The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

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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. SHAPIRO: So what does her story tell you about the ability of civilians to stand up to the military in Pakistan? Manto is best known for his short story “Toba Tek Singh,” a powerful parable about the absurdities of Partition in 1947. But Manto’s other writings, and many of his real-life experiences, foreshadowed the issues that still loom large. He wrote fearlessly about the country’s troubled nationalism, the instrumentalization of blasphemy, and the schisms that cut across society, in stories and essays that, with some tweaks, could have been written today. His work is also graphic, earthy, and filled with a cheeky and subversive humor that is true to the best work on Pakistan. Manto is the ultimate antidote to the saccharine portraits of what Pakistan is, or could be, that are favored by Pakistanis ideologues.

He makes some very basic factual errors (Jinnah was born a Shia [he was born Ismail’i] the religious establishment didn’t want an independent Muslim state but a pan national caliphate [the deobandis where opposed to the creation Pakistan and there were no calls for worldwide caliphate amongst the Indian ulema], and his comments on Sufism are orientalist ['mystics', mystical, liberal and so on ]).

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By the end of Walsh’s time in Pakistan, the winner in this epic struggle is clear: the ISI and the military machine that stands behind it. “It seemed to boil down to one hard truth: the military always wins,” his realises as he prepares to leave, never to return. “When the ISI men come to the door, the illusion of a democratic state melts away.” Unlike many Western journalists who focus more on a country crippled grappled with terrorism and religious extremism, you have deconstructed Pakistan in an unprecedented way in the book while depicting ethnic and religious identities and their looming threats over the country and the powerful military playing the shots. How do you see the future of Pakistan?

Peppered throughout are reminders that this work is not easy. It is telling that among the nine profiled in the book, only one subject remains alive; more than half were killed. Walsh functions with the assumption that his lines are tapped, works to avoid intelligence tails and continues to pry into the dark corners that those in power wish he wouldn’t. A man cleans portrait of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in Karachi. Photograph: Rehan Khan/EPAIt 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. It goes without saying that this religious liberty granted by Islam has often been undermined by political and sectarian motives in Pakistan. Turbulent events The book has an immense literary touch. You’re quoting Sadat Hasan Manto, a giant of 20th century Urdu literature, with regard to Pakistani history, culture, and politics. How and why did Manto seem relevant to contemporary Pakistan?

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. SHAPIRO: Would you tell us about one of the nine lives that you describe in the book? How about - there's a chapter titled "The Fabulous Senorita: A Human Rights Heroine Versus The Generals." Tell us about her. 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. Since its inception, many volatile issues have been exacerbated by ethnic and sectarian conflict, frequently turning Pakistan into a tinderbox. While Pakistan’s image abroad is sustained by a generic hardline approach, Walsh found it hard to square it with the permissiveness he saw in other parts of society, where the rich did as they pleased and organised “lavish, boozy parties inside high walls (and, later, a lot of cocaine consumption)”. Upon close scrutiny, Walsh struggles with the jarring double standards between the rigid, de jure policies of the state and the de facto societal practices. The scale of the struggle for women’s rights is encapsulated by Asma Jahangir, a crusading lawyer whose first client – an eloping lover – is murdered in Jahangir’s office by her own mother. (In “our folklore… the man who stops two lovers from meeting is evil,” yet in real life they “may be killed”, Jahangir wonders in sorrow.) Through Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a preacher whose company Walsh “enjoyed, jihad puffery aside”, you learn of the rise of the Pakistani Taliban. In a chapter entitled “The Good Muslim”, Walsh contrasts the life of the senator Salmaan Tasser, a “hard-charging, money-grubbing sinner”, with the bodyguard who assassinated him for trying to save minorities who had been sentenced to death on dodgy blasphemy laws.I find “valiant” dispatches by foreign correspondents, who visit Pakistan while wearing bulletproof vests and staying at five-star hotels, unwittingly amusing. Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif made a pertinent point about writing on Pakistan from the standpoint of a foreigner. “If you spend enough time with Pakistan’s military and civilian elite, you catch some of their paranoia, and start seeing yourself drowning in rivers of blood.” Hence, while reading this account, I found myself surgically dissecting the text for any hint of confirmation bias or preconceived notions.