Blending journalism, history and travelogue, Walsh, who has covered Pakistan for over a decade for The Guardian and The New York Times, has penned a riveting account of the tumultuous but memorable time he spent in Pakistan, ending in his dramatic expulsion on the election day in 2013 on the basis of “undesirable activities.” Walsh is an accomplished story-teller who keeps the reader spellbound with well-crafted pen-portraits and fast-paced narrative, embellished with interesting anecdotes and pithy judgments. Although mostly anecdotal, the book offers a potted history of the country and its historical figures.
Walsh found Pakistan perplexing and fascinating: crowded with places of unmatched natural beauty, inhabited by people with whom he formed deep friendships and yet pierced with danger. Navigating through the labyrinth, he came across various faultiness in Pakistan’s body politic: faith and identity, praetorianism and the oversized role of intelligence agencies, underdevelopment and ethnic nationalism, corruption and tax evasion culture, a self-serving and hypocritical elite which flouts law, violence fueled by religious extremism, and unscrupulous and compromised political parties, mostly dynastic and dependent upon state patronage.
The author has unrolled quite the panorama by portraying all these complexities and contradictions through the diverse and layered lives of nine Pakistanis: the country’s founding father and his spectral presence; a poetry-quoting tribal chief and senior politician from Baluchistan who was targeted in a military operation; a celebrated and crusading human rights lawyer who challenged the military establishment and defended the marginalized; a business-tycoon turned flamboyant politician who as Governor Punjab lost his life for standing up for a voiceless and persecuted Christian lady languishing in a prison on blasphemy charges; an intrepid Pashtun politician from Bannu who took on the Taliban; a fearless but controversial policeman in Karachi who was killed by militants; a defiant religious cleric who along with fellow jihadis is eliminated by law enforcement agencies in a major operation on a centrally located mosque in Islamabad- a watershed event which triggered a backlash and unleashed terrorism by religious extremists across the country; and a former spy who becomes a victim of Taliban due to his own miscalculation although he had previously been their handler/facilitator in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
His most eventful encounter, however, is with an ex-agent of an intelligence agency who had tailed him during his stay in Pakistan but later left the service and settled in exile in an European capital; he meets Walsh, recalls events which convinced him that he had been tailing him but- most importantly- drops hints which provide clues to the author about the ‘undesirable activities’ due to which he was expelled. Actually, this character, in a way, confirmed what the author already suspected: it had to do with his visits to and reports about Balochistan which possibly led to his abrupt expulsion.
Title: The Nine Lives of Pakistan
Author: Declan Walsh
Publishers: Bloomsbury
Year: 2020
Format: Paperback (332 pages)
As terrorism peaked during the period (2004-13), when Walsh was based here, and has subsequently ebbed substantially due to successful military operations against militants after 2014, it does form the background to many of the heroic stories (police officer Chaudhry Aslam, former Governor Punjab Salman Taseer, Pashtun politician Kamal Khan Marwat) as well as the chapters on Abdul Rashid Ghazi of Lal Masjid and ex-ISI spy known as “Colonel Imam,” who lost his life in Waziristan in 2010 due to his overconfidence about his previous relationship with Taliban.
The most enlightening and engrossing chapter in the book is about Nawab Akbar Bugti, shedding insightful light on his complex personality, his tragic death and the situation in Balochistan. The write-up on Asma Jahangir brings out her inspirational and irrepressible personality in a very candid and convincing manner. Despite difficult relationships of their fathers in the past, there was a deep bond between Benazir Bhutto and Asma Jahangir - two female icons of Pakistan - which has been explained in detail. Jinnah’s profile exposes many myths peddled through official narrative about him and deserves to be read widely.
It is quite common for statesmen to display three qualities: mixed motives, ambiguous character and abnormal drive. Cold and impenetrable, Jinnah, as Walsh shows, was no exception. He was however, committed to the idea of a secular and democratic Pakistan which is at peace with its neighbours. The ideal soon wilted as Pakistan was beset- right from the start- by issues of faith and identity, which were later exploited by military dictators to prolong their stay in power although the price which the country has paid is heavy.
Till the mid-1960s, Pakistan was touted by western capitals as an economic model to be followed by other developing countries. However, after an ill-conceived war with India in 1965, the hope quickly unraveled: first in the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 and later due to mostly average economic growth except for some years during military dictatorships when Islamabad closely allied with Washington and economically benefited from adventitious factors: war in Afghanistan, generous US aid and assistance, and high remittances.
Poverty levels have spiked up as current account deficits over the decades have repeatedly ballooned while exports have stagnated. Pakistan has slipped down in economic and human development indicators indices despite brief spurts of economic growth. Military has either ruled directly or behind the scenes since Bhutto’s ouster in a military coup in 1977. Democratically elected cabinets have governed for short spells but even during those periods it is the General Headquarters which has ruled. A misguided policy which relied on the use of non-state actors has led to a menacing blow-back in the country in the form of sectarian violence and terrorism.
Walsh’s book suffers from minor factual mistakes: Zia had passed away nearly a year before the Tiananmen Square killings in China, so he could not have sent Beijing a message of support in 1989. Intelligence Bureau reports directly to the Prime Minister and not to the interior ministry; former foreign secretary Shaharyar M. Khan never served as Ambassador to India; although the author cites Dilip Hiro’s book on Partition as a source about the meeting between Jinnah and Chaudhry Rahmat Ali in New York’s swanky hotel, it probably happened in London instead of New York as there is no record of Jinnah visiting the United States in 1933.
Apart from his silky prose, Walsh’s accurate portrayal of events and objective evaluation of his characters forces the reader to proceed with breathless attention. His characterizations are spot-on: the Bhutto family saga is described as “part Greek tragedy and part The Godfather”; police officer and encounter specialist Chaudhry Aslam is termed as Karachi’s Dirty Harry; his chapter on Asma Jahangir is titled-the wonderful Senorita; ex-spy “Colonel Imam” saw himself as a “kind of Pakistani TE Lawrence”; Pakistan’s roller-coaster relationship with United States is referred to as a forced marriage based on shared interests rather than values and devoid of any affection- rather punctuated with dispute and betrayal. The Munir Commission report, authored in the aftermath of anti-Ahmedi riots in 1953, could not have been written in today’s Pakistan due to the prevailing religious bigotry.
Walsh is a gifted writer with the talent of a smart-bomb. His timely and trenchant book has significantly set the bar higher for future foreign correspondents interested in writing about Pakistan.
The reviewer is an independent researcher and consultant based in Islamabad. He tweets @AmmarAliQureshi and can be reached at ammar_ali@yahoo.com