In one of my conversations with General Musharraf, I had asked him what he expected from the United States. He didn't answer immediately, and then he said, bitterness edging his voice, "The United States must help clean up the mess that you created during the days
of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Pakistan served your interests very prominently as a frontline state. But when the Soviets withdrew, the U.S. government also pulled out, leaving us high and dry."
-Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan
Through no fault of the author's, this is a terribly depressing book.
It's damned hard upon finishing it to harbor much hope for Pakistan's future,
certainly none that it will develop into a stable capitalist democracy
anytime soon. As General Musharraf's comments above indicate, the
U.S. does share some of the blame, but as Ms Weaver makes clear, Pakistan
has many, many more problems that are of its own making.
The book is for the most part a collection of essays that Ms Weaver
wrote for The New Yorker, here knitted together, somewhat loosely,
to form a first hand account of the past decade or so in Pakistan.
The result is a less systematic survey of the country than one might like,
but she does combine a series of fascinating profiles--of main players
like Zia ul-Haq, Benazir Bhutto, Osama
bin Laden, and Mr.
Musharraf--with almost a travelogue, describing her own adventures
in country. Along the way she reports on such disturbing facets of
modern Pakistan as the "blowback"
from the Afghan jihad, the continuing tension with India over Kashmir,
the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the rivalries among the various ethnic
groups that comprise the nation, and the seemingly omnipresent poverty,
corruption, and hopelessness. Add nuclear weapons to this mix and
the presence of al Qaeda remnants all over the country and you've got a
recipe for continuing decline, disintegration, war, and eventually maybe
even deadly apocalypse at the hands of their Hindu neighbors.
The book is very readable and each chapter, or nearly every chapter,
can stand on its own. The one quarrel I have with Ms Weaver is that
she interjects herself into the narrative quite often and frequently criticizes
U.S. policy towards Pakistan, but then doesn't really put forth any suggestions
for what needs to be done differently. That may simply be because
there's no way to save Pakistan from a bloody collapse, but, if so, then
one wonders if American policymakers had any better choices than those
they made. And if Ms Weaver, who obviously has great familiarity
with the country, has no idea how to improve its situation, then one would
wish she'd have come out and said so. If the future of Pakistan is
as desperate as she makes it sound, then perhaps we should treat it with
even greater brutality and disregard for its doomed people, in order to
protect ourselves to the greatest degree possible. Foremost among
the options we might want to explore is a more blatant tilt towards our
fellow democratic capitalists in India and a lessening of our pressure
on General Musharraf and the Pakistani military to surrender power in Pakistan.
In the end, it may be that the Pakistani military is our first line of
defense and the Indian military our last line against a nation that is
no longer viable, if it ever was.
(Reviewed:03-Dec-02)
Grade: (B-)
Websites:
Book-related and General Links:
-BOOK
SITE: Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan By Mary Anne Weaver
(Written Voices)
-EXCERPT:
from Pakistan: in The Shadow of Afghanistan (Written Voices)
-ESSAY:
General on a Tightrope (Mary Anne Weaver, APF Reporter)
-ESSAY:
The Real bin Laden (Mary Anne Weaver, 2000-01-24, The New Yorker)
-ESSAY:
Letter from Qatar: Democracy by Decree (Mary Anne Weaver, 2000-11-20,
The New Yorker)
-ESSAY:
Blowback: The CIA poured billions into a jihad against Soviet-occupied
Afghanistan, creating a militant Islamist Abraham Lincoln Brigade believed
to have been involved in bombings from Islamabad to New York. Is Bosnia
next? (Mary Anne Weaver, May 1996, The Atlantic Monthly)
-INTERVIEW:
Islam Rising: A conversation with Mary Anne Weaver, whose new book
shows that there is much more to Islamic activism than guns and bombs (Atlantic
Monthly, February 17, 1999)
-ESSAY:
India's Bandit Queen: A saga of revenge -- and the making of a legend
of "the real India" (Mary Anne Weaver, November 1996, Atlantic Monthly)
-INTERVIEW:
Tracking India's Bandit Queen A Conversation With Mary Anne Weaver
(The Atlantic's Toby Lester, November 1996)
-REVIEW
ESSAY: 'Pakistan': A Nuclear Yugoslavia (ROBERT D. KAPLAN, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan by Mary Anne Weaver
(Nayan Chanda, Washington Post)
-REVIEW:
of Pakistan: In the Shadow (Steven Martinovich, Enter Stage Right)
-REVIEW
ESSAY: Pakistan's Slide Into Misery (Sumit Ganguly, November/December
2002, Foreign Affairs)
-REVIEW:
of Pakistan: In the Shadow (Michelle Goldberg, Salon)
-REVIEW:
of Pakistan: In the Shadow (RICHARD LACAYO, TIME)
-REVIEW:
of Pakistan: In the Shadow (Michael Hsu, Asian Review of Books)
-REVIEW:
of Pakistan: In the Shadow (Ahmed Rashid, NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW:
of Pakistan: In the Shadow (Laurie Edwards, Culture Dose)
-REVIEW:
of A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam
By Mary Anne Weaver (Steven Martinovich, Enter Stage Right)
-REVIEW:
of A Portrait of Egypt ( L. Carl Brown, Foreign Affairs)
-REVIEW:
of A Portrait of Egypt (THEODORE SPENCER, Salon)
-REVIEW:
of A Portrait of Egypt (Amir Asmar, MIT)
-REVIEW:
of A Portrait of Egypt (Lt Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, USN, Air & Space
Power Chronicles)
PAKISTAN:
-Country
profile: Pakistan (BBC)
-ARTICLE:
Pakistan's civilian PM sworn in (BBC, 23 November, 2002)
-ARCHIVES:
SAJA Briefing on Pakistan
-ARCHIVES:
Pakistan (Salon)
-ARCHIVES:
U.S. Foreign Policy in the Mid East & Central Asia (Alter Net)
-ESSAY:
Collateral Victory: America's new imperial presence in Central Asia
may be a preview of what's to come in Iraq. The picture is not wholly encouraging.
(Christian Caryl, November 2002, Washington Monthly)
-ESSAY:
Back to Brinksmanship: How India and Pakistan arrived at a nuclear
standoff. (Sumit Ganguly, July 1, 2002, American Prospect)
-ESSAY:
Controlling Pakistan's Nukes: Has the U.S. taken over the stockpile?
(Ramindar Singh, January 14, 2002, American Prospect)
-ESSAY:
Emroz Khan Is Having a Bad Day: Which is not unusual, and helps explain
why Peshawar's youth are tinder for Islamic extremism. (Peter Maass, October
21, 2001, The New York Times Magazine)
-ESSAY:
Return to Pakistan: On Sept. 11, the region where I was born
suddenly became the center of the world -- and I knew I had to go back.
(Asra Q. Nomani, Sept. 28, 2001, Salon)
-ESSAY:
Coup d'état: Pakistan gets a new sheriff (Alicia Montgomery
and Daryl Lindsey, Oct. 13, 1999, Salon)
-ESSAY:
Pakistani purge: The coup in Pakistan seems to have wide popular support
-- with the proviso that military rule should be temporary. (Muddasir Rizvi,
Oct. 13, 1999, Salon)
Comments:
Orrin welcomes reader comments on his reviews.
Add yours here.
