PAKISTAN: I arrived in Pakistan four days after the September 11th attacks in the US and found a country in jitters. Miriam Donohoe reviews Pakistan: Eye of the Storm
Its military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, was under huge pressure, torn between keeping the US happy on the one hand, and containing the country's Islamic extremists on the other.
Musharraf had a delicate balancing act to do in the early weeks following the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Before September 11th he had consistently supported the regime of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. But he realised that once the US had made up its mind to topple the Taliban, there was no point in continuing to support them.
However, he managed to row in 100 per cent behind the US war against terrorism, and to keep control of the forces that helped create the Taliban and fuelled the bitter conflict in Kashmir at the same time.
It was not a safe time for any Westerner to be in this strictly Muslim country, with its turbulent 55-year history. Walking the streets of the capital, Islamabad, Peshawar on the northern frontier and Quetta in the south was unpleasant. Journalists were warned to be careful, and sadly not all survived. The Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Karachi last January when researching an article on al-Qaeda links.
Pakistan is a deeply complex country. A combination of economic and social problems, political instability, and the fact that it has access to nuclear weapons has made it one of the most strategically sensitive nations in the world.
Ruled by the military for half its existence, it has seen three wars with India and the loss of much of its territory. The war in neighbouring Afghanistan last year placed it at the centre of global attention and catapulted Musharraf onto the world political stage.
Ever since its creation, Pakistan's political development has been chaotic. No elected government has ever completed its term in office. Nearly half of its population is illiterate and 20 per cent is undernourished. Religious extremists have been given free reign.
Owen Bennett Jones is well placed to tell the Pakistan story. He travelled the country for three years as the BBC correspondent in Pakistan between 1998 and 2001 and he witnessed at first hand many of the events that brought Musharraf to power.
Many Pakistanis resent the way in which they have been portrayed by outsiders, and in Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, Bennett Jones strives to chart the history of Pakistan from its independence in 1947 in an unbiased way. He outlines in great detail how Musharraf has become the first Pakistani leader in 30 years to dare to confront the country's Islamic extremists.
The Kashmir issue is one of the most serious facing Pakistan, and indeed the world, today given the fact that both Pakistan and India have nuclear capabilities. Bennett Jones charts the history of Kashmir back to when the last viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, approved its incorporation into India when he was organising that country's partition.
Pakistan insisted that it should have been given control of this Muslim-majority state, and the fall-out of Mountbatten's decision is the bloody dispute between India and Kashmir, which is still unresolved today and seriously threatens stability in the region.
Bennett Jones says that to portray Pakistan simply as a rogue state filled with Islamic extremists hell-bent on exporting terrorism is unfair. Ever since its creation, Pakistan has grappled with the issue of what role Islam should play in the State. The question now for Musharraf, as he faces elections, is whether he can continue to succeed in controlling the potentially explosive extremist Islamic forces.
While most Pakistanis have a moderate, tolerant vision of Islam, the author argues that the country's central institutions are too weak and that the military regime may prove incapable of rescuing the "failed state" of Pakistan.
For anyone interested in the history of Pakistan and in putting into context events in the region today, this book is very helpful. The author assesses the role of the nationalists in the provinces, the feudal landlords in the countryside, and the bureaucratic elite in Islamabad. He also analyses the complex relationships between religion, regional politics, and the armed forces in the country.
Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. By Owen Bennett Jones. Yale University Press, 352pp. £18.95
Miriam Donohoe is an Irish Times journalist and the newspaper's former Asia Correspondent, during which time she was based in Beijing