Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Walsh debuts with an immersive and splendidly written portrait of Pakistan based on the nine years he spent in the country reporting for the Guardian and the New York Times. He begins with his 2013 arrest and expulsion from the country for "undesirable activities" (Walsh later came to believe that his reporting on an insurgent movement in Balochistan province got him kicked out), then profiles nine people whose stories provide valuable perspective on Pakistan's volatile politics and "endearing absurdities," as well as its cultural traditions and modern aspirations. Walsh's profile subjects include the "most famous cop in Karachi," Chaudhry Aslam Khan, whose office "had the gleam of a mortuary and the furtive bustle of a mobster's den," and human rights activist Asma Jahangir, a "cast-iron idealist" who "embraced the untouchable and advocated the unthinkable, leading indefatigable campaigns to reform Pakistan's bigoted laws or to protect its most vulnerable minorities." Walsh also probes the history of ISI, Pakistan's fearsome intelligence agency, and interviews one of its best known spies, Colonel Imam, who trained mujahideen fighters in the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s and was kidnapped by the Taliban in 2010. Rich with incisive historical context, astute cultural analysis, and evocative language, Walsh's account brings Pakistan's contradictions to fascinating life. This masterfully reported account deserves a wide readership. (Nov.)
Guardian Review
Declan Walsh begins his captivating new book on Pakistan with an account of how he came to leave the country for the first time, abruptly and involuntarily in May 2013. "The angels came to spirit me away," is the way he puts it, using the Urdu slang for the all-powerful men of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), whose presence is felt, even when not seen, throughout The Nine Lives of Pakistan. The ISI goons give Walsh no hint as to why he is being kicked out, and the government officials he quizzes simply shrug. His quest to unravel that mystery drives the narrative of the book as he goes back through his nine years as a correspondent in Pakistan, first for the Guardian and then for the New York Times, in search of an answer. The solution to the riddle, which emerges out of the haze, says a lot about the turbulent, fractious country Walsh is trying to understand. The subtitle of the book is Dispatches from a Divided Nation and the author criss-crosses those political, religious, ethnic and generational fault lines, assembling a portrait of the vast country of 220 million people through his travels and the lives of the nine compelling protagonists. Walsh is a wonderful writer, with a gift for sketching an impression of a place, time and ambience with a few brief lines. He knows how to interweave travelogue with an account of the relentless tensions that always threaten to burst through each vignette in the book. What also shines through is the relish with which Walsh throws himself into the far corners of Pakistan, into crowds, celebrations and rites, with a drive born of fascination with the land and its people. He is not a war correspondent. Most of the time he is not looking for trouble, and it is hard not to envy him all the parties and feasts to which he finds himself invited. He seeks out oversized characters and makes sure not just to interview them, but to linger at their shoulder to experience Pakistan through their eyes and ears. These are eight of the nine lives of the title. The ninth is Pakistan's conflicted and complicated founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a spectral presence. It says a lot about Pakistan's bloody history that only one of the nine subjects is still alive by the end of the book. Five of them meet violent ends, either killed by jihadists or the security forces. "You see, this murder and fighting business is very tricky," as one brave Pashtun politician says, summing up local politics in the northwest. Accompanying him as he went from village to village campaigning, Walsh observes drily: "I didn't see a single woman. Guns, on the other hand, were everywhere." By the end of The Nine Lives of Pakistan, it seems almost unbelievable that the author himself has survived the experience. The death rate among his subjects is just one measure of the dangers of doing Walsh's job. As Pakistan's home-grown Taliban rise in 2006 and 2007, more and more areas become unsafe, and the violence eventually surges into the capital, Islamabad. Within a few blocks of Walsh's home, a courthouse, a UN office and an army checkpoint are all bombed. Many extremist groups looked on western journalists as legitimate targets, for kidnapping at least, and at one point Walsh is saved by the man he has hired a car from. Overhearing a group of men discussing the logistics of grabbing Walsh, the rental man bundled the Irish journalist into the vehicle and sped away. There was nothing inevitable about Pakistan's association with extremism. After wrestling with the issue, Jinnah recommended a secular republic from his deathbed. After Partition in 1947, Walsh explains, imams lost their sway in society, sinking to a status somewhere between a teacher and a tailor in the villages. That all changed when a pious general, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, seized power in 1977, hanging the democratically elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and opening the door to a "harsh unyeielding brand of Islam" imported from Saudi Arabia, whose princes and clerics Zia allowed to seed his country with madrassas. Then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan at the end of 1979 and Zia's Pakistan, instead of becoming an international pariah, was embraced by the west as a bastion against communism. Jinnah's dream for the "land of the pure" has been sacrificed to the two beasts of violent religious extremism and militarism. "Depending on who you asked, Islam or the army were supposed to be the glue holding the place together," Walsh writes. "Yet both, in their own way, seemed to be tearing it apart." By the end of Walsh's time in Pakistan, the winner in this epic struggle is clear: the ISI and the military machine that stands behind it. "It seemed to boil down to one hard truth: the military always wins," his realises as he prepares to leave, never to return. "When the ISI men come to the door, the illusion of a democratic state melts away."
Kirkus Review
Working back from when he was mysteriously expelled from Pakistan in 2013, journalist Walsh portrays the paroxysms that regularly grip this troubled country. From 2004 to 2013, the author lived in Pakistan as a journalist for the Guardian and then the New York Times, and he witnessed numerous tumultuous changes within the country, which has been ruled by the military for a large part of its history since the Partition from India in 1947. Relations between the countries soured, and Pakistan has been mired in corruption and violence for decades--a situation at odds with its name, which means "Land of the Pure." Pakistan was in the global spotlight during Benazir Bhutto's two terms as prime minister (1988-1990 and 1993-1996), but the nation's "fairy tale" period devolved after lurid revelations of her family's freewheeling corruption, and she was assassinated in 2007. After 9/11, Pakistan was excoriated by the Bush administration for harboring Taliban refugees and jihadi terrorists, in particular Osama bin Laden. In search of the country's profound sense of contradiction ("the cruel, ugly and downright terrifying side of Pakistan"), Walsh diligently investigates the character of a variety of relevant individuals, including Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who, "fearing Hindu domination, sought to create a Muslim homeland"; a fundamentalist who directed a "Waco-style siege in the heart of sleepy Islamabad," spouting jihadi slogans; Asma Jahangir, the "doyenne of Pakistan's human rights movement" who met the ruling generals head-on; and businessman and liberal politician Salmaan Taseer, who was assassinated for supporting a persecuted Christian woman's cause. Walsh also digs intriguingly into the mystery of the insurgencies that persistently plague the province of Balochistan. In 2018, an ex-spy finally revealed to the author why he was actually expelled. Some readers may wish for an epilogue or afterword that brings the story up to the present, but overall, this is a well-written, journalistically sound report. A dogged reporter and fluid writer offers a glimpse inside a seemingly impenetrable country, a "land of broken maps." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
