India's Exploding Book Market Rewards Anti-Pakistan Authors, Publishers

[Riaz Haq]

Have you ever wondered why the publication of anti-Pakistan books has become a major growth industry today? The answer is simple: Authors and publishers of books about Pakistan know where the money is. It's in India where the book sales are rising rapidly in the midst of continuing global decline. Strong profit motive drives them to write what Indians want to read. Those, like Professor Wendy Doniger of University of Chicago, who ignore this reality are punished by having their books withdrawn and pulped. No publisher wants to take this risk now. And authors who wish to get published have to understand it too.

Indian Book Market:

India's English language book market is the world's third largest, behind that of the United States at the top and of the United Kingdom at number 2.  It is the fastest growing market today which will make India the world's number 1 market in the next ten years.  It could happen sooner if the book sales in the US and the UK decline faster or those in India grow more rapidly than they are already.

India's Pakistan Narrative:

The best way to understand the Indian narrative about Pakistan today is to read "The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World" by Canada's McGill University Professor Thazha Varkey Paul, a graduate of India's Jawaharlal Nehru University, who describes Pakistan as a "warrior state" and a "conspicuous failure". It is among a slew of recently published anti-Pakistan books by mainly Indian and western authors which paint Pakistan as a rogue state which deserves to be condemned, isolated and sanctioned by the international community.  Others, including Christine Fair and Husain Haqqani have also used the same narrative to get a lot of buzz and sell books in India and the West.

Christine Fair's About-Face:

C. Christine Fair is an assistant professor in the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She has only recently wised up to the opportunity to sell lots of books in India.

Before writing and promoting "Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War", an anti-Pakistan book, American analyst and author Christine Fair said this in 2009: "Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan".

Husain Haqqani's Double Game:

Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani ambassador to US, has been the darling of India and the West since the publication of his book "Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military" in 2005. He has recently followed it up with another Pakistan-bashing book "Magnificent Delusions" in which he accuses Pakistan of lying and playing a double-game with the West.

Washington Post's Richard Lieby's review summed up the book in the following words: "Read his book and you might think Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington from 2008 to 2011, is no friend of his homeland. Its leaders are liars, double-dealers and shakedown artists, he says. They have been this way for decades, and, as Haqqani ably documents, the United States often has served as Pakistan’s willing dupe. But for all its criticism of Pakistan, “Magnificent Delusions”is a necessary prescriptive: If there’s any hope of salvaging what seems like a doomed relationship, it helps to know how everything went so wrong. Haqqani is here to tell us."

If one really analyses Haqqani's narrative, one has to conclude that Pakistanis are extraordinarily clever in deceiving the United States and its highly sophisticated policymakers who have been taken for a ride by Pakistanis for over 6 decades. It raises the following questions:

Question 1: Given the belief that Pakistan would not survive, how did the country defy such expectations? What role did its "villainous" military play in its political and economic survival? What does the history say about rapid economic development of Pakistan under military regimes?

Question 2: Wouldn't any country that suffered a military invasion by its much larger neighbor and its break-up be justified in feeling threatened? Wouldn't such a country build deterrence against further adventures by its bigger neighbor?

Question 3:  If the standard western narrative is correct, why have successive US administrations been so naive and gullible as to be duped by Pakistan's politicians and generals for such a long period of time? Is it not an indictment of all US administrations from Harry S. Truman's to Barack H. Obama's?

Question 4:  What role did Pakistan play in the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union?

 Question 5:  What price has Pakistan paid for facilitating US military operations in Afghanistan? How many Pakistani soldiers and civilians have lost their lives since 911?

Debunking TV Paul's Narrative: 

TV Paul describes Pakistan as a "warrior state" and a "conspicuous failure". Is it really?

Let's do a point-by-point examination of Paul's narrative:

1. Paul argues: Seemingly from its birth, Pakistan has teetered on the brink of becoming a failed state.

In 1947 at the time of independence, Pakistan was described as a "Nissen hut or a tent" by British Viceroy of India Lord Mountbatten in a conversation with Jawarhar Lal Nehru. However, Pakistan defied this expectation that it would not survive as an independent nation and the partition of India would be quickly reversed. Pakistan not only survived but thrived with its economic growth rate easily exceeding the "Hindu growth rate" in India for most of its history.

