the rise of fundamentalism is a global phenomenon, but in Pakistan, it has given birth to a plethora of Islamic militant groups covertly supported by the Pakistani intelligence services. Pakistan has been branded as ‘the most dangerous state of the world’ and the ‘epicentre of terrorism’. He laments the fact that attempts to present the peaceful side of Islam are extremely feeble because of the dominance of the pro-jihad elements, which are pushing the country into a civil war-like situation. In spite of several years of attempts at indoctrination of the people through mass media and educational institutions, in Pakistan, the anti-Indian feelings and extreme stands on Kashmir have been limited. Ayaz believes that India and the developed world would have to help by being more accommodating and understanding, so that the people of Pakistan can re-invent their country. Without moving towards secularism, the author warns, Pakistan will remain at war with itself as it is torn between the twenty-first century and medieval religious value systems.

Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its struggle with terror. But are ordinary Pakistanis extremists? And what explains how Pakistanis think? Much of the current work on extremism in Pakistan tends to study extremist trends in the country from a detached position—a top-down security perspective, that renders a one-dimensional picture of what is at its heart a complex, richly textured country of 200 million people. In this book, using rigorous analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews in schools and universities in Pakistan, historical narrative reporting, and her own intuitive understanding of the country, Madiha Afzal gives the full picture of Pakistan’s relationship with extremism. The author lays out Pakistanis’ own views on terrorist groups, on jihad, on religious minorities and non-Muslims, on America, and on their place in the world. The views are not radical at first glance, but are riddled with conspiracy theories. Afzal explains how the two pillars that define the Pakistani state—Islam and a paranoia about India—have led to a regressive form of Islamization in Pakistan’s narratives, laws, and curricula. These, in turn, have shaped its citizens’ attitudes. Afzal traces this outlook to Pakistan’s unique and tortured birth. She examines the rhetoric and the strategic actions of three actors in Pakistani politics—the military, the civilian governments, and the Islamist parties—and their relationships with militant groups. She shows how regressive Pakistani laws instituted in the 1980s worsened citizen attitudes and led to vigilante and mob violence. The author also explains that the educational regime has become a vital element in shaping citizens’ thinking. How many years one attends school, whether the school is public, private, or a madrassa, and what curricula is followed all affect Pakistanis’ attitudes about terrorism and the rest of the world. In the end, Afzal suggests how this beleaguered nation—one with seemingly insurmountable problems in governance and education—can change course.

Established as a homeland for India’s Muslims in 1947, Pakistan has had a tumultuous history. Beset by assassinations, coups, ethnic strife, and the breakaway of Bangladesh in 1971, the country has found itself too often contending with religious extremism and military authoritarianism. Now, in a probing biography of her native land amid the throes of global change, Ayesha Jalal provides an insider’s assessment of how this nuclear-armed Muslim nation evolved as it did and explains why its dilemmas weigh so heavily on prospects for peace in the region. “[An] important book...Ayesha Jalal has been one of the first and most reliable [Pakistani] political historians [on Pakistan]...The Struggle for Pakistan [is] her most accessible work to date...She is especially telling when she points to the lack of serious academic or political debate in Pakistan about the role of the military.” —Ahmed Rashid, New York Review of Books “[Jalal] shows that Pakistan never went off the rails; it was, moreover, never a democracy in any meaningful sense. For its entire history, a military caste and its supporters in the ruling class have formed an ‘establishment’ that defined their narrow interests as the nation’s.” —Isaac Chotiner, Wall Street Journal

This book tells the story of the tragic and often tormented relationship between the United States and Pakistan. Pakistan's internal troubles have already threatened U.S. security and international peace, and Pakistan's rapidly growing population, nuclear arsenal, and relationships with China and India will continue to force it upon America's geostrategic map in new and important ways over the coming decades. This book explores the main trends in Pakistani society that will help determine its future; traces the wellsprings of Pakistani anti-American sentiment through the history of U.S.-Pakistan relations from 1947 to 2001; assesses how Washington made and implemented policies regarding Pakistan since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001; and analyzes how regional dynamics, especially the rise of China, will likely shape U.S.-Pakistan relations. It concludes with three options for future U.S. strategy, described as defensive insulation, military-first cooperation, and comprehensive cooperation. The book explains how Washington can prepare for the worst, aim for the best, and avoid past mistakes.

