The Nine Lives Of Pakistan: Dispatches From A Precarious State, by Declan Walsh

This is a book whose ominous form, namely the author seeking to untangle which of his hot-button subjects got him thrown out of Pakistan, while simultaneously reflecting on the often disastrous deaths of the people he knew as sources or as acquaintances whom he used for information while simultaneously also seeming to identify with, leaves the reader with an increasing sense of dread as the book goes on. As the author switches between one impossibly complex and flawed public figure in Pakistan to another, the reader wonders, so how is this person going to die? Are they going to perish in a hailstorm of bullets from an attack by the army? Are they going to be blown up by a terrorist, or shot on camera by someone who considers themselves a good Muslim for doing so? Are they going to be attacked in a secret mission of the Pakistani ISI? This is not, it must be admitted, a very good feeling, but it is the sort of feeling that one gains from this book. While I am by no means fond of the New York Times, nor am I familiar with the author’s dispatches from Pakistan, a nation it is easy to know as being the sort of country that is always falling apart, only kept together by the stubborn will of its military and security apparatus, I found myself seeing in the author’s naive investigative approach to looking for the truth something that closely approaches my own fatal desire for knowledge.

This book is a bit more than 300 pages and it is divided into 11 chapters. After a prologue that sets up the mystery of the author’s sudden escape from the land of mangoes, the first chapter of the book looks at Pakistan as a land of broken maps, examining the troubled beginnings of the state in a British rush to abandon the area after World War II (1). After this, the author turns his attention to Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a Muslim cleric pushed into a fatal conflict with the Pakistani army over control of a mosque in Islamabad (2). After this the author discusses the role of Jinnah, Mountbatten, and Nehru in the disaster of the partition of India, which led to massive population transfers, rapes, murders, and the setting up of decades of tragedy (3). After this the author discusses Anwar Kamal and the bloody arithmetic of the Pakistani frontier provinces with Afghanistan (4), as well as the daring life of Asma Jahangir, the liberal-minded attorney for women and other marginalized people within Pakistan (5). A chapter is devoted to discussion of Salmaan Taseer, a complicated man who served as Bhutto’s ally and the Governor of Punjab before being assassinated by a devout Muslim over his support of a jailed Christian accused of insulting Muhammed (6). Another chapter is devoted to a man called Imam who had been instrumental in setting up the Taliban under the support of the Pakistani army and ISI, only to find himself eventually killed by them in lonely Waziristan (7). Another chapter examines a colorful and violent cop in the noir atmosphere of Karachi (8) who dies in an attack on the roadway, while another gives an account of a Balochi chieftain seeking for the freedom and dignity of his people who is of course killed by the Pakistani army (9). The book then closes with a discussion of a turncoat spy from the ISI who retires, goes to Europe in exile, and lets the author know which of his many potentially fatal stories led to his exile from Pakistan–the one on Balochistan, naturally (10). The last chapter of the book then examines the rightward turn of India and the continuing struggle over Jinnah’s house in Mumbai (11). After this the book concludes with acknowledgements, notes and sources, photo credits, and an index.

Not all readers will be able to identify with the author or will find his fate to be as inevitable as I do. Some readers, especially those who come from countries like Pakistan where to seek freedom and self-expression and to long for truth are themselves sufficiently dangerous decisions to lead to the possibility of death by any number of people who are engaged in actions that they do not want to reach the light of day. In Baluchistan alone, a region that contains nearly half of Pakistan’s area but only 6% or so of its population, this could include the Taliban coming through Afghanistan’s porous borders, heroin smugglers making the dangerous journey between Iran and Afghanistan through the lonely deserts of the region, the Pakistani military, which apparently keeps a large supply of its own nukes there, the Chinese, who are engaged in building in the territory, or the Pakistani ISI, who views any Westerner in the city of Quetta, the capital of the region, as a potential spy. This does not even include the restive local population of Balochis which has been in several rebellions to gain independence over the last few decades. The odds that one will run afoul of one or more of these groups is immense, even certain. And the author’s puzzling over the fact that among his many potentially fatal investigations it appears that it was the one in Baluchistan that ended up crossing the line and leading to his being placed on a list of people never to be given a visa to enter Pakistan again somehow deeply fitting for a nation for whom the loss of Kashmir in 1947 and then Bangladesh in 1971 is a national trauma that refuses to heal, resulting in a struggle between civil and military government that makes any kind of free society in the area seemingly impossible to maintain. The rightward turn of India, moreover, does not help matters when it comes to feeling optimistic about the fate of religious and ethnic minorities in the region as a whole.