The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics

Jalal (The Oxford Companion to Pakistani History) begins her history of Pakistan with the murder of two prime ministers, and, although she suggests that matters have not gone well, she thinks the country may be doing better. The Tufts University history professor emphasizes in this scholarly political analysis that the catastrophic 1947 partition left Muslim Pakistan with no central government, “less than 10 % of the industrial base in the subcontinent,” and a crushing, expensive single-issue foreign policy: a hatred of India that began with its occupation of Muslim-majority Kashmir and continues to fester. Jalal considers Pakistan’s elite mostly corrupt, self-serving, and submissive to the military whose budget takes priority over economic development. Equally clueless, Americans fume when Pakistan spends its lavish aid arming against India instead of fighting terrorism and regret that little aid benefits Pakistan’s citizens while puzzling over their persistent anti-Americanism. Pakistan remains a muddled, America-dependent security state, but Jalal concludes with tepid approval of the relatively free 2013 election. Though insightful, this is an academic work, and lay readers may prefer Husain Haqqani’s Magnificent Delusions (2013) or Ahmed Rashid’s Pakistan on the Brink (2013), which cover identical ground in less detail but with more lively prose. Photos & maps. (Sept.)