The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Divided Nation

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Journalist Hamid Mir survived a suicide attempt when he reported about the human rights violation and insurgency in the same province.

Jinnah’s dream for the “land of the pure” has been sacrificed to the two beasts of violent religious extremism and militarism. He, in some ways, feels sorry for these diplomats, and their need to constantly carry out and defend unpopular and contradictory policies. Overall, Walsh has the view that India and Pakistan have a lot of similarities but, due to their history, simply cannot be harmonious neighbours. But after a while, I started to see them through the lens of public and private spheres that allow a kind of tolerance. The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country.As a result, Pakistani elites vie with each other to rub shoulders with American Foreign Service Officers. Balochistan is the story nobody’s heard of outside Pakistan, and few inside the country are particularly aware of.

D; Elder, S; and Tyson, S (2021) ‘ A Line in the Mountains’, National Geographic, March 2021, 94-121. Few Pakistanis seem willing to accept that the plane crashed due to the failure of the Pakistani military to perform required maintenance, instead accepting stories of exploding mangos and machinations by differing intelligence agencies and shadowy insurgents.

I found Mr Walsh’s book an effortless and enthralling read which beautifully captured the idiosyncrasies, contortions and anachronisms that embody what Pakistan is today.