The Pakistan Paradox

The Pakistan Paradox PDF

Author: Christophe Jaffrelot

Publisher: Random House India

Published: 2016-06-16

Total Pages: 688

ISBN-13: 8184007078

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The idea of Pakistan stands riddled with tensions. Initiated by a small group of select Urdu-speaking Muslims who envisioned a unified Islamic state, today Pakistan suffers the divisive forces of various separatist movements and religious fundamentalism. A small entrenched elite continue to dominate the country’s corridors of power, and democratic forces and legal institutions remain weak. But despite these seemingly insurmountable problems, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan continues to endure. The Pakistan Paradox is the definitive history of democracy in Pakistan, and its survival despite ethnic strife, Islamism and deepseated elitism. This edition focuses on three kinds of tensions that are as old as Pakistan itself. The tension between the unitary definition of the nation inherited from Jinnah and centrifugal ethnic forces; between civilians and army officers who are not always in favour of or against democracy; and between the Islamists and those who define Islam only as a cultural identity marker.

No-Win War

No-Win War PDF

Author: Zahid Hussain

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780190704193

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This book explores the post-9/11 relations between the US and Pakistan. The growing divergence between Washington and Islamabad has taken an already uneasy alliance to a point of estrangement. Yet, a complete breakup is not an option. The underlying cause of the tension, within the partnership the two had entered on 13 September 2001, has never been fully understood. What is rarely discussed is how Pakistan's decision to ally itself with the US pushed the country into a war with itself; the cost of Pakistan's tight roping between alignment with the US and old links with the Afghan Taliban; and its long-term implications for the region and global security. This book elucidates implications for Afghanistan in the so-called war on terror while revealing US and Pakistan's foreign policy initiatives. The author explores all this through little known facts and through the players involved in this cloak and dagger game. The book tells the story behind the headlines: how equivocal is ISI's break with the Afghan Taliban fighting the coalition forces in Afghanistan; the shootout in Lahore involving a CIA agent; and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan at the Crossroads

Pakistan at the Crossroads PDF

Author: Christophe Jaffrelot

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2016-04-12

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0231540256

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In Pakistan at the Crossroads, top international scholars assess Pakistan's politics and economics and the challenges faced by its civil and military leaders domestically and diplomatically. Contributors examine the state's handling of internal threats, tensions between civilians and the military, strategies of political parties, police and law enforcement reform, trends in judicial activism, the rise of border conflicts, economic challenges, financial entanglements with foreign powers, and diplomatic relations with India, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the United States. In addition to ethnic strife in Baluchistan and Karachi, terrorist violence in Pakistan in response to the American-led military intervention in Afghanistan and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by means of drones, as well as to Pakistani army operations in the Pashtun area, has reached an unprecedented level. There is a growing consensus among state leaders that the nation's main security threats may come not from India but from its spiraling internal conflicts, though this realization may not sufficiently dissuade the Pakistani army from targeting the country's largest neighbor. This volume is therefore critical to grasping the sophisticated interplay of internal and external forces complicating the country's recent trajectory.

Muslim Zion

Muslim Zion PDF

Author: Faisal Devji

Publisher: Hurst Publishers

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1849042764

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Originally published: London: C.Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 2013.

Condemned to Repeat?

Condemned to Repeat? PDF

Author: Fiona Terry

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-04-12

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0801468647

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Humanitarian groups have failed, Fiona Terry believes, to face up to the core paradox of their activity: humanitarian action aims to alleviate suffering, but by inadvertently sustaining conflict it potentially prolongs suffering. In Condemned to Repeat?, Terry examines the side-effects of intervention by aid organizations and points out the need to acknowledge the political consequences of the choice to give aid. The author makes the controversial claim that aid agencies act as though the initial decision to supply aid satisfies any need for ethical discussion and are often blind to the moral quandaries of aid. Terry focuses on four historically relevant cases: Rwandan camps in Zaire, Afghan camps in Pakistan, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan camps in Honduras, and Cambodian camps in Thailand. Terry was the head of the French section of Medecins sans frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) when it withdrew from the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire because aid intended for refugees actually strengthened those responsible for perpetrating genocide. This book contains documents from the former Rwandan army and government that were found in the refugee camps after they were attacked in late 1996. This material illustrates how combatants manipulate humanitarian action to their benefit. Condemned to Repeat? makes clear that the paradox of aid demands immediate attention by organizations and governments around the world. The author stresses that, if international agencies are to meet the needs of populations in crisis, their organizational behavior must adjust to the wider political and socioeconomic contexts in which aid occurs.

