Pakistan: Eye of the Storm

This well-told, interesting, robust summary of Pakistan's 55 year old history is more than just the usual "run-of-the-mill country study." The author has talked to real Pakistanis, sampled their opinions, and mapped the nation's temperament and volatility back into its own desires, hopes and fears. It is a rich and dense biography of a much-troubled ally and nation. Strategically situated at the crossroads of some of the most important of international sensitivities, and beset with enough internal problems to place it at the very top of any objective list of the world's most unstable countries, Pakistan continues to muddle through, lurching from one deep-rooted crisis to another. Now that it has become "the first Islamic nuclear power," all of the stakes have been raised immeasurably to a whole new level. As a U.S. ally in the war on terror, it is a sobering thought that like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and even Iraq, Pakistan too could conceivably turn from our number one ally into our number one enemy almost over night. It is just a roll of the dice that keeps this troubled nation afloat and upright for the moment. It is this volatility and unpredictability that makes a deeper study of Pakistan essential for international relation watchers. Jones, a journalist who spent several years "on station" in Pakistan, brings a fresh but very "un-journalistic" approach to this national biography: It is not just another computer dump of a journalist log, but a well-told story, that unfolds chronologically and thematically; one that is linked to internal opinions as well as to the larger international picture. This is a very impressive book. Five stars

Pakistan's turbulent history and military rule is treated to a scholarly and in-depth analysis which describes many of the problems of modern Pakistan with an eye to probing their historical roots. Jones assesses regional conflict and influence within the country and provides an important, scholarly assessment of Pakistan's underlying foundations. College-level readers will find it involving.

The writer has done his best in this book to be turthfull and critical to its subject as it can. if you really wana know about pakistan, from its dirty politics to the real drama, this is a must read.very insightfull, someone who has really gone inside the skin and found out about the truth.

Most foreign correspondents never get to write the real story. Deadlines, impatient editors, lack of space and so forth all get in the way. This book tells you what is going on in a way that you will never read in the daily press. Bennett-Jones knows Pakistan from the mountains to the desert, and it shows. It's well-written, incisive, informative. It belongs on the bookshelf--or on the desk--of anyone with a serious interest in south Asia...

One of the things I began to look for after September 11 was a readable book about Pakistan. I did not have much luck. There were few books about that troubled country on bookstore shelves and the ones that were tended to be dry academic bits of prose.That's why Owen's book is such a valuable and timely addition to the limited collection of books about Pakistan. The author spent two years there as a BBC journalist and was witness to some of the crucial events in that country's recent history. He also had access to many of the key players who make Pakistan tick.But it's the writing style that wins me over the most. Owens does not write like an academic, but he doesn't give us a boring travelogue filled with hard to visualize first person impressions. Instead, you could argue that his book is written as a primer for people who don't know much about Pakistan. In just under three hundred pages of lively writing, he surveys all the major problems and issues facing that country. Kashmir, the atomic bomb, the 1999 coup, the role of the army in Pakistani society, it's all covered.My only criticism is this: at one point the author implies that the Taliban was one of the mujahideen groups that fought the Russians. That is certainly not correct. The Taliban movement only formed after the Russians left Afghanistan. It had fighters from that conflict in its ranks, but the organization did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan war. A small error, but I am surprised that Ahmed Rashid, the author of a very good book about the Taliban and someone who endoresed Owen's book, did not catch and correct. So, if I could I probably would have rated this book 4.5 stars. Oh, well.