Agriculture Value Added Per Capita in 2000 US $. Source: World Bank

Even now when the economic growth rate has considerably slowed, Pakistan has lower levels of poverty and hunger than its neighbor India, according UNDP and IFPRI. The key reason for lower poverty in Pakistan is its per capita value added in agriculture which is twice that of India. Agriculture employs 40% of Pakistanis and 60% of Indians. The poor state of rural India can be gauged by the fact that an Indian farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes.

2. Paul: Its economy is as dysfunctional as its political system is corrupt; both rely heavily on international aid for their existence.

The fact is that foreign to aid to Pakistan has been declining as a percentage of its GDP since 1960s when it reached a peak of 11% of GDP in 1963. Today, foreign aid makes up less than 2% of its GDP of $240 billion.

Foreign Aid as Percentage of Pakistan GDP. Source: World Bank

3. Paul: Taliban forces occupy 30 percent of the country.

 The Taliban "occupy" a small part of FATA called North Waziristan which is about 4,700 sq kilometers, about 0.5% of its 796,000 sq kilometers area. Talking about insurgents "occupying" territory, about 40% of Indian territory is held by Maoist insurgents in the "red corridor" in Central India, according to Indian security analyst Bharat Verma.

4. Paul: It possesses over a hundred nuclear weapons that could easily fall into terrorists' hands.

A recent assessment by Nuclear Threat Initiative ranked Pakistan above India on "Nuclear Materials Security Index".

5. Paul: Why, in an era when countries across the developing world are experiencing impressive economic growth and building democratic institutions, has Pakistan been such a conspicuous failure?

Pakistan's nominal GDP has quadrupled from $60 billion in 2000 to $240 billion now. Along with total GDP, Pakistan's GDP per capita has also grown significantly over the years, from about $500 in Year 2000 to $1000 per person in 2007 on President Musharraf's watch, elevating it from a low-income to a middle-income country in the last decade.I wouldn't call that a failure.

Pakistan Per Capita GDP 1960-2012. Source: World Bank

Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill, the economist who coined BRIC, has put Pakistan among the Next 11 group in terms of growth in the next several decades.

6. Paul argues that the "geostrategic curse"--akin to the "resource curse" that plagues oil-rich autocracies--is at the root of Pakistan's unique inability to progress. Since its founding in 1947, Pakistan has been at the center of major geopolitical struggles: the US-Soviet rivalry, the conflict with India, and most recently the post 9/11 wars.

Pakistan is no more a warrior state that many others in the world. It spends no more than 3.5% of its GDP on defense, lower than most of the nations of the world.

7. Paul says: No matter how ineffective the regime is, massive foreign aid keeps pouring in from major powers and their allies with a stake in the region.The reliability of such aid defuses any pressure on political elites to launch the far-reaching domestic reforms necessary to promote sustained growth, higher standards of living, and more stable democratic institutions.

"Massive foreign aid" adds up to less than 1% of Pakistan's GDP. Pakistan's diaspora sends it over 5% of Pakistan's GDP in remittances.

8. Paul: Excessive war-making efforts have drained Pakistan's limited economic resources without making the country safer or more stable. Indeed, despite the regime's emphasis on security, the country continues to be beset by widespread violence and terrorism.

Pakistan Defense Spending as % of GDP Source: World Indicators

 In spite of declining military spending which is just 3.5% of its GDP now which is average for its size, Pakistan has achieved strategic parity with India by developing nuclear weapons. It has since prevented India from invading Pakistan as it did in 1971 to break up the country. Pakistani military has shown in Swat in 2009 that it is quite capable of dealing with insurgents when ordered to do so by the civilian govt.

Growth in Asia's Middle Class. Source: Asian Development Bank

While it is true that Pakistan has not lived up to its potential when compared with other US Cold War allies in East and Southeast Asia, it is wrong to describe it as "conspicuous failure". Pakistan should be compared with other countries in South Asia region, not East Asia or Southeast Asia. Comparison with its South Asian neighbors India and Bangladesh shows that an average Pakistani is less poor, less hungry and more upwardly mobile, according to credible data from multiple independent sources.

Conclusion: 

Pakistan is neither a "warrior state" nor a "conspicuous failure" as argued by Professor TV Paul. To the contrary, it has been the victim of the invading Indian Army in 1971 which cut off  its eastern wing. Pakistan has built a minimum nuclear deterrent in response to India's development of a nuclear arsenal. Pakistan has responded to the 1971 trauma by ensuring that such a tragedy does not happen again, particularly through a foreign invasion.

