The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

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Dhamaal is a form of spiritual rapture, but Walsh describes it as “a kind of religious rave” and regards the shrine as having a Las Vegas aesthetic, which has extremely different connotations. He seems to be overstretching analogies here to make foreign customs palatable to western readers. SHAPIRO: Declan Walsh's new book is "The Nine Lives Of Pakistan: Dispatches From A Precarious State." Thank you for talking with us about it.

SHAPIRO: You know, beyond the violence and struggle that you chronicle in the book, what made you love Pakistan enough to devote a decade of your life to telling its story?Furthermore this book feels out of date, and the author should have drawn out his narrative more fully to 2020. Finally, there was a definite feeling of hopelessness with some of the vignettes. Why not distill Pakistan through the persona of Edhi? Or what about some of the more interesting and neglected early pioneers of Pakistan (Mohammad Ali Bogra or Suhawardy?) Since its inception, many volatile issues have been exacerbated by ethnic and sectarian conflict, frequently turning Pakistan into a tinderbox. While Pakistan’s image abroad is sustained by a generic hardline approach, Walsh found it hard to square it with the permissiveness he saw in other parts of society, where the rich did as they pleased and organised “lavish, boozy parties inside high walls (and, later, a lot of cocaine consumption)”. Upon close scrutiny, Walsh struggles with the jarring double standards between the rigid, de jure policies of the state and the de facto societal practices.

Over seven years later, Walsh’s second book “ The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Divided Nation,” was published by Bloomsbury UK on September 3. The book is based on Walsh’s time working in Pakistan – more than a decade in total. Walsh uses nine lives from Pakistan to tell the story of one of the world’s most perplexing (and misunderstood) countries. Along the way, he deconstructs the country’s power dynamics, ethnic and religious conflicts, and identity crisis – all of which he argues pose a bigger threat for Pakistan than the much touted dangers from the Taliban. Walsh also talks about his expulsion and experiences reporting out of Pakistan in the book. In 2013, Pakistan was gearing up to witness its first civilian transfer of power, having been ruled over for more than half the years since independence by the military. Do you think new geopolitical alignments and Pakistan’s inclination toward China and the enmity for India will bring more oppression for ethnic minorities in Pakistan amid the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)?verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ And so Asma Jahangir with this small, formidable, fiery woman who was willing to stand up for the most dispossessed people in her country and was also willing to stand up loudly to the most powerful ones. There was nothing inevitable about Pakistan’s association with extremism. After wrestling with the issue, Jinnah recommended a secular republic from his deathbed. After Partition in 1947, Walsh explains, imams lost their sway in society, sinking to a status somewhere between a teacher and a tailor in the villages. He then presents his ruminations on some of the touchiest subjects in Pakistan; from the military’s involvement in politics and the intelligence agencies’ activities to the delicate religious fault lines that are ever-present yet often obscured. Among the many themes discussed, he dissects the Red Mosque seizure, gives accounts of tribal leaders and their ways of war and life, and the many unconventional stories of Pakistanis he stumbled upon during his time here.