Ebbs and Flows of Pakistan’s History

For decades, perennial precariousness in Pakistan has been the centre of gravity while remaining a defining factor in the region’s strategic and geopolitical narratives. The nation’s degeneration, all this while, has propelled academic debates and gathered abundant attention. Negative perceptions and its bad boy image have been the centrepiece in most of these discussions. Consequently, if one surveys through the titles of some of the more contemporary works on Pakistan, they are conspicuously telling of the turmoil the country has undergone and continues to undergo—a ruptured submissive polity, the absolutist military and a populace in complete disarray given the steep ethnic divides and pursuant conflicts. For instance, Pakistan: A Hard Country (Anatol Lieven), Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Hussain Haqqani), Pakistan: Courting the Abyss (Tilak Deveshar), Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Divided Nation (Declan Walsh) and many more. Tahir Kamran’s Chequered Past, Uncertain Future: The Story of Pakistan is a new addition to a long-existing array of literature that looks dismally on Pakistan’s fractious trajectory in order to fathom its future prospects.