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.

    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.

    After rallying non-Urdu speaking leaders around him, Jinnah imposed a unitary definition of the new nation state that obliterated linguistic diversity. This centralisation - 'justified' by the Indian threat - fostered centrifugal forces that resulted in Bengali secessionism in 1971 and Baloch, as well as Mohajir, separatisms today. Concentration of power in the hands of the establishment remained the norm, and while authoritarianism peaked under military rule, democracy failed to usher in reform, and the rule of law remained fragile at best under Zulfikar Bhutto and later Nawaz Sharif. While Jinnah and Ayub Khan regarded religion as a cultural marker, since their time the Islamists have gradually prevailed. They benefited from the support of General Zia, while others, including sectarian groups, cashed in on their struggle against the establishment to woo the disenfranchised. Today, Pakistan faces existential challenges ranging from ethnic strife to Islamism, two sources of instability which hark back to elite domination. But the resilience of the country and its people, the resolve of the judiciary and hints of reform in the army may open a new and more stable chapter in its history.

    Gary J. Bass shows how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan’s military dictatorship as it brutally quashed the results of a historic free election. The Pakistani army launched a crackdown on what was then East Pakistan (today an independent Bangladesh), killing hundreds of thousands of people and sending ten million refugees fleeing to India—one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twentieth century.Nixon and Kissinger, unswayed by detailed warnings of genocide from American diplomats witnessing the bloodshed, stood behind Pakistan’s military rulers. Driven not just by Cold War realpolitik but by a bitter personal dislike of India and its leader Indira Gandhi, Nixon and Kissinger actively helped the Pakistani government even as it careened toward a devastating war against India. They silenced American officials who dared to speak up, secretly encouraged China to mass troops on the Indian border, and illegally supplied weapons to the Pakistani military—an overlooked scandal that presages Watergate.Drawing on previously unheard White House tapes, recently declassified documents, and extensive interviews with White House staffers and Indian military leaders, The Blood Telegram tells this thrilling, shadowy story in full. Bringing us into the drama of a crisis exploding into war, Bass follows reporters, consuls, and guerrilla warriors on the ground—from the desperate refugee camps to the most secretive conversations in the Oval Office. Bass makes clear how the United States’ embrace of the military dictatorship in Islamabad would mold Asia’s destiny for decades, and confronts for the first time Nixon and Kissinger’s hidden role in a tragedy that was far bloodier than Bosnia. This is a revelatory, compulsively readable work of politics, personalities, military confrontation, and Cold War brinksmanship.

    While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan.Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence. Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking. This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.

    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 this magisterial book, Saran discerns the threads that tie together his experiences as a diplomat.In his book, part memoir and part thesis on India’s international relations since Independence, Shyam Saran discerns the threads that tie together his experiences as a diplomat. Using the prism of Kautilya’s Arthashastra and other ancient treatises on statecraft, Saran shows the historical sources of India’s worldview. He looks at India’s neighbourhood and the changing wider world through this lens and arrives at fascinating conclusions — the claims that the world is hurtling towards Chinese unipolarity are overblown; international borders are becoming irrelevant as climate change and cyber terror bypass them; and India shouldn’t hold its breath for a resolution to its border disputes with China and Pakistan in the foreseeable future. The book also takes the reader behind the closed doors — from Barack Obama popping by a tense developing-country strategy meeting at the Copenhagen climate change summit to the private celebratory dinner thrown by then US President George W. Bush for then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the success of the nuclear deal.Praise For The Book - ‘Part history, part memoir, How India Sees the World is an illuminating and at times controversial insight into the thinking of one of India’s great diplomats and civil servants. A vigorous defender of India’s national interests, Shyam Saran offers us a unique and candid view of policy deliberations at the highest levels of the Indian government. He rightly argues for a deeper understanding of China and the historic factors which inform and shape its strategic behaviour today. Moreover, Ambassador Saran provides a timely overview of the contemporary challenges facing global politics, including but not limited to cyberspace, climate change and outer space. This is a strong contribution from a fine strategic thinker’ – *Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia*‘As an insightful, acute and erudite description of the well-springs of Indian foreign policy, Shyam Saran’s How India Sees the World is unmatched. Drawing on his deep experience in crucial positions and his undoubted intellectual gifts, this book is required reading for anyone interested in India’s role in the world, and the future of Asia and the world. His familiarity with traditional Indian statecraft, and his focus on China - a country he is familiar with and has studied for over forty years - makes for fascinating and thought-provoking reading. A must read and an essential addition to any library on modern India’ – *Shivshankar Menon, former national security advisor of India*