Pakistan is a complex country. It is much more upwardly mobile than many of its neighbors, including India.  While the country is suffering growing pains like any other developing nation, the false narrative of exaggeration of its difficulties being promoted by a flurry of books bashing Pakistan is driven more by desire for commerce than by serious academic search for truth. Assertions made in such books fall apart when subjected to the close scrutiny that I have done in this post.

Today, Pakistan faces some of the toughest challenges of its existence. It has to deal with the Taliban insurgency and a weak economy. It has to solve its deepening energy crisis. It has to address growing water scarcity. While I believe Pakistanis are a very resilient and determined people, the difficult challenges they face will test them, particularly their leaders who have been falling short of their expectations in recent years.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Debunking TV Paul

Challenging Gall-Haqqani-Paul Narrative

Looking Back at 1940 Lahore Resolution

Pakistan's Economic History

History of Literacy in Pakistan

Upwardly Mobile Pakistan

Asian Tigers Brought Prosperity

Value Added Agriculture in Pakistan

Are India and Pakistan Failed States?

Musharraf Accelerated Growth of Pakistan's Financial and Human Capital

Pakistan's Nuclear Program

Pakistan on Goldman Sachs' BRIC+N11 Growth Map

[Riaz Haq]

With a collection of over 200,000 individual titles, Saeed Book Bank in Jinnah Super Market is considered to be one of Asia’s largest bookstores. The founder and owner of the store, Saeed Jan Qureshi, has been involved in the business for almost 60 years. Dawn spoke to Mr Qureshi about the business of selling books.

Q. How did you end up in the book business?

A. After leaving my hometown in Tando Ghulam Ali in Sindh in 1956, I took up employment at the London Book House because I love books. To this day, I stay up reading till 3am every night. I also liked the kind of people who came to bookstores - educated and generally well-mannered. In 1964, I opened my own bookstore in Peshawar called Saeed Book Bank.

We did good business. We were the biggest bookstore in the north-western Pakistan and Afghanistan. There was frequent movement of people, tourism thrived and people would travel all the way from Kandahar and Kabul to shop at our store.

Thirty-six years later, politics had changed Peshawar. We also wanted to expand so in 2000, we opened the Islamabad branch.

Q. There is a general global decline in book sales, how is that affecting your business?

A. There may be a decline in sales globally, but fortunately in Pakistan and India, book sales are actually going up. The reason is the growth in population and even literacy rate. The trend of reading e-books on handheld devices may have affected book sales in the developed world but not here.

This is despite the fact that the Pakistani government has never taken steps to encourage the book business. Importing a book costs 18 per cent of the price, including taxes and transportation costs. In India the book business is thriving because the government offered publishers lucrative incentives.

The government even buys back any unsold book stocks from publishers at 10 per cent higher than the cost.

For Saeed Book Bank, in particular, business is good because of our scale. We import much of our stock. Publishers around the world know us and offer us better prices than smaller buyers. This allows us to offer competitive prices. Some publishers in the United Kingdom and the United States even offer us refunds on any unsold stock.

Secondly, even though it is a small city, Islamabad is a big market for books. It’s a city of diplomats and officers, so many people read. Book lovers from all over the region, come and shop at Saeed Book Bank. We even export books to South Africa, Nigeria and China.

Q. How do you choose the titles for your stock?

A. One needs years of experience and a lot of research to know which titles to stock. There are some obvious choices, such as authors who always sell such as Pervez Musharraf.

People place orders for books by these authors, before the book is even out. Then there are current topics in non-fiction books such as Taliban, terrorism, Kashmir which we know people are interested in and we stock-up on them.

To order latest titles, my sons and I travel to the world’s biggest book fairs. At these fairs, the biggest one of which is in Germany, publishers from around the world display latest titles. Booksellers like us, place orders with publishers at the fair and later stocks are delivered. This is how we ensure that we have all the latest titles.

