Reimagining Pakistan (Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State).

AuthorDorschner, Jon P.
PositionBook review

Reimagining Pakistan (Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State) by Hussain Haqqani

Pakistan has been decried as a failing state for as long as I can remember. Its travails have been discussed in hosts of books during this period. Former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Hussain Haqqani has now added his own title. Much of the material Haqqani covers has been dealt with elsewhere. It is difficult to determine what new contribution this book can make, and whether readers pressed for time should select it out of the many other titles.

It would be easy to dismiss Reimagining Pakistan as a throwaway, but I think this would be a mistake. The book falls squarely within the classic academic mold. It posits a problem, supplies the background necessary to understand and analyze the problem, and concludes with policy recommendations, to address the problem. Haqqani does a good job of sticking within these parameters, making a solid contribution to the literature.

Haqqani, one of Pakistan's most outspoken political and cultural liberals, describes Pakistan's malaise, enumerates its causes, and hypothesizes about a possible way out. Pakistan's once-powerful liberals, with their strong emphasis on moderation, at one time dominated the political/economic mainstream and maintained an open-minded and secular outlook stressing personal freedom. They are now an endangered species, driven out of the country and forced to seek sanctuary abroad. Haqqani himself faces death threats in Pakistan and must reside in the United States for his own personal safety. Pakistan's liberals have a rapidly shrinking constituency within the country, and are taken far more seriously by foreign scholars than their own people.

Pakistani liberals have been supplanted by increasingly outspoken Islamists, bent on eliminating the last vestiges of westernization and liberalism from the country. Haqqani points out that this was not always the case. Pakistan was founded as a homeland for South Asian Muslims, but not a theocracy. Its founders, including the father of the country, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, were thoroughly grounded in the Western democratic tradition and meant to establish a secular state where all Pakistanis could worship freely.

But, Haqqani emphasizes, Pakistan's founders proved incapable of realizing their liberal ideal. Ill-equipped to administer a new country facing serious economic and political problems, it proved easier to fall back on Islamic obscurantism...

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