Reviewed here:
To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan, by Nicholas Schmidle
Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al-Qaeda, by Gretchen Peters
Pakistan is in flames. The Pakistan neo-Taliban insurgency has taken over large portions of Swat, the once idyllic Switzerland of Pakistan where Lollywood (the Pakistani Bollywood) movies were once filmed. The Pakistan army has finally fought back, and 2.4 million refugees from Swat have fled the fighting and now constitute the largest number of internally displaced people in the country. That is in addition to 1.8 million Afghan refugees residing in Pakistan.
Portions of the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan are effectively Taliban-controlled. While the world's attention was turned to Iraq and then Afghanistan, Pakistan slipped into the abyss of a civil war with a Taliban and jihadi insurgency.
To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan
, by Nicholas Schmidle, Henry Holt, 254 pages, $28
Nicholas Schmidle, an enterprising young U.S. journalist, has had an excellent adventure. He spent two tumultuous years in Pakistan and managed to visit trouble spots before they became headline news: jihadis ensconced in the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, Taliban fighters overrunning Swat and North Waziristan, ethnic conflict between Pashtuns and mohajirs (immigrants from India) in Karachi, and a secular nationalist separatist movement in Baluchistan. His reportage offers genuine insight into the travails of a nation ravaged by violence and political instability. Unusually, he develops an evident fondness for the people he meets and befriends. That quintessentially American trait of the innocent abroad allows him to delve into the existential challenges confronting Pakistan today.
While Schmidle was residing in the Pakistani capital, several thousand young men and women based at the Red Mosque launched a Taliban-like campaign in January, 2007. They threatened owners of DVD and CD stores for selling “vulgar videos,” intimidated women and contributed to an aura of fear and instability.
Unlike a typical mosque, this one was stacked with grenade launchers, Kalashnikovs and DVD-burning facilities for churning out propaganda videos. Many of the students at the Lal Masjid were from the tribal areas. Militants from the A-list of Pakistani jihadi paramilitary groups also lived in the mosque.
Reading Schmidle's portrait, one is struck by the multiple crises of state and society – political, military, economic – afflicting Pakistan
The Lal Masjid is fronted by Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who has professed his sympathy for Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the Taliban. Schmidle desperately wishes to interview Ghazi. However, introductions are required. Khalid Khawaja, a former Pakistani military intelligence operative with self-professed ties to bin Laden, makes the introduction. Schmidle is a bit nervous (Khawaja made similar introductions for Daniel Pearl) and tells his new American bride that if he doesn't return, send out the posse. In one almost-amusing encounter with a militant group, he asks whether he should identify himself as a Canadian. His handler replies, “It doesn't matter. To these guys, you are all infidels.”
Ghazi is a charismatic leader appealing to the young and disenfranchised whose marginalization fuels their radicalization. He is articulate, speaks English fluently and compares himself to Rudolph Giuliani, wishing to clean up his city. Schmidle views him as iconic of the seismic shift to an Islamism that is anti-democratic and impatient for radical change.
In July, 2007, the army launched an assault against the Lal Masjid. Hundreds of commandos assaulted the building and credible estimates were that several hundred died. Schmidle suggests that the indiscriminate action breathed new life into the jihadis , who chanted, “The blood of our martyrs will not go to waste” and “Ghazi! Ghazi! From your blood the revolution will come!” Schmidle whimsically writes about Ghazi in a Washington Post op-ed article, My Buddy, the Jihadi. His family is horrified (father and brother are both Marines).
In October, 2007, Schmidle decides to visit Swat, where the Taliban had effectively taken control of Mingora, the provincial capital. Our enterprising journalist dyes his blond hair dark and dons a scarf. His guide contacts the local Taliban commander for safe passage. Both guide and journalist are petrified when they encounter Taliban fighters with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs and who appear like “Viking raiders.” There was no discernible military or government presence that could resist the militants barely four hours from Islamabad.
