The Future of Pakistan

The Future of Pakistan
Author: Stephen P. Cohen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815721811

With each passing day, Pakistan becomes an even more crucial player in world affairs. Home of the world's second-largest Muslim population, epicenter of the global jihad, location of perhaps the planet's most dangerous borderlands, and armed with nuclear weapons, this South Asian nation will go a long way toward determining what the world looks like ten years from now. The Future of Pakistan presents and evaluates several scenarios for how the country will develop, evolve, and act in the near future, as well as the geopolitical implications of each. Led by renowned South Asia expert Stephen P. Cohen, a team of authoritative contributors looks at several pieces of the Pakistan puzzle. The book begins with Cohen's broad yet detailed overview of Pakistan, placing it within the context of current-day geopolitics and international economics. Cohen's piece is then followed by a number of shorter, more tightly focused essays addressing more specific issues of concern. Cohen's fellow contributors hail from America, Europe, India, and Pakistan itself, giving the book a uniquely international and comparative perspective. They address critical factors such as the role and impact of radical groups and militants, developments in specific key regions such as Punjab and the rugged frontier with Afghanistan, and the influence of—and interactions with—India, Pakistan's archrival since birth. The book also breaks down relations with other international powers such as China and the United States. The all-important military and internal security apparatus come under scrutiny, as do rapidly morphing social and gender issues. Political and party developments are examined along with the often amorphous division of power between Islamabad and the nation's regions and local powers. Uncertainty about Pakistan's trajectory persists. The Future of Pakistan helps us understand the current circumstances, the relevant actors and their motivation, the crit

Pakistan

Pakistan
Author: K. Tausif Kamal
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2019-11-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1480884103

Pakistan is the world’s second-largest Muslim nation; it is strategically located and armed with nuclear weapons. It is also in a precarious position: its economy is collapsing to the point of bankruptcy, and many factors other threaten its stability as well: terrorism, ethnic uprisings, unsustainable population growth rate, water scarcity, illiteracy, and poverty. Even so, author Tausif Kamal points to country’s nationalism, resiliency, and survival instincts as things that could ensure Pakistan’s viability and continuity as a nation-state. In Pakistan: A Possible Future, Kamal traces the country’s constitutional history and holds its two most respected institutions responsible for the disruption of the rule of law and the instability that resulted from the disruption. For future survival and progress, Pakistan must strive to become a non-revisionist, non-violent, peaceful, tolerant, market-oriented, modern state. To accomplish that goal, Kamal proposes tough, pragmatic, and achievable measures the nation to ease its problems and begin the process of reforming itself. Focusing on the future of Pakistan, this unique, wide-ranging study offers an unflinching analysis of the nation’s predicaments, both foreign and domestic, and provides practical suggestions for overcoming them.

Pakistan on the Brink

Pakistan on the Brink
Author: Ahmed Rashid
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2013-02-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0143122835

An urgent, on-the-ground report from Pakistan—from the bestselling author of Descent Into Chaos and Taliban Ahmed Rashid, one of the world's leading experts on the social and political situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, offers a highly anticipated update on the possibilities—and hazards—facing the United States after the death of Osama bin Laden and as Operation Enduring Freedom winds down. With the characteristic professionalism that has made him the preeminent independent journalist in Pakistan for three decades, Rashid asks the important questions and delivers informed insights about the future of U.S. relations with the troubled region. His most urgent book to date, Pakistan on the Brink is the third volume in a comprehensive series that is a call to action to our nation's leaders and an exposition of this conflict's impact on the security of the world.

The Idea of Pakistan

The Idea of Pakistan
Author: Stephen P. Cohen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2004-09-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780815797616

In recent years Pakistan has emerged as a strategic player on the world stage—both as a potential rogue state armed with nuclear weapons and as an American ally in the war against terrorism. But our understanding of this country is superficial. To probe beyond the headlines, Stephen Cohen, author of the prize-winning India: Emerging Power, offers a panoramic portrait of this complex country—from its origins as a homeland for Indian Muslims to a militarydominated state that has experienced uneven economic growth, political chaos, sectarian violence, and several nuclear crises with its much larger neighbor, India. Pakistan's future is uncertain. Can it fulfill its promise of joining the community of nations as a moderate Islamic state, at peace with its neighbors, or could it dissolve completely into a failed state, spewing out terrorists and nuclear weapons in several directions? The Idea of Pakistan will be an essential tool for understanding this critically important country.

