A Nation On The Unmake

Lest this seem like familiar Indian propaganda, it is a picture that emerges from the books under review, written by individuals long familiar with Pakistan and broadly sympathetic to it, though with eyes wide open. Both are journalists who have gone uncommonly deep into their subject. In sometimes overlapping accounts, each has much to say and together they provide an arresting account of today's Pakistan.

Jones sets out to write a history, and his is a more structured effort. He looks at the sense of insecurity vis-a-vis India that affected Pakistan from the start and that leads to a constant quest for offsetting friendships. Hence its tangled tie with America. Also afflicting it from the start are the problems of governance that have repeatedly led to army intervention. Jones takes a cool look at the army, politically dominant but always unsuccessful in war, its generals unable to think through the consequences of the actions they initiate. Kargil is a case in point, where the tactics were smart but hopelessly inadequate, decision-making meant there was no exit plan from the inevitable trouble to follow. Unanswered questions like the role of Islam and Kashmir remain salient, the regions pull apart, the nation's structure is brittle. Democracy has been undermined by the agencies that should have held it together: civil service, judiciary, politicians, army, intelligence. The army rank-and-file is becoming radicalised. It is a sombre picture.

The most riveting part of the book is the minute-by-minute account of the 1999 coup that brought Musharraf to power. It was something far removed from the official version of an innocent army chief being obliged to strike in extremis against the machinations of the prime minister. In fact, Musharraf and his friends were well prepared and it did not take them long to counter Nawaz Sharif's inept moves. Nor did it take long, in Jones' telling, for Musharraf to revert to the ways of Zia, promising much but unable to deliver; and for the same reason, for he could not realise that the army was part of the problem, not a solution.

Weaver's is a different sort of book, stylistically restless, with a confusing chronology and much unnecessary detail—one loses count of the bearers with cockaded turbans who serve her cakes and tea. But Weaver is an extraordinary reporter. She penetrated into remote places to witness the delivery of cia arms to Afghan mujahideen, or the virtual invasion of Pakistan by Arab sheikhs hunting the houbara, or Baluch feudals in their hideaways, or religious leaders in their madrassas. She had frequent meetings with Benazir Bhutto, for whom alone she has a soft spot, and with virtually all prominent leaders. The anti-Soviet jehad was her initiation into Pakistan's affairs, and she keeps returning to it as the seed of much that followed. There is endless irony in that the cia, with the isi in close support, radicalised the militants; before long they came back to haunt them.

Weaver's is an authoritative account of how various Islamic movements, criss-crossing repeatedly with Osama bin Laden, were born of the Afghan war. Nationalist war was transformed into holy war, and spread outward, including to Kashmir. The Kashmiri militants are part and parcel of the armies that trained and fought with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The real battleground against Al Qaeda and its offshoots, she concludes dismally, will be Pakistan.

These two books give a sobering account of Pakistan's deeply-embedded problems. They should be read, for India needs to understand its neighbour better. It cannot be immunised against the consequences of what happens there.