Q. Is it true that your bookstore drove smaller shops selling cheap and second-hand books out of business?

It is true, although it was not our intention. Most other book sellers in the city buy containers of what we call pulp books from the United Kingdom and the United States. These are books which would otherwise have been recycled and are instead sold by weight to booksellers in the developing world. So, they are sold at very cheap prices and even if five to 10 per cent of the stock is sold, it is profitable for the seller.



http://www.dawn.com/news/1166006/

[Riaz Haq]

From Newsweek about Lahore Literary Festival:


The hope that one day Pakistan will escape from the clutches of jihadist terrorism, corrupt politicians and an overbearing army came alive last weekend at the Lahore Literary Festival, where mostly young audiences averaging 25,000 people a day applauded criticisms and wider worries about the functioning of the country as well as enjoying other sessions on literature and the arts.

The festival took place in the shadow of a bomb blast in the city on February 17 that killed more than six people, but it matched the famous Jaipur Literature Festival for the mood, the energy and the excitement in the relaxed surroundings of the Alhambra Arts Centre, and it beat Jaipur for passion.

The enthusiasm during the three days was evident not only from the audience participation, but also from long lines of people waiting outside the five auditoriums and a queue that stretched 100 yards at a well stocked bookshop. People remembered and celebrated how Lahore had always been a center for the arts.

The secret that the organizers kept to themselves until the end was that the Punjab state government, worried about security risks, had canceled permission for the festival to take place on the afternoon before it was due to start, just as people were arriving from abroad and other parts of Pakistan. It took Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister and elder brother of Punjab’s chief minister Shabaz, to intervene and give the permission at 9 p.m. that evening.

Some music and other outside events were canceled, but otherwise the festival went ahead without fuss and included a stimulating exhibition that displayed the country’s vibrant contemporary art scene. There were several rings of highly visible security around the venue, though the police and other guards looked relatively relaxed and showed none of the officious heavy presence one would expect in India. A couple of foreign governments and agencies, including the British Council, panicked because of the bomb blast and withdrew approval for their sponsored speakers’ presence.

“People are almost surprised to see themselves here,” I was told by Salima Hashmi, a painter and writer, and daughter of the famous Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz. “They see it almost as an act of defiance, and they are speaking with the freedom to say what they want.”

http://www.newsweek.com/lahore-talking-books-and-politics-310280

[Riaz Haq]

Excerpt of Aqil Shah on TV Paul's book "Warrior State" and Christine Fair's "Fighting to the End": 

" ...claims in The Warrior State are contestable on several grounds.
One, both South Korea and Taiwan enjoyed varying degrees of external
security guarantees from the United States, so they had a better chance of
prioritizing economics over warfare. Two, and unlike ethnically divided
Pakistan, both South Korea and Taiwan were also homogenous societies,
which ultimately facilitated their transitions to democracy by insulating
them from the potential challenge of peacefully accommodating ethnic
diversity. Finally, neither Turkey nor Indonesia was even half as insecure
as Pakistan, and their main security threats were internal. Hence, as Paul
himself concedes, neither had the need to overspend on defense or develop
the tools, such as the use of nonstate actors, needed to fight a much stronger
external enemy (p. 165).
Second, he attributes Pakistan’s thwarted development to its geographic
location, which has put a “geostrategic curse” on the country (pp. 3, 15,
21–22, 33). According to the book, this strategic curse works much like the well-known curse of natural resources. In return for serving (and at
times undermining) U.S. security interests, Pakistan’s elites have enjoyed
access to strategic rents, which has discouraged them from expanding the
state’s extractive capacity to achieve the economic strength required for
maintaining the security competition with India (pp. 18–23).
This “rentier” thesis has much going for it but leaves one question
unanswered: why did Pakistan not reform itself when the strategic rents
dried up—for example, in 1965–80 and 1990–2001? Paul alludes to the
path-dependent nature of ideas (p. 23), so it is reasonable to infer that even
in the absence of U.S. military aid, Pakistani elites continued to harbor their
hyper-realpolitik strategic assumptions. However, it is not clear where these
assumptions come from, or how they stick. On closer analysis, it appears
more plausible that once Pakistan’s founding fathers adopted a warrior state
strategy in response to structural insecurity at the outset of independence,
these Hobbesian beliefs developed a life of their own, especially because the
powerful military institution internalized them. "