    Successive American presidents from both parties have pursued narrow short-term interests in the South Asian nation, and many of the resulting policies proved counterproductive in the long term, contributing to political instability and a radicalized public. This background has helped set the stage for the global jihad confronting much of the world today.In Deadly Embrace, Bruce Riedel explores the forces behind these developments, explaining how and why the history of Pakistan-U.S. relations has unfolded as it has. He explains what the United States can do now to repair the damage and how it can avoid making similar mistakes in dealing with extremist forces in Pakistan and beyond.Riedel is one of America's foremost authorities on U.S. security, South Asia, and terrorism, and he helped to craft President Obama's 2009 speech referring to the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands as the "most dangerous region of the world." He follows up The Search for al Qaeda, his influential 2008 analysis of the terror network's ideology and leadership, with a sober, authoritative, and sometimes alarming look at the history, importance, and current role of Pakistan, epicenter of the global jihad movement, beginning with the history of U.S.-Pakistan relations since the partitioning of the subcontinent in 1947.The relationship between Pakistan and America is a fascinating yet muddled story, meandering through periods of friendship and enmity, symbiosis and distrust: it's no wonder that people in both nations are confused. Deadly Embrace explains how the United States, on several occasions, actually helped the foes of democracy in Pakistan and aided in the development of the very enemies it is now fighting in the region. The book seeks to unravel this paradox, revealing and interpreting the tortuous path of relations between two very different nations, which remain, in many ways, stuck with each other.

    Events, anecdotes and personalities drive its narrative to illustrate the cocktail of hostility, nationalism and nostalgia that defines every facet of the relationship. It looks at the main events through the eyes and words of actual players and contemporary observers to illustrates how, both in India and in Pakistan, these past events are seen through radically different prisms, how history keeps resurfacing and has a resonance that cannot be avoided to this day. Apart from political, military and security issues, The People Next Door evokes other perspectives: divided families, peacemakers, war mongers, contrarian thinkers, intellectual and cultural associations, unwavering friendships, the footprint of Bollywood, cricket and literature: all of which are intrinsic parts of this most tangled of relationships.

    The update looks at recent nuclear dealings between India and the United States, including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 2005 visit to America. Under the highly controversial agreement that emerged, the United States would give India access to U.S. nuclear technology and conventional weapons systems. In exchange, India would place its civilian nuclear program under international monitoring and continue the ban on nuclear testing. Praise for the hardback edition "A fascinating study of how diplomatic dialogue can slowly broaden to include subtle considerations of the domestic politics and foreign policies of both countries involved." Foreign Affairs "An important addition to the literature of modern diplomatic history."—Choice "Detailed and revealing... an honest behind-the-scenes look at how countries make and defend policies.... A must-read for any student of diplomacy."—Outlook (India) "A rapidly engrossing work and a welcome addition to modern world history shelves."—Reviewer's Bookwatch "A highly engaging book; lucid, informative and at times, amusing."—International Affairs

    Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s protégé and the political leader of India, believed Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand. But in August 1946, exactly a year before Independence, Calcutta erupted in riots. A cycle of street-fighting — targeting Hindus, then Muslims, then Sikhs — spun out of control. As the summer of 1947 approached, all three groups were heavily armed and on edge, and the British rushed to leave. Hell let loose. Trains carried Muslims west and Hindus east to their slaughter. Some of the most brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing in modern history erupted on both sides of the new border, searing a divide between India and Pakistan that remains a root cause of many evils. From jihadi terrorism to nuclear proliferation, the searing tale told in Midnight’s Furies explains all too many of the headlines we read today.

