Dateline Islamabad


Book Description

It Was An Assignment That Was At Once Challenging And Intimidating. I Was Going To Be Setting Foot On Enemy Territory. Amit Baruah Was One Of Only Two Indian Journalists Allowed To Be Based In Islamabad During Three Tumultuous Years Of Pakistan S History. The Author Recounts With Some Amusement His Family S Experience Of Life In Islamabad Society Between April 1997 And June 2000 All Of It Conducted Under The Suspicious Gaze Of Pakistani Intelligence Agents Who Shadow Baruah, His Wife And Daughters Everywhere, Including Into Friends Living Rooms. He Records His Frustration At Being Disallowed From Reporting Freely On The Ground Many Events That Defined Indo-Pak Relations, Even As Death Or Kidnapping Forever Stalks Him. Three Incidents Haunt Baruah The Most: Not Being Cleared To Attend The Funeral, In 1998, Of John Joseph, The Bishop Of Faisalabad Who Committed Suicide In Protest Against Pakistan S Blasphemy Laws; Being Forbidden To View The Wreckage Of An Indian Air Force Plane Shot Down During The Kargil Conflict Of 1999; And Being Prevented From Entering Afghanistan From Pakistan To Report On The Kandahar Hijacking Later That Year. And Yet, Says Baruah, Despite All The Personal And Professional Difficulties He Faced In Pakistan, His Stint In Islamabad And His Exchanges With So Many Friends He Cannot Name Proved To Be The Most Exciting And Enriching In His Career. While Admitting The Difficult Nature Of His Job As A Foreign Correspondent In A Hostile Nation, Baruah Recalls The Joys Of Meeting Generous, Like-Minded People In A Country Whose Regimented Stance On India And Its Press Is Less Than Friendly.




Pakistan Before and After Osama


Book Description

Explicating the pre- and post-Bin Laden Pakistan, Imtiaz Gul relooks at questions plaguing the nation: Why and how this country became home to the world’s most wanted terrorist? Bin Laden’s escape from the Tora Bora Mountains in Eastern Afghanistan in December 2001 to his last hideout in Abbottabad, and to find answers to the dozens of questions surrounding his stay in Pakistan as well as the US blitz raid in the wee hours of 2 May 2011. Had the world’s most wanted person at all been living in Pakistan for all those years, how did he manage to stay undetected, together with his big family, including an eight-month-old son? Who from within the security establishment provided the safety network to the family? What stakes did the Pakistan Army and the ISI have at all – if they were complicit – in protecting him? Why did Bin Laden fascinate certain people and groups within Pakistan? Pakistan: Before and After Osama is an attempt to analyze present-day Pakistan in the light of two narratives – one stitched together in Washington and the other woven in Pakistan – about the checkered history of its relations with Pakistan and its involvement in the region, and how differences over how to tackle Al Qaeda and its local affiliates continue to sour and strain the ties between the two long-time ‘allies’.




Corporate Social Responsibility and Development in Pakistan


Book Description

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has not only become an important concept for corporate organizations but also civil society, community, state and the multilateral and bilateral development agencies. It has acquired great significance in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, not only in the advanced economies, but also in emerging and developing countries. In contemporary Pakistan problems of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, and human rights violations are frequent. These problems cannot be dealt with by the state and civil society alone and call for corporate involvement. Backed by rich empirical data, based on extensive fieldwork and complemented with the official data sources, this book offers a detailed analysis of the socially responsible corporate policies and practices of companies operating in the emerging economy of Pakistan. Employing qualitative and quantitative research methods, it examines the sensitivity of companies in Pakistan to CSR measured in terms of their policies and perceptions about CRS, their CSR development activities, perceptions about development Non-Governmental Organisations, and channels and forms of support for development projects(both monetary and non-monetary). Filling a significant gap in our understanding of an important part of contemporary Pakistan’s development and the outlook of companies towards CSR, the book will be of interest to policymakers and scholars working in the fields of Development Studies, Business Studies and Asian Studies.




Military, State and Society in Pakistan


Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive study of the dynamics of civil-military relations in Pakistan. It asks how and why the Pakistan military has acquired such a salience in the polity and how it continues to influence decision-making on foreign and security policies and key domestic political, social and economic issues. It also examines the changes within the military, the impact of these changes on its disposition towards the state and society, and the implications for peace and security in nuclearized South Asia.




Pakistan, Islamisation, Army and Foreign Policy


Book Description

Relates To Islamization Starting From Zia In Pakistan, Its Effect On The Army, Pakistan`S Foreign Policy In Relation To Kashmir And Nepal. Has 4 Appendices Concerning Mushraf`S Interviews With Asian Age, The Guardian, His Press Conference, Associate Press Of Pakistan News Summary.