"Fair seems to discount the role of political learning on elite
attitudes and behavior. As the case of Brazil and other Latin American
countries demonstrates, the experience of authoritarian government can
unite political elite against military praetorianism and electoral competition
can create incentives for them to erode the military’s undue political and
strategic influence. Pakistan’s most recent transition from authoritarian rule
in 2007–8 has revealed that major political parties like the Pakistan Peoples
Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) have learned
their lessons from exile, incarceration, and repression under authoritarian
rule and appear strongly committed to the democratic process. In May 2013,
Pakistan broke its seemingly permanent curse of zero democratic turnover
of power from one full-term elected government to another when the PPP
government completed its five-year tenure and Nawaz Sharif’s opposition
PML-N won the parliamentary elections to form a new government. As Fair
herself admits, this successful transition was made possible in good part by
Sharif’s ability to resist the temptation of knocking on the garrison’s door
to unseat the PPP government (p. 265). "

http://www.nbr.org/publications/asia_policy/free/ap19/AsiaPolicy19_...

[Riaz Haq]

John G. Gill's review of books on Pakistan by TV Paul, Christine Fair and Aqil Shah:

As for the individual books, it would have been interesting to see
Fair and Paul examine how the Pakistan Army defines concepts such as
“friends” and “interests” in the international context. Fair approaches this
in her review of the army’s hagiographic treatment of China as compared
with the generally vitriolic rhetoric reserved for the United States, and
Paul touches on this issue when he depicts Pakistan as viewing the world
through a Hobbesian prism. But it would have been enlightening if they
had carried this line of thinking a few steps further. Shah, on the other
hand, may be too critical of the army in some of its recent interactions with
the civilian elements of the state. The former chief of staff of the Pakistan
army, General Ashfaq Kayani, for one, allegedly tried but failed to elicit
strategic guidance from the civilian leadership. Having cleared and held
zones of militancy such as Swat, the army may also legitimately complain
that civilian authorities are conspicuous by their absence when the time
comes for the military to withdraw. Furthermore, the army is the object of 

urgent importunities by groups across the political spectrum whenever a
domestic crisis arises. For example, Shah might have explicitly addressed
the thorny issues associated with the army’s role—if any—when elected
officials undermine the political system through corruption, ineptitude, or
megalomaniac behavior. Breaking out of this destructive cycle requires civil
as well as military vision and steadfastness.
These lacunae and desiderata notwithstanding, all three works are
excellent additions to the growing scholarship on Pakistan and its army.
Policy-relevant and academically rigorous, thoughtful and readable, they
can be recommended highly for decision-makers, staffers, and analysts in
the policy, security, and intelligence communities. They will be especially
valuable for diplomats and military officers assigned to serve in Pakistan or
with Pakistani armed forces.

http://www.nbr.org/publications/asia_policy/free/ap19/AsiaPolicy19_...

[Riaz Haq]

“I AM a rambo b**ch”: Meet drone defender Christine Fair who wants #India to militarily SQUASH #Pakistan http://www.salon.com/2015/11/04/i_am_a_rambo_bch_meet_the_drone_def... … via @Salon

In a debate on the Al Jazeera program UpFront in October, Fair butted heads with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, a prominent critic of the U.S. drone program. Fair, notorious for her heated rhetoric, accused Greenwald of being a “liar” and insulted Al Jazeera several times, claiming the network does not appreciate “nuance” in the way she does. Greenwald in turn criticized Fair for hardly letting him get a word in; whenever he got a rare chance to speak, she would constantly interrupt him, leading host Mehdi Hasan to ask her to stop.

The lack of etiquette aside, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Shadi Hamid remarked that Fair’s arguments in the debate were “surprisingly weak.”

After the debate, Fair took to Twitter to mud-sling. She expressed pride at not letting Greenwald speak, boasting she “shut that lying clown down.” “I AM a rambo b**ch,” she proclaimed.

Fair also called Greenwald a “pathological liar, a narcissist, [and] a fool.” She said she would like to put Greenwald and award-winning British journalist Mehdi Hasan in a Pakistani Taliban stronghold, presumably to be tortured, “then ask ’em about drones.”

Elsewhere on social media, Fair has made similarly provocative comments. In a Facebook post, Fair called Pakistan “an enemy” and said “We invaded the wrong dog-damned country,” implying the U.S. should have invaded Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

In another Facebook post, Fair insisted that “India needs to woman up and SQUASH Pakistan militarily, diplomatically, politically and economically.” Both India and Pakistan are nuclear states.

