Neither Illuminating nor Forensic -Book Review of Battle for Pakistan - Shuja Nawaz: Journal of Book Reviews

No high hopes were there when this scribe heard of this book. However I was deeply disappointed with the insertion of recommendations of so called eminent persons who had gained great dignities , in many cases through indignities !The name of General Petraeus in list of those who recommended the book left a bad impression since this is the careerist responsible for unnecessary death of many hundred US troops in Afghanistan.Riedel was another big disappointment in the list of Shujas book admirers since this man planned the total failure US surge in Afghanistan that led to pointless death of 1400 US troops.The first impression that I got was that Mr Nawaz is not good with his facts :-- Firstly US violations of Pakistan border were few in number , so Shuja’s claim that US invaded Pakistan at will is factually incorrect.And our so called brilliant analyst who also met this scribes brilliant coursemate LTG Nazeer Butt totally missed the most important US rape of Pakistani sovereignty i.e “ Gora Prayo”.Shuja is supremely evasive and non committal when he makes round about statements as below :-- He totally ignores and hoodwinks the sad fact that Pakistans founder Mr Mohammad Ali Jinnah had no clear vision of what Pakistan should be and had excessively misused Islam as a slogan at various points in his politics , more frequently between 1938 and 1947.He also forgets that Pakistani military who he finds helpless in front of growing Islamic extremism had played a most negative role in misuse of Islam in Pakistans undeclared wars from 1978 to 2001.Example statements like below:-- Statements by Mr Shuja Nawaz as below are also questionable and do not stand the heat of hard facts of history:-- Afghanistan as a state chose confrontation with Pakistan as a political gambit for much of its history and the trade hub that Nawaz talks about is pre Utopia which armchair thinkers like Shuja Nawaz can concoct from the safety of their homes in USA.Trade with India was simply impossible while Iran never had any serious trade relations with Pakistan because of simple geographical constraints.Here Shuja is considerably off the mark.Above all a major culprit was USA in snubbing Afghanistan in its request for US aid , which forced Afghanistan to look north , thus whole of Afghanistans economy and communication was heavily biased towards the USSR.Pakistan could have done little about it.Shujas utopia is seriously misplaced when he make statements as below on page -34