A fascinating account of British reporter Willem Marx's travels in Balochistan, a largely forgotten province of Pakistan, along with some spectacular images captured by French photojournalist Marc Wattrelot.

In Pakistan at the Crossroads, top international scholars assess Pakistan's politics and economics and the challenges faced by its civil and military leaders domestically and diplomatically. Contributors examine the state's handling of internal threats, tensions between civilians and the military, strategies of political parties, police and law enforcement reform, trends in judicial activism, the rise of border conflicts, economic challenges, financial entanglements with foreign powers, and diplomatic relations with India, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the United States. In addition to ethnic strife in Baluchistan and Karachi, terrorist violence in Pakistan in response to the American-led military intervention in Afghanistan and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by means of drones, as well as to Pakistani army operations in the Pashtun area, has reached an unprecedented level. There is a growing consensus among state leaders that the nation's main security threats may come not from India but from its spiraling internal conflicts, though this realization may not sufficiently dissuade the Pakistani army from targeting the country's largest neighbor. This volume is therefore critical to grasping the sophisticated interplay of internal and external forces complicating the country's recent trajectory.

Pakistan's growing proximity to a China-led new geopolitical order and a Turkey-led potential 'caliphate' pose new challenges to India and the world. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor traverses territory that legally belongs to India, and enables China to expand its footprint on land and sea routes to Europe, the Middle East, up to Africa and even South America. These developments highlight the strategic importance of Balochistan, which stands at the crossroads of Afghanistan, Iran and the Gulf. This work discusses Balochistan's failure to secure independence in August 1947, including the Anglo-US quest for military bases and post-1945 dominance. It traces the distinct identity of the Balochs that forms the basis of Baloch nationalism, along with successive insurgencies since 1948, their brutal suppression, and the emergence of powerful guerrilla groups. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor straddles the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road and gives China command of a geostrategic sphere from Xinjiang to the Mediterranean Sea and beyond, making it a two-ocean power, while swamping Islamabad in untold debt. Finally, China's vision for a new international order via the Border and Road Initiative contrasts with India's gentler neighbourhood policy; it has triggered the evolution of the Indo-Pacific concept from a purely maritime idea to a geopolitical one. India is adamant that Beijing should not achieve a Sino-centric unipolar Asia, as a multipolar Asia is a critical pillar of a multipolar world. Balochistan is strategically located at the crossroads of Afghanistan, Iran and the Gulf, at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, through which the bulk of Asia's supply of oil passes. To control the Gulf region and secure their military bases in northwestern India, London tried to make Balochistan accede to Pakistan prior to Partition, and encouraged Mohammad Ali Jinnah to annex the territory. Ahmad Yar Khan, the Khan of Kalat, struggled in vain to regain the independence he was entitled to under the 1876 treaty with the British Crown.

Winner of the 2021 Overseas Press Club of America Cornelius Ryan Award The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country. Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times’s most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis—a chieftain readying for war at his desert fort, a retired spy skulking through the borderlands, and a crusading lawyer risking death for her beliefs, among others. Through these “nine lives” he describes a country on the brink—a place of creeping extremism and political chaos, but also personal bravery and dogged idealism that defy easy stereotypes. Unbeknownst to Walsh, however, an intelligence agent was tracking him. Written in the aftermath of Walsh’s abrupt deportation, The Nine Lives of Pakistan concludes with an astonishing encounter with that agent, and his revelations about Pakistan’s powerful security state. Intimate and complex, attuned to the centrifugal forces of history, identity, and faith, The Nine Lives of Pakistan offers an unflinching account of life in a precarious, vital country.

"This book is the result of a field research carried out by the author among a community of agriculturists in what was till recently the uttermost part of Southern Pakistani Balochistan. It deals with themes such as ways of living and representing spaces, constructing memory, the heritage of a form of social stratifiation which shaped community relationships in the last three centuries, and, last but not least, the insurgence of nationalism. Furthermore, the book puts forward some theoretical proposals about the translation of cultural "models," throughout a constant comparison between the author's and his interlocutors', alternating ethno-graphic "descriptions" with reflxive arguments. Notwithstanding its remoteness, Balochistan is today at the conflence of forces which reflct both local and "global" logics, pushing this land, once only visited by few adventurous travelers, in the focus of international interests which could impinge on political evolution of this sensitive area straddling South Asia and Middle East."--Publisher's description.

Since 9/11, Pakistan has loomed large in the geopolitical imagination of the West. A key ally in the global war on terror, it is also the country in which Osama bin Laden was finally found and killed—and the one that has borne the brunt of much of the ongoing conflict’s collateral damage. Despite its prominence on the front lines and on the front pages, Pakistan has been depicted by Western observers simplistically in terms of its corruption, its fundamentalist Islamic beliefs, and its propensity for violence. Dispatches from Pakistan, in contrast, reveals the complexities, the challenges, and the joys of daily life in the country, from the poetry of Gilgit to the graffiti of Gwadar, from an army barrack in Punjab to the urban politics of Karachi. This timely book brings together journalists, activists, academics, and artists to provide a rich, in-depth, and intriguing portrait of contemporary Pakistani society. Straddling a variety of boundaries—geographic, linguistic, and narrative—Dispatches from Pakistan is a vital attempt to speak for the multitude of Pakistanis who, in the face of seemingly unimaginable hardships, from drone strikes to crushing poverty, remain defiantly optimistic about their future. While engaging in conversations on issues that make the headlines in the West, the contributors also introduce less familiar dimensions of Pakistani life, highlighting the voices of urban poets, rural laborers, industrial workers, and religious-feminist activists—and recovering Pakistani society’s inquilabi (revolutionary) undercurrents and its hopeful overtones. Contributors: Mahvish Ahmad; Nosheen Ali, U of California, Berkeley; Shafqat Hussain, Trinity College; Humeira Iqtidar, King’s College London; Amina Jamal, Ryerson U; Hafeez Jamali, U of Texas at Austin; Iqbak Khattak; Zahra Malkani; Raza Mir; Hammad Nasar; Junaid Rana, U of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; Maliha Safri, Drew U; Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Lahore U of Management Sciences; Ayesha Siddiqa; Sultan-i-Rome, Government Jahanzeb Postgraduate College, Swat, Pakistan; Saadia Toor, Staten Island College.

Religion, violence, and ethnicity are all intertwined in the history of Pakistan. The entrenchment of landed interests, operationalized through violence, ethnic identity, and power through successive regimes has created a system of ‘authoritarian clientalism.’ This book offers comparative, historicist, and multidisciplinary views on the role of identity politics in the development of Pakistan. Bringing together perspectives on the dynamics of state-building, the book provides insights into contemporary processes of national contestation which are crucially affected by their treatment in the world media, and by the reactions they elicit within an increasingly globalised polity. It investigates the resilience of landed elites to political and social change, and, in the years after partition, looks at the impact on land holdings of population transfer. It goes on to discuss religious identities and their role in both the construction of national identity and in the development of sectarianism. The book highlights how ethnicity and identity politics are an enduring marker in Pakistani politics, and why they are increasingly powerful and influential. An insightful collection on a range of perspectives on the dynamics of identity politics and the nation-state, this book on Pakistan will be a useful contribution to South Asian Politics, South Asian History, and Islamic Studies.