    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.Attentive to Pakistan's external relations as well as its internal dynamics, Jalal shows how the vexed relationship with the United States, border disputes with Afghanistan in the west, and the conflict with India over Kashmir in the east have played into the hands of the generals who purchased security at the cost of strong democratic institutions. Combined with domestic ethnic and regional rivalries, such pressures have created a siege mentality that encourages military domination and militant extremism.Since 9/11, the country has been widely portrayed as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism. Assessing the threats posed by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as American troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Jalal contends that the battle for Pakistan's soul is far from over. Her definitive biography reveals how pluralism and democracy continue to struggle for a place in this Muslim homeland, where they are so essential to its future.

    His unique knowledge of this complex, war-torn region gives him a panoramic vision and grasp of nuance that no Western writer can emulate.

    Nuclear weapons restored strategic parity, erasing the advantage of India's much larger size and conventional military superiority. Yet in the years that followed Pakistan went on to lose decisively to India. It lost any ability to stake a serious claim to Kashmir, a region it called its jugular vein. Its ability to influence events in Afghanistan diminished. While India's growing economy won it recognition as a rising world power, Pakistan became known as a failing state. Pakistan had lost to India before but the setbacks since 1998 made this defeat irreversible.Defeat is an Orphan follows the rollercoaster ride through post-nuclear India-Pakistan, from bitter conflict in the mountains to military confrontation in the plains, from the hijacking of an Indian plane to the assault on Mumbai. Nuclear weapons proved to be Pakistan's undoing. They encouraged a reckless reliance on militant proxies even as the jihadis spun out of control outside and inside Pakistan. By shielding it from retaliation, the nuclear weapons also sealed it into its own dysfunction -- so much so that the Great South Asian War, fought on-and-off since 1947, was not so much won by India as lost by Pakistan.

    In her long-awaited study of Kargil, Nasim Zehra combines hitherto unknown information garnered from key players in the Pakistani military establishment involved in the planning of the incursion with a historically grounded and analytically nuanced analysis of the Indo-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir. She convincingly shows how the Kargil conflict accentuated Pakistan's relations with not only India and the United States of America but also brought to the fore age-old tensions between the civil and military arms of the state, resulting in the 1999 military coup. A gripping account of the Kargil war as it unfolded surreptitiously and then flagrantly, this study puts to rest myths about the relative strengths of the military decision-making process in Pakistan compared to its civilian counterpart, underscoring the imperative need to streamline both with a view to facilitating more cooperative relations between them, especially in the realm of strategic security. Well researched and persuasively argued, the book is mandatory reading for students of international relations and South Asia. (Professor Ayesha Jalal, Historian) Nasim Zehra s book is a remarkably honest, bold, diligent and well-researched account of the Kargil episode, a doomed initiative, conceived in shadows, without a thought-through institutional evaluation and based on a misreading of the international situation. The author combines a wealth of information and a good deal of fresh detail with scholarly insights and deep analysis. She has produced a comprehensive landmark case study- a must read- of great value to policy makers and scholars in Pakistan and to the wider readership interested in the history and political affairs of the country and the region. (Riaz M Khan, Senior Diplomat, former Foreign Secretary) The Kargil episode has remained an enigma both in Pakistan as well as India. Shrouded in secrecy, the deafening silence on this conflict has given rise to many conspiracies, rumours and ill-informed opinions on both sides of the divide, in India and Pakistan. In this book, the author has collated facts painstakingly and juxtaposed them into the regional environment. She establishes the context of this conflict in the light of the US-Afghan issues at the time, the international concerns in view of the potential of a Nuclear Conflict, the contradictions of the Lahore Declaration and the history of the Line of Control. An extremely well analysed study that will remain a reference point for any further study. (Lt General (retd) Tariq Khan, Pakistan Army Armoured Corps).