5 of 13 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars One-Dimensional and Flawed, April 6, 2014
By Moorthy Muthuswamy - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War (Kindle Edition)
Pakistan is indeed a standout nuclear-armed nation, as it (through its military) wages a relentless war by all means to expand its territory and impose its will on neighboring nations (especially on non-Muslim India), even at the expense of weakening itself. Why is this the case and secondly, what to do with Pakistan?
This book seemingly positions itself into answering these questions of immense local and international security relevance. However, as I explain below owing to a one-dimensional and deeply-flawed analysis, this book has failed in its primary purpose. I am still giving it a two-star rating because the book has some useful new insights and is a good source of reference material.
Simply put, Pakistan is driven by a sense of injustice that goes far beyond its loss of Kashmir to India. Moreover, it sees itself as an all-conquering Islamic power - a wannabe along the lines of the Muslim armies in the aftermath of Muhammad's reign. Let me elaborate. The Muslim elite of South Asia, despite ruling Pakistan and Bangladesh have long felt a sense of injustice because they no longer rule Hindu-majority India. The following statements encapsulate this point. In a 2008 Time magazine interview, Tarik Jan of the Institute of Policy Studies (Islamabad) stated: "We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of India, and in 1857 the British took that away from us. In 1947 they should have given that back to the Muslims." In 2006, one of India's most powerful clerics, Shahi Imam Bukhari noted: "We were rulers here [in India] 800 years. By God willing, we shall return to power here once again."
The elite find it convenient to ignore the fine detail that the Muslim rule in India around 1850 was at its nadir and that Hindu/Sikh kingdoms were resurgent. Nonetheless, in its quest for what it perceives as an injustice, Pakistan is willing to endure hardships as a cost toward attaining its objectives. In this sense, Pakistan's behavior is not unusual.
Most disappointingly, the author has pointed out only Pakistan's failures in its quest for defeating India in the battle field and to retard India's rise. But she has completely overlooked the point that, aided by the likes of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has made spectacular inroads into indoctrinating and radicalizing India's Muslim minorities into believing in its revisionist cause. This is very important, because Indian Muslims, who were 10% of the population in 1947, now constitute around 25% of the Indian children under the age of five. In 2008, India's National Security Advisor admitted that there are at least 800 terror cells operating, presumably in India's Muslim communities, supported by the likes of Pakistan. In 2006, Indian Intelligence voiced concerns that India's largest state Uttar Pradesh had become a big base for Pakistan-based Islamic terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Indeed, the current trends in Indian Muslim population growth, their extent of radicalization and India's dismal record in rolling back the escalating Islamist siege gives the Pakistani elite the hope of reversing the injustice.
Hence, I am not surprised that the Pakistani military elites are steadfastly staying the course on this all-out jihad, because in their mind, even though they have lost a few tactical battles with India, they could eventually win the civilizational one (and correct the "injustice"), by destroying and gaining control of India for Islam, through proxies. In 2013, a retired high level military official called Hamid Gul said this: "...a lot of people here who are waiting for the conquest of India, it will be our privilege to take part in this war." Sadly, this angle is entirely missing from the book.
The above discussion tells us that it is of utmost importance to stop and roll back radicalization of India's Muslim minorities. And this ought to be one way of putting a real damper on Pakistan's revisionist tendencies. However, in the book, the author offers no ideas on how external entities might help mitigate Pakistan's revisionist tendencies.
Christine Fair, despite again-and-again identifying ideological (Islamic) underpinnings of Pakistani military's outlook, failed to analyze the clerical role in influencing it. The ideological underpinnings necessitate that the military leadership look up to leading clerics for vision and guidance. Hence, Pakistan' military's ability to sustain its revisionist outlook is possible only if it aligns with that of the clerical cadre. For instance, easily the most transformative cleric of Pakistan, Abul Maududi was a strong proponent of Islamic conquest - that of invoking armed jihad to expand Pakistan's frontiers. In fact, the clerics played a leading role in the initial conquest of Pakistan-based infidels, by conquering Hindus/Sikhs and their properties for Islam, when over 20% Hindu/Sikh population in Pakistan dropped to single digits with most either killed, forcibly converted or driven to India. The leaders of state-sponsored jihadist groups in Pakistan are tellingly, clerics, in addition to retired military officials. This informs us unequivocally that, contrary to the author's claims, the dominant revisionist power in Pakistan is not just its military but the military-cleric combo. Such a delineation calls for a different book, unfortunately.
Indeed, the accolade this flawed book has received from U.S.-based specialists on Pakistan goes a long way toward explaining why the United States has gotten to be so wrong and so long on Pakistan.
http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-End-The- ... ewpoints=1
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