Fair proudly identifies as a staunch liberal and advocates for a belligerent foreign policy. She rails against neo-conservatives, but chastises the Left for criticizing U.S. militarism. In 2012, she told a journalist on Twitter “Dude! I am still very much pro drones. Sorry. They are the least worst option. My bed of coals is set to 11.”

Despite the sporadic jejune Twitter tirade, Fair has established herself as one of the drone program’s most vociferous proponents. Fair is a specialist in South Asian politics, culture, and languages, with a PhD from the University of Chicago. She has published extensively, in a wide variety of both scholarly and journalistic publications. If you see an article in a large publication defending the U.S. drone program in Pakistan, there is a good chance she wrote or co-authored it.

Reviewing the “mountains of evidence”

After her debate with Greenwald, Fair wrote an article for the Brookings Institution’s Lawfare blog. While making jabs at Greenwald, Hasan, and Al Jazeera; characterizing her participation in the debate as an “ignominious distinction”; and implying that The Intercept, the publication co-founded by Greenwald with other award-winning journalists, is a criminal venture, not a whistleblowing news outlet, Fair forcefully defended the drone program.

Secret government documents leaked to The Intercept by a whistleblower show that 90 percent of people killed in U.S. drone strikes in a five-month period in provinces on Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan were not the intended targets. Fair accused The Intercept of “abusing” and selectively interpreting the government’s data. In a followup piece in the Huffington Post, she maintained that the findings of the Drone Papers do not apply to the drone program in Pakistan.

[Riaz Haq]

Saeed Book Bank: A Storied #Bookstore and Its Late Oracle Leave an Imprint on #Islamabad #Pakistan http://nyti.ms/1NprQkA 

That approach helped Mr. Qureshi make an extraordinary future for Saeed Book Bank, particularly in an era when online sales have been driving independent bookstores out of business, and in a region where unfettered book piracy adds to retailers’ travails.

With his passion for books, Mr. Qureshi built one of the biggest bookstores in the world — mostly selling books in English, in a country where that is a second language for most people.

Saeed Book Bank has 42,000 square feet of usually busy floor space over three stories, displays 200,000 titles, and stocks more than four million books in its five warehouses — all, Ahmad Saeed said, “by the grace of the almighty.”

(His visitor had not read “Fallen Leaves,” so Mr. Saeed sent one of his 92 employees to fetch a copy. “It is so good, you must read this book.” Another visitor to the office, an aged doctor named S.H. Naqvi, agreed, having himself read it at their insistence: “It will touch your heart,” he said.)

Saeed Jan Qureshi came from a family that worked for a feudal landlord named Mir Banda Ali. His estates in southern Sindh Province were so vast that five railway stops reputedly lay within his property lines. His library was similarly scaled, and as a 9-year-old, Saeed was put to work dusting the shelves. One day Mr. Ali found him reading instead of working, and told the boy to get back to work immediately — but added that he could take a book home every night, so long as he returned it in mint condition.

Saeed never got past high school but he was exceedingly well-read, and after school he found a job as a book salesman for a company that sent him to its Peshawar branch. Later, in the 1950s, he opened his own bookshop in Peshawar.

During the Cold War years that followed, Pakistan was an outpost in the American rivalry with the Soviet Union, and Peshawar became an important military base, and later a vital C.I.A. base of operations, particularly during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Say what you will about the spooks, they were readers, and Mr. Qureshi built his business around catering to their literary tastes.


(Speaking of Afghanistan, Mr. Saeed said: “Have you read ‘The Spinner’s Tale,’ by Omar Shahid Hamid? No?” He seemed mildly shocked. Moments later a Pan Macmillan paperback copy of the novel materialized. “I am sorry, we’ve sold out of ‘Fallen Leaves’ — it’s so hard to keep in stock — but read this,” Ahmad said. “A lot of it is set in Afghanistan.”)

Later the rise of terrorism and fundamentalist Islam made Peshawar, capital of the wild frontier lands of Pakistan, a dangerous place for a bookseller — especially one who insisted on carrying magazines like Cosmopolitan and Heavy Metal, books by Karen Armstrong on Islam, and even the scientist Richard Dawkins’s atheist treatise, “The God Delusion.” (“You just wouldn’t believe how that sells,” Mr. Saeed said. “We buy a thousand copies from Random House every year, year after year.”)

