To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan.

• Author: Sheikh, Waheed Ahmad
• Position: FURTHER READING - Book review

To LIVE OR TO PERISH FOREVER: Two TUMULTUOUS YEARS IN PAKISTAN

Nicholas Schmidle

(New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2009),272 pages.

In March 2007, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry as a result of the latter's refusal to endorse a renewal of Musharraf's presidency. Chaudbry's dismissal exposed Pakistani civil society's growing distrust of Musharraf's rule, moving the nation to the verge of instability.

American journalist Nicholas Schmidle was in Karachi in May 2007, when the pro-Musharraf Muttahida Quami Movement staged a rally on the same day Chaudhry was to address a gathering of lawyers in the city. He witnessed riots that quickly spiraled into ethnic strife--the gathering was a microcosm of a nation plagued by ethnic tensions among its Baluchis, Pashtuns, Punjabis and Sindhis. Schmidle posits that the failure of the state security apparatus to quell the violence in Karachi was a deliberate attempt by Musharraf's regime to further destabilize an ethnically-divided nation, thereby rebuffing any viable opposition.

Schmidle's interviews with Islamist militants and political leaders in Swat and Waziristan reveal the complexity of changing alliances between Pakistani Islamist militants and the Afghan Taliban. Schmidle learned that many terrorist attacks carried out by Islamist militants are a way for feuding tribes to settle old scores that have lasted decades, and are not necessarily part of a broader political Islamist agenda. Furthermore, Schmidle implies that...