Review: Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military

Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military by Husain Haqqani
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: A detailed Op-Ed by a former Pakistani ambassador on the history of Pakistan through the lens of military and religion.

Whether you call it confirmational bias or not, Husain Haqqani does provide an interesting insight that resonates with the direction Pakistani leadership has taken since 1947 and as he goes through the political history in the swings between military and civil power centres - the focus on the Pakistani ideology based on the tripod of a common external enemy being India, the one single thread of religion that binds the diverse country and removes the emphasis on regional ethnicities and the ability to leverage foreign funding adds color to the decisions primarily military leadership have undertaken over decades to keep them as kingmakers and power centres internally and in the region. Whilst contrasting personalities have donned the mantle, the way they fall back to this one central theme in changing geo-political scenarios start making sense to some of the current decisions that one also sees.

Husain does a good job of introducing the various main leads in this story, their compulsions and their relationships with the other players and the environment that leads to the various decisions they take. Fundamentally he highlights that military as succour of all of Pakistan's issues and the final word on everything has been a motivating factor in leveraging religion - the only common cause identified when the country was being created anew from the British India and how to balance out other power centres, religion was used to hedge the risk and became a slippery slope that now the country's leadership finds tough to get out of as new power centres have been created that refuse to be held down.

There are lot of facts and timelines in play that gives one a reasonably good history lesson on the journey Pakistan has undergone primarily under military leadership with spurts of military backed civilian leadership upto the time of Musharaf all the way from Ayub Khan and the relationship with India and USA throughout.

Overall, a fine read for someone trying to get a sense of Pakistan's political history and its bearing on their foreign policy.

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