Refugees and the Politics of the Everyday State in Pakistan


Book Description

The Partition of India in 1947 involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise Hindu or Muslim majorities. The Partition displaced between 10 and 12 million people along religious lines. This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the resettlement and rehabilitation of Partition refugees in Pakistani Punjab between 1947 and 1962. It weaves a chronological and thematic plot into a single narrative, and focuses on the Punjabi refugee middle and upper-middle class. Emphasising the everyday experience of the state, the author challenges standard interpretations of the resettlement of Partition refugees in the region and calls for a more nuanced understanding of their rehabilitation. The book argues the universality of the so-called 'exercise in human misery', and the heterogeneity of the rehabilitation policies. Refugees’ stories and interactions with local institutions reveal the inability of the local bureaucracy to establish its own 'polity' and the viable workability of Pakistan as a state. The use of Pakistani documents, US and British records and a careful survey of both the judicial records and the Urdu and English-language dailies of the time, provides an invaluable window onto the everyday life of a state, its institutions and its citizens. A carefully researched study of both the state and the everyday lives of refugees as they negotiated resettlement, through both personal and official channels, the book offers an important reinterpretation of the first years of Pakistani history. It will be of interest to academics working in the field of refugee resettlement and South Asian History and Politics.




The Longest August


Book Description

The partitioning of British India into independent Pakistan and India in August 1947 occurred in the midst of communal holocaust, with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other. More than 750,000 people were butchered, and 12 million fled their homes—primarily in caravans of bullock-carts—to seek refuge across the new border: it was the largest exodus in history. Sixty-seven years later, it is as if that August never ended. Renowned historian and journalist Dilip Hiro provides a riveting account of the relationship between India and Pakistan, tracing the landmark events that led to the division of the sub-continent and the evolution of the contentious relationship between Hindus and Muslims. To this day, a reasonable resolution to their dispute has proved elusive, and the Line of Control in Kashmir remains the most heavily fortified frontier in the world, with 400,000 soldiers arrayed on either side. Since partition, there have been several acute crises between the neighbors, including the secession of East Pakistan to form an independent Bangladesh in 1971, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by both sides resulting in a scarcely avoided confrontation in 1999 and again in 2002. Hiro amply demonstrates the geopolitical importance of the India-Pakistan conflict by chronicling their respective ties not only with America and the Soviet Union, but also with China, Israel, and Afghanistan. Hiro weaves these threads into a lucid narrative, enlivened with colorful biographies of leaders, vivid descriptions of wars, sensational assassinations, gross violations of human rights—and cultural signifiers like cricket matches. The Longest August is incomparable in its scope and presents the first definitive history of one of the world’s longest-running and most intractable conflicts.




Judging the State


Book Description

The political history of Pakistan is characterised by incomplete constitution-making, a process which has placed the burden of constitutional interpretation on state instruments ranging from the bureaucracy to the military to the judiciary. In a penetrating and original study of the relationship between state and civil society in Pakistan, Paula Newberg demonstrates how the courts have influenced constitutional development and the structure of the state. By examining judicial decisions, particularly those made at times of political crisis, she considers how tensions within the judiciary, and between courts and other state institutions, have affected the ways political society views itself, and explores the consequences of these debates for the formal organisation of political power.




Paper Citizens


Book Description

In this groundbreaking work, Kamal Sadiq reveals that most of the world's illegal immigrants are not migrating directly to the US, but to countries in the vast developing world, where they are able to obtain citizenship papers fairly easily. Sadiq introduces "documentary citizenship" to explain how paperwork--often falsely obtained--confers citizenship on illegal immigrants. Across the globe, there are literally tens of millions of such illegal immigrants who have assumed the guise of "citizens." Who, then, is really a citizen? And what does citizenship mean for most of the world's peoples? Rendered in vivid detail, Paper Citizens not only shows how illegal immigrants acquire false papers, but also sheds light on the consequences this will have for global security in the post 9/11 world.




Pakistan's Pathway to the Bomb


Book Description

"Mansoor Ahmed's Pakistan's Pathway to the Bomb reveals a new history of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and the bureaucratic competition that shaped it from its inception in 1956 until the 1998 nuclear tests and beyond. While the enduring security dilemma from India was the chief driver for the country's quest for the bomb, heated domestic rivalries within the country's technocratic community influenced the direction and growth of the nuclear program in equal measure. Ahmed offers a revisionist assessment of the role of Dr. A. Q. Khan, the giant of Pakistan's nuclear program. He reveals the competition between Khan Research Laboratories and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, how A. Q. Khan was able to build a cult of personality that inflated his role in the public mind, and how Khan was able to build a fiefdom largely outside of state control that proliferated nuclear technology abroad. Drawing on elite interviews and previously untapped primary-source documents, this book sheds light on the process by which Pakistan became a nuclear power"--