Deadly Embrace

Deadly Embrace
Author: Bruce Riedel
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2012-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0815722834

Pakistan and America have been gripped together in a deadly embrace for decades. For half a century American presidents from both parties pursued narrow short-term interests in Pakistan. This myopia actually backfired in the long term, helping to destabilize the political landscape and radicalizing the population, setting the stage for the global jihad we face today. Bruce Riedel, one of America's foremost authorities on U.S. security and South Asia, sketches the history of U.S.-Pakistani relations from partitioning of the subcontinent in 1947 up through the present day. It is muddled story, meandering through periods of friendship and enmity. Riedel deftly interprets the tortuous path of relations between two very different nations that remain, in many ways, stuck with each other. The Preface to the paperback provides an inside account of the discovery of Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad hideout that led to the al Qaeda leader's demise. Accusations of Pakistani complicity in harboring bin Laden once again dramatized the ambivalence and distrust existing between two nations that purport to be allies. Riedel discusses what it all means for the war on terror and the future of U.S.- Pakistani relations. Praise for the hardcover edition of Deadly Embrace "Mr. Riedel, who has advised no fewer than four American presidents, knows power from the inside—something he is keen to share with the reader.... His book provides a useful account of the dysfunctional relationship between Pakistan and America." — The Economist "Bruce Riedel has produced an excellent volume that is both analytically sharp and cogently written. It will engage both specialists and the interested public. Essential reading."—Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know "Riedel lucidly provides an overview of the last thirty years of Pakistan's internal politics, its relationship with the United States, as well as the various i

The Pashtun Question

The Pashtun Question
Author: Abubakar Siddique
Publisher: Hurst & Company Limited
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 1849042926

Most contemporary journalistic and scholarly accounts of the instability gripping Afghanistan and Pakistan have argued that violent Islamic extremism, including support for the Taliban and related groups, is either rooted in Pashtun history and culture, or finds willing hosts among their communities on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Abubakar Siddique sets out to demonstrate that the failure, or even unwillingness, of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to absorb the Pashtuns into their state structures and to incorporate them into the economic and political fabric is central to these dynamics, and a critical failure of nation- and state-building in both states. In his book he argues that religious extremism is the product of these critical failures and that responsibility for the situation lies to some degree with the elites of both countries. Partly an eye-witness account and partly meticulously researched scholarship, The Pashtun Question describes a people whose destiny will shape the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

No Exit from Pakistan

No Exit from Pakistan
Author: Daniel S. Markey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2013-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107045460

This book tells the story of the tragic and often tormented relationship between the United States and Pakistan. Pakistan's internal troubles have already threatened U.S. security and international peace, and Pakistan's rapidly growing population, nuclear arsenal, and relationships with China and India will continue to force it upon America's geostrategic map in new and important ways over the coming decades. This book explores the main trends in Pakistani society that will help determine its future; traces the wellsprings of Pakistani anti-American sentiment through the history of U.S.-Pakistan relations from 1947 to 2001; assesses how Washington made and implemented policies regarding Pakistan since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001; and analyzes how regional dynamics, especially the rise of China, will likely shape U.S.-Pakistan relations. It concludes with three options for future U.S. strategy, described as defensive insulation, military-first cooperation, and comprehensive cooperation. The book explains how Washington can prepare for the worst, aim for the best, and avoid past mistakes.

The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State
Author: Declan Walsh
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2020-11-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0393249921

Winner of the 2021 Overseas Press Club of America Cornelius Ryan Award The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country. Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times’s most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis—a chieftain readying for war at his desert fort, a retired spy skulking through the borderlands, and a crusading lawyer risking death for her beliefs, among others. Through these “nine lives” he describes a country on the brink—a place of creeping extremism and political chaos, but also personal bravery and dogged idealism that defy easy stereotypes. Unbeknownst to Walsh, however, an intelligence agent was tracking him. Written in the aftermath of Walsh’s abrupt deportation, The Nine Lives of Pakistan concludes with an astonishing encounter with that agent, and his revelations about Pakistan’s powerful security state. Intimate and complex, attuned to the centrifugal forces of history, identity, and faith, The Nine Lives of Pakistan offers an unflinching account of life in a precarious, vital country.

The Battle for Pakistan

The Battle for Pakistan
Author: Shuja Nawaz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2020-04-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538142058

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.

Making Sense of Pakistan

Making Sense of Pakistan
Author: Farzana Shaikh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190929111

Pakistan's transformation from supposed model of Muslim enlightenment to a state now threatened by an Islamist takeover has been remarkable. Many account for the change by pointing to Pakistan's controversial partnership with the United States since 9/11; others see it as a consequence of Pakistan's long history of authoritarian rule, which has marginalized liberal opinion and allowed the rise of a religious right. Farzana Shaikh argues the country's decline is rooted primarily in uncertainty about the meaning of Pakistan and the significance of 'being Pakistani'. This has pre-empted a consensus on the role of Islam in the public sphere and encouraged the spread of political Islam. It has also widened the gap between personal piety and public morality, corrupting the country's economic foundations and tearing apart its social fabric. More ominously still, it has given rise to a new and dangerous symbiosis between the country's powerful armed forces and Muslim extremists. Shaikh demonstrates how the ideology that constrained Indo-Muslim politics in the years leading to Partition in 1947 has left its mark, skillfully deploying insights from history to better understand Pakistan's troubled present.