Pakistan's transformation from supposed model of Muslim enlightenment to a state now threatened by an Islamist takeover has been remarkable. Many account for the change by pointing to Pakistan's controversial partnership with the United States since 9/11; others see it as a consequence of Pakistan's long history of authoritarian rule, which has marginalized liberal opinion and allowed the rise of a religious right. Farzana Shaikh argues the country's decline is rooted primarily in uncertainty about the meaning of Pakistan and the significance of 'being Pakistani'. This has pre-empted a consensus on the role of Islam in the public sphere and encouraged the spread of political Islam. It has also widened the gap between personal piety and public morality, corrupting the country's economic foundations and tearing apart its social fabric. More ominously still, it has given rise to a new and dangerous symbiosis between the country's powerful armed forces and Muslim extremists. Shaikh demonstrates how the ideology that constrained Indo-Muslim politics in the years leading to Partition in 1947 has left its mark, skillfully deploying insights from history to better understand Pakistan's troubled present.

Pakistan is a strategic ally of the US in the 'war on terror'. It is the third largest recipient of US aid in the world. Yet Pakistan is a state run by its army and intelligence service. Operating in the shadows, Pakistan's military industrial complex owns and controls swathes of the economic and political landscape of the country. Military Inc. dares to illuminate the military as an oppressive holding company possessing not just security-related businesses, but also hotels, shopping malls, insurance companies, banks, farms and even an airline. The result is a deeply undemocratic society, where money is funnelled towards the military's economic enterprises, leaving those in need of it impoverished and effectively disenfranchised. With an empirical richness, and a view to Pakistan's recent history, Ayesha Siddiqa offers a detailed and powerful case study of a global phenomenon: corruption, hollow economic growth and elitism. This new edition includes a chapter on the recent developments of the military's foray into the media, and a new preface.

Winner of the 2021 Overseas Press Club of America Cornelius Ryan Award The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country. Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times’s most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis—a chieftain readying for war at his desert fort, a retired spy skulking through the borderlands, and a crusading lawyer risking death for her beliefs, among others. Through these “nine lives” he describes a country on the brink—a place of creeping extremism and political chaos, but also personal bravery and dogged idealism that defy easy stereotypes. Unbeknownst to Walsh, however, an intelligence agent was tracking him. Written in the aftermath of Walsh’s abrupt deportation, The Nine Lives of Pakistan concludes with an astonishing encounter with that agent, and his revelations about Pakistan’s powerful security state. Intimate and complex, attuned to the centrifugal forces of history, identity, and faith, The Nine Lives of Pakistan offers an unflinching account of life in a precarious, vital country.

In the past decade Pakistan has become a country of immense importance to its region, the United States, and the world. With almost 200 million people, a 500,000-man army, nuclear weapons, and a large diaspora in Britain and North America, Pakistan is central to the hopes of jihadis and the fears of their enemies. Yet the greatest short-term threat to Pakistan is not Islamist insurgency as such, but the actions of the United States, and the greatest long-term threat is ecological change. Anatol Lieven's book is a magisterial investigation of this highly complex and often poorly understood country: its regions, ethnicities, competing religious traditions, varied social landscapes, deep political tensions, and historical patterns of violence; but also its surprising underlying stability, rooted in kinship, patronage, and the power of entrenched local elites. Engagingly written, combining history and profound analysis with reportage from Lieven's extensive travels as a journalist and academic, Pakistan: A Hard Country is both utterly compelling and deeply revealing.

The idea of Pakistan stands riddled with tensions. Initiated by a small group of select Urdu-speaking Muslims who envisioned a unified Islamic state, today Pakistan suffers the divisive forces of various separatist movements and religious fundamentalism. A small entrenched elite continue to dominate the country’s corridors of power, and democratic forces and legal institutions remain weak. But despite these seemingly insurmountable problems, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan continues to endure. The Pakistan Paradox is the definitive history of democracy in Pakistan, and its survival despite ethnic strife, Islamism and deepseated elitism. This edition focuses on three kinds of tensions that are as old as Pakistan itself. The tension between the unitary definition of the nation inherited from Jinnah and centrifugal ethnic forces; between civilians and army officers who are not always in favour of or against democracy; and between the Islamists and those who define Islam only as a cultural identity marker.

Do Muslims around the world hate us in the US? *** Aren't we the good guys? Don't we come to the aid of the poor and dislocated whenever there is a disaster in any part of the world? *** Attitudes of people in Muslim countries toward the US continue to confound American policymakers and the American public. Billions of dollars in aid has gone to Muslim countries, yet Muslims worldwide have an extremely unfavorable image of America and the West. *** Fatal Faultlines is a comprehen sive look at attitudes in Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world toward the US and the West, presenting a clear narrative of vastly conflicting interests and perceptions. *** It is an indispensable guide to understanding how rational people on each side of the divide can have such a different perspective on what is going on in the world.