This is an interesting exploration of Pakistan's history and current problems. Tariq Ali, who first gained fame as a leftist student activist in Great Britain in the 1960's, grew up in Pakistan, the son of a leftist editor of one of Pakistan's major newspapers. With his strong connections to the elite in Pakistan he has been able to personally know some of the big shots of the country's oligarchy. He makes use of the insight such connections have given him into the dismal inner workings of Pakistani politics in this book.
He portrays Pakistan as a government controlled by a corrupt bureaucratic-military oligarchy in alliance with feudal landowners and heavily dependent on American backing. The majority of the population lives in horrendous poverty. Communicable diseases and malnutrition are rampant. The Pakistani military and intelligence services greatly assisted the Afghan mujahedeen drug running business in the 1980's. The effects on Pakistan were disastrous. According to Ali, Pakistan had only a few hundred heroin addicts in 1977 but had two million ten years later. But to adopt the view of the Western imperialists--that Pakistan is a cauldron of serious poverty, nuclear weapons and jihadists chomping at the bit--is quite wrong, Ali cautions. Islamic fanatics have terrorized Pakistan since the late 70's when General Zia, with Saudi support, began to provide them with state backing, but they represent a very small segment of Pakistani society. Pakistan has a strong secular tradition and Islamic fundamentalist parties have been never achieved much at the ballot box. Secular parties are even strong in Waziristan, supposedly the main center of jihadist agitation in Pakistan. However what could throw more Pakistanis into alliance with the jihadists, Ali warns, is substantial U.S military operations in Pakistan. US air attacks in Pakistan's western frontier have killed many civilians. If the U.S decides to engage in more substantial military action on Pakistani territory, Ali warns that this might very well throw many Pakistanis into alliance with the jihadists and split the Pakistani army. Segments of the Pakistani army might very well violently resist such aggression by a foreign power, ally with the jihadists and then Pakistan's nukes might find their way into the hands of terrorists.
A large part of the book, and maybe the most interesting part of it deals with the saga of the Bhutto family. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto created the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) as his personal political vehicle to ride the wave of the popular uprising against the dictatorship of General Ayub Khan in 1968-69. Bhutto had been a minister under Ayub and violently urged on the Pakistani military in its genocidal butcheries in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1971. (The factors leading to Pakistan's mass slaughter and the internal workings and flaws of the Bangladesh independence movement are discussed extensively in this book). Bhutto rode to power promising free health care, free housing, guaranteed food and other socialist rhetoric but he almost completely avoided implementing his promises while in power. He was executed by General Zia on trumped up charges in 1979, after a kangaroo court trial. Ali describes how he got to personally know Bhutto's daughter Benazir in the 1970's and 80's. He expresses some admiration for Benazir's courage in leading resistance against General Zia. But he is unsparing in his account of the gangster character of Benazir's second government (1993-1996). Benazir and her husband Asif Zardari accumulated at least 1.5 billion while she was prime minister and he minister for investment. Courts in England, Spain and Switzerland launched charges against the Bhuttos for receiving tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks from western corporations. Most of the corruption charges against the Bhutto's were dropped as a result of an amnesty for corrupt politicians declared by General Musharraf. Zardari, of course, is now president of Pakistan. Ali also implicates Bhutto and Zardari in the murder of Bhutto's brother. Murtaz Bhutto had been highly critical of the corruption and hollow politics of his sister's regime. In September 1996 the street to Murtaz's house was closed down and dozens of police officers descended upon him and machined gunned him and his bodyguards to death. Meanwhile, Benazir decided to put herself at the disposal of the Bush administration during the crises in Pakistan last year. This fidelity to American imperialism made her a sterling figure in the eyes of the American media and her assassination was mourned as the loss of a great secular democrat and stateswoman, etc. Her stratospheric corruption was forgotten as was her sponsorship of the Taliban in the mid-90's.
Ali also discusses the murder of Daniel Pearl. He argues that several pieces of circumstantial evidence suggest that the Pakistani government may have had some involvement in it. One such piece of evidence is the fact that many Salafi terror groups of the type that claimed credit for Pearl's murder have been the creation and tools of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)..........
Ali also discusses the most recent crises in Pakistan, touched off by the firing of Pakistan's chief justice after the latter's investigation of corruption in Musharraf's economic privatization and the "disappearance" of hundreds of dissidents.