Literature, Gender, and the Trauma of Partition

Literature, Gender, and the Trauma of Partition PDF

Author: Debali Mookerjea-Leonard

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-04-07

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1317293886

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Partition occurring simultaneously with British decolonization of the Indian subcontinent led to the formation of independent India and Pakistan. While the political and communal aspects of the Partition have received some attention, its enormous personal and psychological costs have been mostly glossed over, particularly when it comes to the splitting of Bengal. The memory of this historical ordeal has been preserved in literary archives, and these archives are still being excavated. This book examines neglected narratives of the Partition of India in 1947 to study the traces left by this foundational trauma on the national- and regional-cultural imaginaries in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. To arrive at a more complex understanding of how Partition experiences of violence, migration, and displacement shaped postcolonial societies and subjectivities in South Asia, the author analyses, through novels and short stories, multiple cartographies of disorientation and anxiety in the post-Partition period. The book illuminates how contingencies of political geography cut across personal and collective histories, and how these intersections are variously marked and mediated by literature. Examining works composed in Bengali and other South Asian languages, this book seeks to broaden and complicate existing conceptions of what constitutes the Partition literary archive. A valuable addition to the growing field of Partition studies, this book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian history, gender studies, and literature.

Pakistan Beyond the Crisis State

Pakistan Beyond the Crisis State PDF

Author: Maleeha Lodhi

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2012-10-03

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780199327430

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Seen through the lens of the outsider, Pakistan has often been reduced to a caricature. Its diversity and resilience have rarely figured in the single-issue focus of recent literature on the country, be it journalistic or scholarly. This book seeks to present an alternate paradigm and to contribute a deeper understanding of the country's dynamics that may help explain why Pakistan has confounded all the doomsday scenarios. It brings together an extra-ordinary array of leading experts, including Ahmed Rashid, Ayesha Jalal and Zahid Hussain, and practitioners, such as the book's editor, Maleeha Lodhi, Akbar Ahmed and Munir Akram. Together they debate their country's strengths and weaknesses and offer ways out of its current predicament. This book provides a picture of how Pakistanis see themselves and their country's faultlines and spells out ways to overcome these. Pakistan's political, economic, social, foreign policy and governance challenges are assessed in detail. So too is the complex interplay between domestic developments and external factors including great power interests that are so central to the Pakistan story and explain the vicissitudes in its fortunes. Lodhi and her contributors contend that Pakistan and its people have the capacity to transform their country into a stable, modern Muslim state, but bold reforms will be needed to bring about this outcome.

The China-Pakistan Axis

The China-Pakistan Axis PDF

Author: Andrew Small

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 019007681X

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"The Beijing-Islamabad axis plays a central role in Asia's geopolitics, from India's rise to the prospects for a post-American Afghanistan, from the threat of nuclear terrorism to the continent's new map of mines, ports and pipelines. China is Pakistan's great economic hope and its most trusted military partner; Pakistan is the battleground for China's encounters with Islamic militancy and the heart of its efforts to counter-balance the emerging US-India partnership. For decades, each country has been the other's only 'all-weather' friend. Yet the relationship is still little understood. The wildest claims about it are widely believed, while many of its most dramatic developments are hidden from the public eye. This book sets out the recent history of Sino-Pakistani ties and their ramifications for the West, for India, for Afghanistan, and for Asia as a whole. It tells the stories behind some of its most sensitive aspects, including Beijing's support for Pakistan's nuclear program, China's dealings with the Taliban, and the Chinese military's planning for crises in Pakistan. It describes a relationship increasingly shaped by Pakistan's internal strife, and the dilemmas China faces between the need for regional stability and the imperative for strategic competition with India and the USA."--Amazon.com.

Pakistan's Stability Paradox

Pakistan's Stability Paradox PDF

Author: Ashutosh Misra

Publisher:

Published: 2013-10-25

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780415728256

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Pakistan, with the second largest Muslim population in the world, is a crucial country in the international system. This book identifies the factors that contribute both to Pakistan's perceived instability and its resilience. It examines the drivers of Pakistan chronic instability and addresses the implications of its current political and security predicaments for regional, international and its own security.

The Battle for Pakistan

The Battle for Pakistan PDF

Author: Shuja Nawaz

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-04-10

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1538142058

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The Battle for Pakistan showcases a marriage of convenience between unequal partners. The relationship between Pakistan and the United States since the early 1950s has been nothing less than a whiplash-inducing rollercoaster ride. Today, surrounded by hostile neighbors, with Afghanistan increasingly under Indian influence, Pakistan does not wish to break ties with the United States. Nor does it want to become a vassal of China and get caught in the vice of a US-China rivalry, or in the Arab-Iran conflict. Internally, massive economic and demographic challenges as well as the existential threat of armed militancy pose huge obstacles to Pakistan's development and growth. Could its short-run political miscalculations in the Obama years prove too costly? Can the erratic Trump administration help salvage this relationship? Based on detailed interviews with key US and South Asian leaders, access to secret documents and operations, and the author’s personal relationships and deep knowledge of the region, this book untangles the complex web of the US-Pakistani relationship and identifies a clear path forward, showing how the United States can build better partnerships in troubled corners of the world.