Download or read book Multination States in Asia written by Jacques Bertrand and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As countries in Asia try to create unified polities, many face challenges from minority groups within their own borders seeking independence. This volume brings together international experts on countries in all regions of Asia to debate how differently they have responded to this problem. Why have some Asian countries, for example, clamped down on their national minorities in favour of homogeneity, whereas others have been willing to accommodate statehood or at least some form of political autonomy? Together they suggest broad patterns and explanatory factors that are rooted in the domestic arena, including state structure and regime type, as well as historical trajectories. In particular, they find that the paths to independence, as well as the cultural elements that have been selected to define post-colonial identities, have decisively influenced state strategies.
Download or read book Pakistan at the Crossroads written by Christophe Jaffrelot and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Pakistan at the Crossroads, top international scholars assess Pakistan's politics and economics and the challenges faced by its civil and military leaders domestically and diplomatically. Contributors examine the state's handling of internal threats, tensions between civilians and the military, strategies of political parties, police and law enforcement reform, trends in judicial activism, the rise of border conflicts, economic challenges, financial entanglements with foreign powers, and diplomatic relations with India, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the United States. In addition to ethnic strife in Baluchistan and Karachi, terrorist violence in Pakistan in response to the American-led military intervention in Afghanistan and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by means of drones, as well as to Pakistani army operations in the Pashtun area, has reached an unprecedented level. There is a growing consensus among state leaders that the nation's main security threats may come not from India but from its spiraling internal conflicts, though this realization may not sufficiently dissuade the Pakistani army from targeting the country's largest neighbor. This volume is therefore critical to grasping the sophisticated interplay of internal and external forces complicating the country's recent trajectory.
Download or read book Pakistan written by Anatol Lieven and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past decade Pakistan has become a country of immense importance to its region, the United States, and the world. With almost 200 million people, a 500,000-man army, nuclear weapons, and a large diaspora in Britain and North America, Pakistan is central to the hopes of jihadis and the fears of their enemies. Yet the greatest short-term threat to Pakistan is not Islamist insurgency as such, but the actions of the United States, and the greatest long-term threat is ecological change. Anatol Lieven's book is a magisterial investigation of this highly complex and often poorly understood country: its regions, ethnicities, competing religious traditions, varied social landscapes, deep political tensions, and historical patterns of violence; but also its surprising underlying stability, rooted in kinship, patronage, and the power of entrenched local elites. Engagingly written, combining history and profound analysis with reportage from Lieven's extensive travels as a journalist and academic, Pakistan: A Hard Country is both utterly compelling and deeply revealing.
Download or read book State and Civil Society in Pakistan written by I. Malik and published by Springer. This book was released on 1996-11-13 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problems of governance in Pakistan are rooted in a persistently unclear and antagonistic relationship among the forces of authority, ideology and ethnicity. Based on theoretical and empirical research this book focuses on significant themes such as the oligarchic state structure dominated by the military and bureaucracy, civil society, Islam and the formation of Muslim identity in British India, constitutional traditions and their subversion by coercive policies, politics of gender, ethnicity, and Muslim nationalism versus regional nationalisms as espoused by Sindhi nationalists and the Karachi-based Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM).
Download or read book Pakistan written by Husain Haqqani and published by Carnegie Endowment. This book was released on 2010-03-10 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among U.S. allies in the war against terrorism, Pakistan cannot be easily characterized as either friend or foe. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is an important center of radical Islamic ideas and groups. Since 9/11, the selective cooperation of president General Pervez Musharraf in sharing intelligence with the United States and apprehending al Qaeda members has led to the assumption that Pakistan might be ready to give up its longstanding ties with radical Islam. But Pakistan's status as an Islamic ideological state is closely linked with the Pakistani elite's worldview and the praetorian ambitions of its military. This book analyzes the origins of the relationships between Islamist groups and Pakistan's military, and explores the nation's quest for identity and security. Tracing how the military has sought U.S. support by making itself useful for concerns of the moment—while continuing to strengthen the mosque-military alliance within Pakistan—Haqqani offers an alternative view of political developments since the country's independence in 1947.