On the other hand, he said, another best-seller is “The Message of the Qur’an,” an English translation of the holy book by Muhammad Asad, a European Jewish scholar and diplomat who converted to Islam.

Forced to close shop in Peshawar, Mr. Qureshi focused his efforts in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, a place heavily insulated from the country’s more extremist elements. Hard times followed as even Islamabad became a “no families” posting for diplomats and aid workers, but by then the bookstore was so big that its sheer breadth kept it viable, as plenty of Pakistanis read books in English.

[Riaz Haq]

Saeed Book Bank: A Storied #Bookstore and Its Late Oracle Leave an Imprint on #Islamabad #Pakistan http://nyti.ms/1NprQkA 

NY Times Saeed Book Bank Story Contd:

“Other Pakistani booksellers laughed at us that we never carried pirated books,” Mr. Saeed said. “But only best-sellers get pirated, and we carry everything.”

The result is a bookstore of impressive scope, quirky and catholic. “Islamic Fashion,” a glossy coffee table book and a best-seller, vies for shelf space with “Queer Studies.”

A thick condolence book for Mr. Qureshi, the third so far, sits on a counter, which sags under the weight of a couple hundred miniature books as well. A few rows away, an entire shelf is given over to Noam Chomsky, 26 titles in all, which may well be more than any bookstore in the world displays for the radical linguist and philosopher.

“Honestly, Chomsky sells here,” Mr. Saeed said.

As the eldest son, Mr. Saeed was always destined to take over the business when his father passed away, and to learn the trade he traveled with his father to international book fairs; annually to Frankfurt, thrice yearly to London, twice yearly to Delhi.

But not to the United States, the Saeed Book Bank’s biggest source of books.

“We spend $500,000 annually in America, and I can’t get a visa,” Mr. Saeed said. “The consular officer said, ‘Why can’t you just order by email and fax?’ They just don’t understand about books. You have to go to the warehouses, and see them and feel them — that’s how you buy books.”

(“Fallen Leaves” again: “When my father was sick, he said, ‘Read this book, and you will calm down,’” Mr. Saeed said. “He was right.” Dr. Naqvi could quote lines from it. “What if it is for life’s sake that we must die?” Otherwise, “youth would find no room on the earth.”)


Mr. Qureshi made sure his children had the education he did not. Ahmad has a master’s degree in business administration, with ambitious plans to computerize the store’s inventory and build up what is now a clunky and unsophisticated online business. Nonetheless, it sells $1,000 worth of books a day online in a place where credit cards are still a novelty.

For his father, books were more than just a business, Mr. Saeed said. One of the penitent former book thieves who dropped in was Suleman Khan, the vice chancellor of Iqra University, in Islamabad.

“He came to say that when he was a child, 6 years old or so, he stole an Archie comic book and my father saw him,” Mr. Saeed said. “He said he was afraid he was going to get slapped, but my father said: ‘This is good that you like books. So every day you can take a book but keep it in mint condition and return it when you’re done so I can still sell it.’”

And then the vice chancellor said, “Everything that I am now, I owe to your father.”

(Dr. Naqvi, who is getting on in years, had seemed to doze off for a moment but awoke when he heard that story. “‘Fallen Leaves,’” he sighed. “You have to read that book. Everything is in there.”)

[Riaz Haq]

Excerpts: Stop Writing Pakistan Blank Checks by Daniel Markey:


Mending U.S. assistance to Pakistan requires a more sophisticated and comprehensive approach for precisely the reasons that Corker notes: The countries continue to share both overlapping and diverging interests with this nuclear-armed nation of nearly 200 million people. Washington should keep the following points in mind as it reconsiders assistance to Pakistan.

First, Washington should be careful not to overestimate the leverage generated by U.S. assistance. It has learned this lesson through its long experience in Pakistan. Despite tens of billions of dollars in aid since 9/11, Islamabad still does not see the world through the United States’ preferred strategic prism — whether in Afghanistan, India, or on the issue of nuclear proliferation. Then again, history also shows that U.S. sanctions on Pakistan throughout the 1990s failed to curtail Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, the political dominance of its military, or the state’s support to terrorist groups like the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba that have engulfed the region in violence. Aid is no panacea. Neither are sanctions.

