Tariq Ali was born in Lahore and educated at Oxford University. He has campaigned against wars from Vietnam to Iraq. I always admire him for his commitment to his ideologies’; I have seen many intellectuals marching from left to right or opting to stay “in between”. Tariq Ali writes for the Guardian, the Nation and the London Review of Books. He has written more than dozen books including Can Pakistan Survive? The Clash of Fundamentalisms’, etc…
His latest book, The Duel; Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power is an eye opener. Personally, it’s been shock for me; I didn’t want to believe what I read. I can’t change the history and can not deny the fact that East Pakistan is now called Bangladesh.
Tariq Ali’s books are (generally) banned in Pakistan; there is no official word on it. But I think Tariq Ali knows why? He writes in the preface…
“Books have a destiny. This is my Third Study of Pakistan. The first, Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power? Was written in 1969 and predicted the breakup of the state. It was banned in Pakistan. Critics of every persuasion, even those who liked the book, thought it was going too far in suggesting that the state could disintegrate, but a few decades later that is what exactly happened? Just over a decade later, I wrote Can Pakistan Survive? The question mark was not that important but nonetheless struck a raw nerve in General Zia’s Pakistan, where to even pose question was unacceptable”
God Bless him (though he doesn’t believe in God), his third book is more uncomfortable and harder to digest. It’s about Pakistan’s strange love affair with America and 60 years of pain, agony and distress.
Here are few insights from the book…
In Can Pakistan Survive, I argued that if the state carried out the same old way, some of the minority left behind might also defect, leaving the Punjab alone, strutting like a cock on a dunghill.
The country is here to stay. It’s not the mystical “ideology of Pakistan” or even religion that guarantees it survival, but two factors: its nuclear capacity and the support it receives from Washington. The threat of jihadi takeover is remote. There is no possibility of a coup by the religious extremists unless the army wants.
Unless the West begins nuclear disarmament, it has no moral or material on which to demand the others to do the same. Only a twisted logic accepts that London and Paris can have the bomb, but New Delhi and Islamabad cannot. It’s unlikely that they would resort to first use of these weapons, but that is not sufficient reassurance for the citizens of either country. While Pakistan’s principal preoccupation remains India, its senior partners in Washington have been trying to hard to shift Islamabad’s focus to the western frontier.
Tariq Ali discusses the role of Pakistan army, government’s writ on Waziristan, Taliban and much more. More can be found about Tariq Ali at www.tariqali.org
The book may be purchased from www.amazon.com/Duel-Pakistan-Flight-American-Power/dp/1416561013
