10 Takeaways from Anaton Lieven’s book: Pakistan A Hard Country

(Umar Saeed)

  1. Pakistan is a hard country unless the USA and India, or both together invade Pakistan and thereby precipitate its disintegration. The likelihood is that the country will hold together and that if it eventually collapses, it will be not Islamist extremism but climate change — an especially grim threat in the whole of South Asia.
  2. If you preach Islamic revolution, most Pakistanis won’t follow you because they practice different kinds of Islam and worship different saints so they cannot unite behind a revolution.
  3. Pakistan is a negotiated state in so many ways, be it between the democracy of democrats or dictatorship of dictators, be it balance between the provinces or be it interpretation of Islam between liberals and Islamists.
  4. The idea of the modern state is of the population being subject to one legal code. By contrast, the Pakistani population has a choice between the law of the state, the law of religion (the Shariah), and local folk, tribal or community law. People move between three codes depending on circumstance and advantage, often pursuing their goals through several of them simultaneously, another example of Pakistan being a “negotiated state”.
  5. The relative military efficiency is only possible because the military has far more resources than civilian institutions.
  6. Every new Pakistani government comes to power making two sets of promises, one general (to the public), and one specific (to the electables), which of those are fulfilled often, needs no explanation.
  7. A political party that desires to do well in elections should be Conservative with a small “c”, a form of religion that gives stability and comfort but is not fanatical, and is at peace with itself — unlike our psychologically and culturally tortured liberals, and equally tortured Islamists. Political parties often reward loyalty and courage, not ability.
  8. When representatives of other provinces denounce Punjab for its 55 percent quota of official jobs, they conveniently forget that Punjab’s share of state revenues is considerably below its share of both population and revenue generation.
  9. What happens in Afghanistan will always have an impact on Pakistan because “Afghan” is the Persian word for “Pathan”.
  10. There is a crucial difference between terrorism and successful rebellion. In the long run, the greatest threat to Pakistan’s existence is not an insurgency, but ecological change. Read more:

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