by Youssef Aboul-Enein
Download the Full Article: Current Books on Pakistan, Shiism, and Saudi Arabia: Thinking Beyond Usama Bin Laden
I spend a significant amount of time conducting seminars on Islam, Islamist Political Theories, and Militant Islamist Groups to units deploying to the Middle East, as well as to leaders attending the National Defense University. Part of the benefits of teaching, is a requirement to keep current on books recently published about the region. I hope to give you an overview of books I enjoyed and others that were much more challenging and do not garner my immediate recommendation. Three current books will be featured in this review essay, one each on Pakistan, Shiism, and Saudi Arabia. Let us begin with a book that gets my vote as required reading for 2011, Anatol Lieven's new book on Pakistan.
Download the Full Article: Current Books on Pakistan, Shiism, and Saudi Arabia: Thinking Beyond Usama Bin Laden
Commander Aboul-Enein is author of "Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat," (Naval Institute Press, 2010). He is Adjunct Islamic Studies Chair at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) and Senior Counter-Terrorism Advisor at the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism. Commander Aboul-Enein wishes to thank the National Defense University Librarians for directing him to a few of these books. Good teaching demands great librarians. Finally he wishes to thank his ICAF colleague CAPT Chan Swallow, USN for his edits that enhanced this review and more importantly his discussion of these books.
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Comments
I have just started to read "Packistan: A Hard Country". I have considered the split of what might be considered to be a "greater India" into five different countries to be a disaster. This ius especially true of India and Packistan. I have a deep interest in the region since I did my history MA on the Russo-British frontier disturbances in the latter part of the 19th century. I am looking forward to seeing if this work will shed a 30,000ft look at the region.
Um, I am revisiting this thread because I don't want to sound too harsh when talking about the UK. And I'm a huge fan of the Kings of War blog (which represents the Kings College London War Studies Department and all that).
I have a huge interest in the Anglosphere. I am as much of an Anglophile as my background will allow me to be....
Frankly, I feel for their security services, you know? Whose cockamamie idea was it to turn London into a hotbed of radicalism via large amounts of immigrations? Post-colonial guilt run amuck. I mean, this is someone named <em>MADHU</em> saying this. Sheesh. Dampen immigration, cut aid to India and Pakistan, and buy your troops some new helicopters. If the Indians complain, tell 'em killing Terry Taliban is much better for them than stupid aid regimes anyway.
At any rate, a fan of the Anglosphere and the Brits and I think the relationship will continue to be important for Americans. I just think NATO in Asia doesn't make much sense. We can stand a smaller relationship with Pakistan and it would do us good, frankly. The UK would have a hard time with such a break which is probably why some in their political establishment try and influence us otherwise, I imagine....
But I might be making all of that up.
We should pay more attention to our own hemisphere, IMO.
Omar:
Now, this is your rhetorical strength in blog commenting! You say what you think.
I was trying to be polite. I suppose the State Dept. finds the scholarship useful, hence the Washington Post opinion article.
Praveen Swami does point out some interesting points for discussion:
1. Not speaking any local languages.
2. The curious place the Pakistani military has had in, er, post-colonial British foriegn policy.
3. There are many good books written in English <em>by Pakistanis</em> and entirely appropriate for an American military audience. Personally, I would start with one of those books but the more the merrier, intellectually speaking. I will still buy and read the book.
Not to get too carried away with cheap "pop" psychology, but what is the deal with all that Rudyard Kipling-ish "brave fighting Pathans" stuff you find here and there on some British and American military sites? The contemporary version: "why, the men I've personally worked with over there brave blah smart blah know-their-stuff blah blah blah."
I suppose I'd do the same too. But personal relationships won't help you understand the whole picture. That's all I'm saying....
You might find the following quotes interesting, omar:
<em>He won respect even from some of his political enemies for his lack of vindictiveness. It was said his repression , unlike that of his predecessor stopped with individuals and was not extended to attempts to destroy their families. From that point of view he had some claim..to be remembered as an honourable man
--Anatol Lieven the Times of London, on Zia ul-Haq </em>
http://takhalus.blogspot.com/2011/05/pakistan-anatol-lieven.html
This is interesting too:
<em>ANATOL LIEVEN: Although in some ways I would see the ISI as a somewhat disobedient and recalcitrant baby elephant, rather than an enormous elephant, in that in the end, I'm quite convinced, at least when it comes to strategic questions, they are firmly under the command of the military. After all, the present chief of staff of the Pakistani military, General Kayani, was previously, himself, head of the ISI.</em>
http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/transcripts/0380.html
A baby elephant, eh? Charming image, Madhu says drily....
As an American of Indian heritage, I will say this: trust yourselves, fellow Americans. We have our own history in that region and it may be that the optimum security relationships for our country may not overlap entirely with that of some of our NATO partners.
And that is all that I am going to say on that topic for the time being.
(Except for this: NATO-Russia Cold War thinking may not work for this particular era.)
Anatol Bahadur is over-rated, but perhaps it is inevitable that a western audience would prefer him (he is not totally hopeless and may serve as a bridge to more nuanced analysis?). Praveen Sami does a good job of pointing out many of his deficiencies. The underlying problems seems to be that Lieven is unaware of his own biases and see everything through some kind of Raj-Liberal-Politicallycorrect glasses that he does not even know he is wearing.
Marvelous. Love book reviews. Nice collection.
I plan to read Dr. Lieven's book at some point, but here I note another review (link at end of comment). I think it is helpful for Americans to move beyond standard narratives of "South Asia" that are a combination of residua from our own Cold War history in the region, current security imperatives, and perhaps conflicting security agendas in Asia between various NATO partners - an organization meant to deal with European realities somehow transported to an entirely different reality. Here is a link to Praveen Swami's discussion of the book in Literary Review:
http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/327/342/8916/3/6?dps