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The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

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Blending journalism, history and travelogue, Walsh, who has covered Pakistan for over a decade for The Guardian and The New York Times, has penned a riveting account of the tumultuous but memorable time he spent in Pakistan, ending in his dramatic expulsion on the election day in 2013 on the basis of “undesirable activities.” Walsh is an accomplished story-teller who keeps the reader spellbound with well-crafted pen-portraits and fast-paced narrative, embellished with interesting anecdotes and pithy judgments. Although mostly anecdotal, the book offers a potted history of the country and its historical figures. He then presents his ruminations on some of the touchiest subjects in Pakistan; from the military’s involvement in politics and the intelligence agencies’ activities to the delicate religious fault lines that are ever-present yet often obscured. Among the many themes discussed, he dissects the Red Mosque seizure, gives accounts of tribal leaders and their ways of war and life, and the many unconventional stories of Pakistanis he stumbled upon during his time here. Shah Meer Baloch: How representative are these “nine lives” for a diverse and complicated country such as Pakistan?

If you live in Pakistan, the relentless onslaught of turbulent events and ensuing incessant high drama leaves one with a permanent case of deja vu 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. Declan Walsh: No group of nine, or even ninety-nine, lives could do justice to a country as diverse, tumultuous or intricately fascinating as Pakistan. And the goal is not to represent, but to understand. I chose to write about this group of people because their stories helped me to understand the country, not only through the dramatic events they became swept up in, and in many cases were consumed by — kidnappings, uprisings, assassinations — but also because their experiences were a window on the eternal themes that have dogged Pakistan since its birth in 1947: identity, faith, and a sense of unresolved history. I’m wary of writers who speak about countries in general terms — “Pakistanis think this” or “Egyptians like that” — and, in that sense, there are many potential nine lives. But these were the ones that opened a window on the country for me and, hopefully, for my readers. SHAPIRO: So what does her story tell you about the ability of civilians to stand up to the military in Pakistan?There was nothing inevitable about Pakistan’s association with extremism. After wrestling with the issue, Jinnah recommended a secular republic from his deathbed. After Partition in 1947, Walsh explains, imams lost their sway in society, sinking to a status somewhere between a teacher and a tailor in the villages. Walsh is a wonderful writer, with a gift for sketching an impression of a place, time and ambience with a few brief lines. He knows how to interweave travelogue with an account of the relentless tensions that always threaten to burst through each vignette in the book. What also shines through is the relish with which Walsh throws himself into the far corners of Pakistan, into crowds, celebrations and rites, with a drive born of fascination with the land and its people. Declan Walsh begins his captivating new book on Pakistan with an account of how he came to leave the country for the first time, abruptly and involuntarily in May 2013. “The angels came to spirit me away,” is the way he puts it, using the Urdu slang for the all-powerful men of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), whose presence is felt, even when not seen, throughout The Nine Lives of Pakistan.

SHAPIRO: I'm just thinking - it takes so little to make a journalist happy. Just return our phone calls. Talk to us. That's all we ask. Walsh’s book suffers from minor factual mistakes: Zia had passed away nearly a year before the Tiananmen Square killings in China, so he could not have sent Beijing a message of support in 1989. Intelligence Bureau reports directly to the Prime Minister and not to the interior ministry; former foreign secretary Shaharyar M. Khan never served as Ambassador to India; although the author cites Dilip Hiro’s book on Partition as a source about the meeting between Jinnah and Chaudhry Rahmat Ali in New York’s swanky hotel, it probably happened in London instead of New York as there is no record of Jinnah visiting the United States in 1933. One of the most problematic chapters for me was the portrayal of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. A stoic, enigmatic figure compared to his flashy contemporaries Nehru and Gandhi, Jinnah’s legacy had suffered the repercussions of his reticence, leading his countrymen to recast everything from his attire to his speeches for self-serving motives.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. Walsh found Pakistan perplexing and fascinating: crowded with places of unmatched natural beauty, inhabited by people with whom he formed deep friendships and yet pierced with danger. Navigating through the labyrinth, he came across various faultiness in Pakistan’s body politic: faith and identity, praetorianism and the oversized role of intelligence agencies, underdevelopment and ethnic nationalism, corruption and tax evasion culture, a self-serving and hypocritical elite which flouts law, violence fueled by religious extremism, and unscrupulous and compromised political parties, mostly dynastic and dependent upon state patronage. SHAPIRO: You know, beyond the violence and struggle that you chronicle in the book, what made you love Pakistan enough to devote a decade of your life to telling its story?

On the eve of the 2013 national election, Irish journalist Declan Walsh was unceremoniously expelled from Pakistan, after spending a decade there, on suspicion of “undesirable activities”. The New York Times’s Pakistan bureau chief logs his intimate account of that tumultuous period in this book. Apart from his silky prose, Walsh’s accurate portrayal of events and objective evaluation of his characters forces the reader to proceed with breathless attention. His characterizations are spot-on: the Bhutto family saga is described as “part Greek tragedy and part The Godfather”; police officer and encounter specialist Chaudhry Aslam is termed as Karachi’s Dirty Harry; his chapter on Asma Jahangir is titled-the wonderful Senorita; ex-spy “Colonel Imam” saw himself as a “kind of Pakistani TE Lawrence”; Pakistan’s roller-coaster relationship with United States is referred to as a forced marriage based on shared interests rather than values and devoid of any affection- rather punctuated with dispute and betrayal. The Munir Commission report, authored in the aftermath of anti-Ahmedi riots in 1953, could not have been written in today’s Pakistan due to the prevailing religious bigotry. Do you think new geopolitical alignments and Pakistan’s inclination toward China and the enmity for India will bring more oppression for ethnic minorities in Pakistan amid the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)? 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.In 2013, Pakistan was gearing up to witness its first civilian transfer of power, having been ruled over for more than half the years since independence by the military. Over seven years later, Walsh’s second book “ The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Divided Nation,” was published by Bloomsbury UK on September 3. The book is based on Walsh’s time working in Pakistan – more than a decade in total. Walsh uses nine lives from Pakistan to tell the story of one of the world’s most perplexing (and misunderstood) countries. Along the way, he deconstructs the country’s power dynamics, ethnic and religious conflicts, and identity crisis – all of which he argues pose a bigger threat for Pakistan than the much touted dangers from the Taliban. Walsh also talks about his expulsion and experiences reporting out of Pakistan in the book. 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? This book came well recommended by several colleagues and so I was eager to read it when I had an opportunity They provide readers with the chance, if they are willing to read with an open mind, to deeply introspect on their individual and national lives and reflect upon where and how they need to make amends to progress collectively. The Nine Lives of Pakistan is worthwhile reading for those looking to understand an alternate viewpoint and gain an outsider reporter’s perspective on the multiple complexities that make Pakistan, Pakistan.

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