Customer Reviews

Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within

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Anyone with a true desire to understand our essential, yet phlegmatic, ally in the Mideast should take the time to read and reflect on this comprehensive history of the complicated relationship between the Pakistan Army and the governments of Pakistan and the US. It is a true insiders view carefully researched and presented. It is not light reading but important in it's insights as we continue to define the US role in this area of the world. I wish it had been available to our leaders in 2002.

This book is not suitable for light reading due to the amount of detail, but it is an excellent reference. I have found that when the name of a politician or military leader appears in the papers I can look him up in this book and get a rough bio. It is a thorough Who's Who of Pakistan since its inception.

This is a great book on Pakistan and it's history. I've read several over the past few months including "Pakistan Between Mosque and Military", "Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons", "Descent into Chaos", "The Duel", "Military Inc." and "Pakistan Deep Inside the World's Most Frightening State".

This is the most comprehensive-detailed account of the history of Pakistan and fills in a lot of history that was skimmed over in some of these other works. I consider it an essential part of anyone trying to learn, in depth, about the nation.

However, all of these books share 2 common issues for Westerners though.

1. These works all sorely lack maps and graphical representation of data. This title and many like it are presenting a tremendous amount of information about a region and people that many of the readers are not in any way familiar with. I find I need to keep Google maps open and make copious notes while reading these titles just to keep track of some of the events, especially when they describe battles...

Also some charts laying out the power structure of the government and the relations between the political parties, mullahs and military would've made understanding some of the information a lot easier to comprehend.

2. More pictures of the people/places being discussed in context. I understand these are scholarly texts but modern printing technology affords these writers many bells and whistles that were not available to their predecessors. Knowledge transfer would definitely be improved by some of the above mentioned features.

Authoritative and easy to read, this book offers great insight into South Asian issues and their relations with world affairs. Compared to the book store... the price is RIGHT.

A bit dry for those of us who crave for excitement in a book, but it seems to be factually accurate and a book that is worth citing.

This book presets an excellent review of the role of the Pakistan Army in pakistani society from it's creation sixty years ago to the present.

I just heard part of an interview with the author on NPR (I think) The author did research for many years. His brother, who was in the army, and died mysteriously in January 1993 when he was army chief, encouraged him very much in this research and paid for most of the books that he read on this subject. In addition, the author also had access to archives and conducted numerous interviews.

I am not sure how well he understands the subject. Right now, he seems to want to limit the responsibility of the ISI for the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul - most likely that was merely the tip of the iceberg and it is merely the acknowledged proof that is limited.

Still anything like this should fill in a lot of the pieces of the puzzle, and the history of Pakistan since 1947 really is a riddle wrapped in amystery inside an enigma.

If the author really knew everything he would also know or strongly suspect how exactly his brother died. It probably was murder. Numerous diffeernt stories were told to his family giving all kinds of different motives..This story is recounted in detail in the book.

Still, this *must* contain lots of details even if he didn't get to the full truth. It must, of course, be read with a warning - almost anything here might turn out to be wrong because maybe it is part of some coverup of something that took place years ago, but it may be a better first read than any other thing.