The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics by Ayesha Jalal (review)

In recent studies of Pakistan, the words “hard,” “struggle,” and “failure” frequently have arisen, as scholars have attempted to tease out the complicated history of a country which has faced numerous struggles in achieving and maintaining independent nation-statehood. Historians and political scientists alike — often with an eye on the present day, and focusing specifically on the nato withdrawal from Afghanistan and its regional impact — have turned to the issue of Pakistan’s survival and sustainability, focusing directly or obliquely on the question of whether the Pakistani state will fail. Ayesha Jalal offers one such approach to this question in her new book, The Struggle for Pakistan; happily, Jalal sees room for some optimism, as she emphasizes various elements and events within the nation that could help reassert stability and (ultimately, hopefully) democracy.

The Struggle for Pakistan is effectively a history of the state in Pakistan. Jalal charts the rise and fall of the civilian and military governments that have ruled over Pakistan; moving chronologically, she begins with the political negotiations by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League in the 1930s that ultimately resulted — regardless of Jinnah’s intentions — in an independent “Muslim homeland” within South Asia before progressing into the post-1947/post-independence era and ultimately into the twenty-first century. After explaining Pakistan’s roots, Jalal then turns to Jinnah’s legacy in independent Pakistan, emphasizing how quickly Jinnah’s vision for a secular nation-state faded and particularly focusing on how a series of politicians and civilian and military leaders used and abused the idea of a Muslim homeland to obtain and maintain political power, usually to the detriment of democracy and public engagement.

In her analysis of the political dynamics that have led to the prevalence of the Pakistan Army in national politics, Jalal rightly points out that issues of national security and sovereignty have driven the army’s intervention, as well as many of the political decisions taken by the country’s leaders. Concerns about the state’s security, in turn, frequently have been moulded by foreign and domestic events. The global Cold War and the subsequent War on Terror, both of which played out on and in Pakistan’s northwestern borderlands, have had lasting impacts on Pakistan’s regional relations with Afghanistan and India, as well as on the Pakistani state’s relations with its own Pakhtun citizens, particularly in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Within Pakistan, Jalal emphasizes the provincial, linguistic, and ethnic tensions that have undermined national unity, leading most starkly to the breakaway and independence of Bangladesh in 1971. The domination of Punjab — both real and imagined — is a clear theme of the book, a point which is further emphasized by Jalal’s focus on the top echelons of Pakistani governance, which themselves have been largely Punjabi.

Jalal’s previous works will be familiar to any scholar of Pakistan, or likely any scholar of twentieth-century South Asia. The Struggle for Pakistan very clearly reasserts many of the arguments she has made in previous works such as The Sole Spokesman, The State of Martial Rule, and Democracy and Authoritarianism; just as usefully, Jalal brings her previous works into dialogue with each other, clearly linking her thinking on the role of Muhammad Ali Jinnah as “father” of Pakistan to her other work addressing the rise of the security state in Pakistan. Moving into newer territory, The Struggle for Pakistan actively links Pakistan’s historical trajectory to its current politics; Jalal offers a particularly clear explanation of the rise of Pakistan’s notoriously influential intelligence services and its continued influence on Pakistan’s political leadership. Jalal also tantalizingly hints at the various elements of Pakistani society that have resisted the country’s increased militarization and its leaders’ dictatorial leanings. She pays particular attention to the role of the judiciary and the lawyers’ movement, while also mentioning Pakistan’s middle-class intelligentsia and artistic communities. Jalal’s discussion of these...