FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 06/22/05
CONTACT: Jennifer Linker, 202/939-2372, jlinker@CarnegieEndowment.org

“In this cogent, well-informed and extraordinarily informative book, Husain Haqqani describes in detail the unholy alliance between Islamists and military officers…An important and disturbing tale, deftly told.”  Andrew J. Bacevich, author

Pakistan today is both a breeding ground for radical Islam and a key ally in U.S. efforts to eliminate terror worldwide. In a fascinating political history, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, distinguished journalist, diplomat, and government insider Husain Haqqani provides unprecedented insight into Pakistan and the origins of the historical alliance between Islamists and Pakistan’s military.

In the book Haqqani argues that since the country’s inception, its leaders have played upon religious sentiment as an instrument for strengthening national identity. Islamization, he writes, has been an extension of a concerted state ideology, not an aberration. But while Pakistani leaders court religious nationalism to advance their personal—and in case of the military, institutional—agendas, they have rarely been able to control its less desirable effects. Radical and violent manifestations of Islamist ideology, which sometimes appear to threaten Pakistan’s stability, are in Haqqani’s view, a state project gone wrong.

The United States and Pakistan have been allies off and on since the 1950s but the two countries enter the alliance with totally divergent objectives. That has led to their parting of ways in the past, and Haqqani warns that there could a parting of ways again, unless Pakistan’s imperatives are understood, and dealt with, in Washington.

From counter-terrorism to nonproliferation, effective cooperation with Pakistan is a sine qua non for the success of critical U.S. foreign policy goals. The harrowing discovery of the A. Q. Khan network in 2003—a Pakistan-based operation selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran, and Libya—is a recent example of this troubled interdependence. Given the central role Pakistan plays in reaching key U.S. foreign policy objectives, the partnership will be a priority well into the future.

Visit http://www.CarnegieEndowment.org/Pakistan for excerpts and ordering information.

Husain Haqqani, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and associate professor at Boston University, is a journalist, former diplomat and advisor to Pakistani prime ministers.
 
Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military  
July 2005, 380 pp.  
$17.95/ paper: 0-87003-214-3  
$35.95/ cloth: 0-87003-223-2  

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