Download or read book The Nine Lives of Pakistan Dispatches from a Precarious State written by Declan Walsh and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 Overseas Press Club of America Cornelius Ryan Award The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country. 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. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis—a chieftain readying for war at his desert fort, a retired spy skulking through the borderlands, and a crusading lawyer risking death for her beliefs, among others. Through these “nine lives” he describes a country on the brink—a place of creeping extremism and political chaos, but also personal bravery and dogged idealism that defy easy stereotypes. Unbeknownst to Walsh, however, an intelligence agent was tracking him. Written in the aftermath of Walsh’s abrupt deportation, The Nine Lives of Pakistan concludes with an astonishing encounter with that agent, and his revelations about Pakistan’s powerful security state. Intimate and complex, attuned to the centrifugal forces of history, identity, and faith, The Nine Lives of Pakistan offers an unflinching account of life in a precarious, vital country.
Download or read book The South Asia Papers written by Stephen P. Cohen and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This curated collection examines Stephen Philip Cohen’s impressive body of work. Stephen Philip Cohen, the Brookings scholar who virtually created the field of South Asian security studies, has curated a unique collection of the most important articles, chapters, and speeches from his fifty-year career. Cohen, often described as the “dean” of U.S. South Asian studies, is a dominant figure in the fields of military history, military sociology, and South Asia’s strategic emergence. Cohen introduces this work with a critical look at his past writing—where he was right, where he was wrong. This exceptional collection includes materials that have never appeared in book form, including Cohen’s original essays on the region’s military history, the transition from British rule to independence, the role of the armed forces in India and Pakistan, the pathologies of India-Pakistan relations, South Asia’s growing nuclear arsenal, and America’s fitful (and forgetful) regional policy.
Download or read book Pakistan Under Siege written by Madiha Afzal and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its struggle with terror. But are ordinary Pakistanis extremists? And what explains how Pakistanis think? Much of the current work on extremism in Pakistan tends to study extremist trends in the country from a detached position—a top-down security perspective, that renders a one-dimensional picture of what is at its heart a complex, richly textured country of 200 million people. In this book, using rigorous analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews in schools and universities in Pakistan, historical narrative reporting, and her own intuitive understanding of the country, Madiha Afzal gives the full picture of Pakistan’s relationship with extremism. The author lays out Pakistanis’ own views on terrorist groups, on jihad, on religious minorities and non-Muslims, on America, and on their place in the world. The views are not radical at first glance, but are riddled with conspiracy theories. Afzal explains how the two pillars that define the Pakistani state—Islam and a paranoia about India—have led to a regressive form of Islamization in Pakistan’s narratives, laws, and curricula. These, in turn, have shaped its citizens’ attitudes. Afzal traces this outlook to Pakistan’s unique and tortured birth. She examines the rhetoric and the strategic actions of three actors in Pakistani politics—the military, the civilian governments, and the Islamist parties—and their relationships with militant groups. She shows how regressive Pakistani laws instituted in the 1980s worsened citizen attitudes and led to vigilante and mob violence. The author also explains that the educational regime has become a vital element in shaping citizens’ thinking. How many years one attends school, whether the school is public, private, or a madrassa, and what curricula is followed all affect Pakistanis’ attitudes about terrorism and the rest of the world. In the end, Afzal suggests how this beleaguered nation—one with seemingly insurmountable problems in governance and education—can change course.
Download or read book Structural Reform in Japan written by Eisuke Sakakibara and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this candid book, Japan's former top financial diplomat asserts the urgent need for wholesale structural reform to revitalize the long-stagnant Japanese economy. Eisuke Sakakibara, whose influence over global currency markets earned him the nickname of Mr. Yen, envisions a social and economic revolution that encompasses all sectors of Japanese society. Sakakibara. Profitable investment opportunities are hard to find in the dysfunctional corporate sector, where costs are high and earnings continue to decline. The country's entrenched power elite - the Liberal Democratic Party, the bureaucracy, and vested interest groups - are threatened by reform efforts. It will be difficult to restore economic health to Japan until its political leaders are able to break the grip of this iron triangle and implement aggressive, widespread reforms.
Download or read book The Idea of Pakistan written by Stephen P. Cohen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-09-21 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years Pakistan has emerged as a strategic player on the world stage—both as a potential rogue state armed with nuclear weapons and as an American ally in the war against terrorism. But our understanding of this country is superficial. To probe beyond the headlines, Stephen Cohen, author of the prize-winning India: Emerging Power, offers a panoramic portrait of this complex country—from its origins as a homeland for Indian Muslims to a militarydominated state that has experienced uneven economic growth, political chaos, sectarian violence, and several nuclear crises with its much larger neighbor, India. Pakistan's future is uncertain. Can it fulfill its promise of joining the community of nations as a moderate Islamic state, at peace with its neighbors, or could it dissolve completely into a failed state, spewing out terrorists and nuclear weapons in several directions? The Idea of Pakistan will be an essential tool for understanding this critically important country.
