An incomplete project

Recent works on Pakistan's post-colonial history by Anatol Lieven (Pakistan: A Hard Country) and Ian Talbot (Pakistan: A New History) have adopted a thematic approach to understand the country's problems of governance, civil-military relations and the threat from Islamic militancy. In their book A Political History of Pakistan, 1947-2007, Vyacheslavn Y Belokrenitsky and Vladimir N Moskalenko favour a straightforward narrative account which blends description with analysis. While Lieven turns to oral sources and Talbot has utilised archival material, the book under review is largely a synthesis of published works. This represents a missed opportunity, especially when considering key moments in Pakistan's history such as the 1965 War and the subsequent Tashkent meeting, when recourse to Russian archives could have provided a potentially fresh insight. But more of this later; what do Belokrenitsky and Moskalenko tell us about Pakistan's political history and its chequered experience with democracy that stands in such contrast to the experience of its Indian neighbour?

Perhaps because of the range of secondary material consulted, the reader is presented with a conventional analysis which emphasises the failure of the first experiment with democracy in the 1950s in terms of political weakness and the creeping militarisation and bureaucratisation which began in the middle of the decade and culminated in Ayub Khan's coup of October 1958. Growing US military and economic assistance in the Cold War context is discussed but the way in which this encouraged the army to develop a group interest is omitted from the narrative. While Ayub, like subsequent coup makers, justified his action in terms of the national interest, the army by this time had developed vested interests as a result of its penetration of Pakistan's economy and society. The coup in 1958 extended this process, giving rise to what some authors have described as a process of 'path dependency'. It was under later Pakistani military leaders, however that the 'Milbus' developed to its greatest extent. (See Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy London:Pluto, 2007).