Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Washington, D.C. :

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005, 397 pp. $ 35.95 (paper, $ 17.95)

Abstract

Revisiting a book written in 2005 is like reading the report of a Truth Commission. This review is a caution, because on every count Husain Haqqani’s observations 16 years ago were prescient. The work is intellectually durable and morally upright. Two points bear mentioning: the partnership between Islamists and Pakistan’s military remains strong, and Pakistan has not abandoned its asymmetric war against India.

Indians don’t have access to Pakistani archives and thus Indian scholarship on Pakistan is like climbing a dark alley. As Pakistani Haqqani proves a credible researcher, using primary sources which makes it difficult to refute his arguments. A former ambassador must be authentically Pakistani but a career in public life may never be retrieved because of the difficult subject he writes about. Even if you embrace only the passion and not the polemics, someone is watching over you.

Haqqani’s reasoned support for return to democracy sets him apart as a conscientious doubter. When many western- educated Muslims embrace religious rage, Haqqani, a cleric’s son, who attended religious schools, went in an unlikely direction, becoming a trenchant critic of the role of religion in politics. He works now from the Hudson Institute in the U.S.; a pity that such talent must remain outside a homeland that needs him.