Download or read book Delusional States written by Nosheen Ali and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a pioneering study of state-making, religion, and development in contemporary Pakistan and its northern frontier.
Download or read book Not War Not Peace written by George Perkovich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mumbai blasts of 1993, the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, Mumbai 26/11—cross-border terrorism has continued unabated. What can India do to motivate Pakistan to do more to prevent such attacks? In the nuclear times that we live in, where a military counter-attack could escalate to destruction beyond imagination, overt warfare is clearly not an option. But since outright peace-making seems similarly infeasible, what combination of coercive pressure and bargaining could lead to peace? The authors provide, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the violent and non-violent options available to India for compelling Pakistan to take concrete steps towards curbing terrorism originating in its homeland. They draw on extensive interviews with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, in service and retired, to explore the challenges involved in compellence and to show how non-violent coercion combined with clarity on the economic, social and reputational costs of terrorism can better motivate Pakistan to pacify groups involved in cross-border terrorism. Not War, Not Peace? goes beyond the much discussed theories of nuclear deterrence and counterterrorism strategy to explore a new approach to resolving old conflicts.
Download or read book The State of Islam written by Saadia Toor and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The State of Islam tells the story of the Pakistani nation-state through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, in order to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the rise of militant Islam across the world. Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined political realm, The State of Islam is a Gramscian analysis of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. The author uses the tools of cultural studies and postcolonial theory to understand what is at stake in discourses of Islam, socialism and the nation in Pakistan. Among other things, The State of Islam seeks to explain how Pakistan went from being a place where the strategic battle for hegemony was fought between two secular forces -- the liberal nationalists and the Marxist cultural Left or Progressives -- to one where the national discourse has become increasingly defined by the agenda of the religious right. Toor argues how this was directly tied to the Cold War context in which political Islam was advanced, along with the marginalization and active repression of the organized Left and attempts to marginalize its alternate visions of Pakistani society.
Download or read book The Pakistan Paradox written by Christophe Jaffrelot and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of Pakistan stands riddled with tensions. Initiated by a small group of select Urdu-speaking Muslims who envisioned a unified Islamic state, today Pakistan suffers the divisive forces of various separatist movements and religious fundamentalism. A small entrenched elite continue to dominate the country’s corridors of power, and democratic forces and legal institutions remain weak. But despite these seemingly insurmountable problems, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan continues to endure. The Pakistan Paradox is the definitive history of democracy in Pakistan, and its survival despite ethnic strife, Islamism and deepseated elitism. This edition focuses on three kinds of tensions that are as old as Pakistan itself. The tension between the unitary definition of the nation inherited from Jinnah and centrifugal ethnic forces; between civilians and army officers who are not always in favour of or against democracy; and between the Islamists and those who define Islam only as a cultural identity marker.
Download or read book India Pakistan Negotiations written by Dennis Kux and published by US Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a historical and current review of the trends of six key India-Pakistan negotiations, largely over shared resources and political boundaries.
Download or read book Boundaries of Belonging written by Sarah Ansari and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores citizenship, rights and belonging in post-Independence South Asia, examining the long-term impact of the 1947 Partition.
Download or read book Making Sense of Pakistan written by Farzana Shaikh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pakistan's transformation from supposed model of Muslim enlightenment to a state now threatened by an Islamist takeover has been remarkable. Many account for the change by pointing to Pakistan's controversial partnership with the United States since 9/11; others see it as a consequence of Pakistan's long history of authoritarian rule, which has marginalized liberal opinion and allowed the rise of a religious right. Farzana Shaikh argues the country's decline is rooted primarily in uncertainty about the meaning of Pakistan and the significance of 'being Pakistani'. This has pre-empted a consensus on the role of Islam in the public sphere and encouraged the spread of political Islam. It has also widened the gap between personal piety and public morality, corrupting the country's economic foundations and tearing apart its social fabric. More ominously still, it has given rise to a new and dangerous symbiosis between the country's powerful armed forces and Muslim extremists. Shaikh demonstrates how the ideology that constrained Indo-Muslim politics in the years leading to Partition in 1947 has left its mark, skillfully deploying insights from history to better understand Pakistan's troubled present.
