Tariq Ali's the Duel Reviewed by Mohammed Hanif

In the introduction to his third book on Pakistan, Tariq Ali quotes a friend who asked if it wasn't reckless to start a book about the country when the dice were still in the air. Ali's reply: he would never have been able to write anything about Pakistan if he had waited for the dice to fall. Ali has had an uncanny record of foreseeing the way things are going. In his 1969 book Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power he foretold the imminent break-up of Pakistan, a shocking prediction at the time which came true within two years. In the 80s, Can Pakistan Survive? caused outrage within the Pakistani establishment, but two decades later, on the cover of every current affairs magazine and in every TV talk show, not only is Pakistan being branded the most dangerous place on earth but it has even been suggested that the world's end is being planned there. The Duel is less concerned with the trajectory of the dice than with why they've been in the air for more than 60 years and who threw them.

1. The Duel
2. : Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power
3. by Tariq Ali
4. pp304,
5. Simon & Schuster,
6. £17.99
7. 

1. Buy Duel at the Guardian bookshop

When I heard the title of the book earlier this year, I thought it had a certain poetic flourish. As American drones started pounding the tribal areas of Pakistan and its ruling elite tried to convince their people that it's for their own good, it turned out to be devastatingly literal.

But The Duel is not the familiar quick round-up of recycled headlines peppered with inane quotes from anonymous intelligence sources rattling off their theories about jihadists taking over Pakistan's nuclear devices, the jihadists taking over Pakistan, and then Pakistan destroying western civilisation as we know it. Not since Ayesha Siddiqa's groundbreaking work Military Inc has there been such a well-informed and articulate account of the country's history.

Ali has a simple advantage: he knows his subject. He can turn many of the lazy assumptions about Pakistan on their heads merely by providing context. In the opening chapter he gives a detailed account of the Lal Mosque debacle, a week-long televised siege of the militant hideout in the heart of the Pakistani capital, which brought all the factions of the Pakistani Taliban together and resulted in a wave of suicide attacks that culminated in the horrific bombing of Islamabad's Marriott Hotel.