By Nicholas Schmidle
Nicholas Schmidle, journalist and Fellow at the New American Foundation, went to Pakistan. He spent the next two years travelling throughout the country, learning to speak Urdu, meeting and interviewing supporters of the Taliban and radical Islamists, reporting on his travels and experiences.
This book is a colourful and intriguing account of Schmidle’s experiences during those tumultuous two years, beginning right at the end of his time in Pakistan when he and his wife had their visas revoked and were asked to leave the country.
But this book is not just a diary. During his stay in the country the author was much more than an on-looker reporting from a safe distance. Throughout the two years he made every effort to visit and try to understand the extremists as well as the ordinary Pakistani people. Schmidle wanted to learn about all of Pakistan, what really made it tick, and as a result he is able to present a deep insight into all the contrasting elements of the country, providing his readers with a mirror to real life inside Pakistani culture and politics.
Taking its title from a famous 1933 pamphlet by Shurdi Rahma Ali, in which the name “Pakistan” was first suggested, the book presents a detailed encounter with the contrasts of the modern state of Pakistan.
We see the cracks that appear in Pakistani society and hear of the proposals to remedy them. We learn of the historical circumstances and cultural differences that abound in the country. Many of which have been at the root of conflicts between ethnic groups and different regions. These conflicts have led to struggles between the regions and the government for control of authority in the regions, in the way that the country’s development funds are spent and how the economic resources are allocated.
In his book, Schmidle takes the reader to meet the Taliban and its supporters, brings the areas of internal strife right up close and gives a firsthand account of the events that led up to the declaration of emergency rule in November 2007, the street battles and protests that preceded President Pervez Musharraf’s impeachment and eventual resignation. One of the people the author befriended whilst in Pakistan was the radical cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who controlled the Red Mosque in Islamabad. As a result of this friendship, Schmidle is able to present a detailed account of the controlling of the mosque and the widely reported military storming of it.
Whilst many readers may be interested in Pakistan because of more recent events; the Swat Valley for instance and the government’s opposition of the Taliban control there, Schmidle’s account of what he experienced in that area - and throughout Pakistan - covers a much broader spectrum than the newspaper reports and current affairs magazines, and has a far more realistic feel for what is really going on in the country.