Second, U.S. assistance is never delivered in a vacuum; its political effects must be assessed in a broader context. For instance, U.S. lawmakers should not be surprised that billions of dollars in development assistance over the past decade failed to win Pakistani “hearts and minds,” when the arrival of that money coincided with a massive surge in violence at least partly caused by the U.S. war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Similarly, Sen. Corker’s threat to hold up FMF until Pakistan turns against the Haqqani network is only the latest wrinkle in the long, complicated saga of the U.S. war in Afghanistan and its associated dealings with Pakistan. Unfortunately, that saga is full of mixed messages being sent from Washington to Islamabad. Right now, U.S. officials are not simply using assistance as coercive leverage to force Pakistan to fight the Haqqanis; they are also asking for Pakistan’s help to facilitate a “reconciliation dialogue” with all factions of the Afghan insurgency (including the Haqqanis). These mixed messages come at a time of deep Pakistani doubts about the future of America’s commitment to Afghanistan’s struggling government and security forces. Under such circumstances, Pakistan’s decisions about how to manage relations with the Haqqanis will surely be influenced by many factors beyond U.S. aid.

Third, Pakistan is a high-stakes game for the United States. Washington should steer clear of risky policy moves — including threats to curtail assistance and reimbursements — unless they hold the realistic promise of significant gains. Washington must appreciate that fixing today’s patently broken aid strategy is a tricky business, and that some “solutions” could make the problem even worse. This is not an unqualified argument against cutting Pakistan’s aid, but only for thinking carefully and acting with purpose.

Many academics and pundits have correctly pointed out failings in U.S. assistance to Pakistan. Most damningly, they argue that U.S. aid is often worse than ineffective; it is positively counterproductive. These critics have a ...


http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/18/pakistan-corker-military-aid-bl...

[Riaz Haq]

For the love of #books in #Pakistan where book sales are growing amidst global decline #WorldBookDay

http://www.dawn.com/news/1166006

Q. There is a general global decline in book sales, how is that affecting your business?

A. There may be a decline in sales globally, but fortunately in Pakistan and India, book sales are actually going up. The reason is the growth in population and even literacy rate. The trend of reading e-books on handheld devices may have affected book sales in the developed world but not here.

This is despite the fact that the Pakistani government has never taken steps to encourage the book business. Importing a book costs 18 per cent of the price, including taxes and transportation costs. In India the book business is thriving because the government offered publishers lucrative incentives.

The government even buys back any unsold book stocks from publishers at 10 per cent higher than the cost.

For Saeed Book Bank, in particular, business is good because of our scale. We import much of our stock. Publishers around the world know us and offer us better prices than smaller buyers. This allows us to offer competitive prices. Some publishers in the United Kingdom and the United States even offer us refunds on any unsold stock.

Secondly, even though it is a small city, Islamabad is a big market for books. It’s a city of diplomats and officers, so many people read. Book lovers from all over the region, come and shop at Saeed Book Bank. We even export books to South Africa, Nigeria and China.

[Riaz Haq]

A fair response to Fair
October 21, 2016 BRIGADIER (RETD) SAAD MUHAMMAD (RAWALPINDI) 0 Comments 

http://www.brecorder.com/articles-a-letters/1=:/95327:a-fair-respon...

In the second session of the HSD a female scholar from the United States, Christine Fair, was a panel speaker. This woman is an Associate Professor at the George Town University. She's a known Pakistan baiter. She opened up with an attack on Pakistan. I have no issues with criticism of our policies but the foul language she used in her talk was as follows:

"Pakistan is a terrorist predator state. It is a hyena which is the ugliest scavenger. The clowns of Rawalpindi. It should be declared a terrorist state and sanctioned for exporting terrorism. It is dubious and liar state. It bites the hand that feeds it and took billions of dollars to fund the terrorists to kill American troops." Turning to Chinese Ambassador she said that "China should stop supporting this terrorist state."

I was absolutely stunned and furious. So I decided to respond to this utterly vulgar tirade. Briefly my response was: "I would like to respond to her who has used such disgusting words. Let me quote one of the greatest military thinkers JFC Fuller. He had said, "The United States has no historical sense. It thinks war is lethal game and whoever has more lethal force wins." I told her, "You compared my country to a hyena. Well hyena has some emotions and can be friendly if treated well. Your country is like a vulture. This bird has no emotions and flies over the entire savannah scavenging carcasses. It has been scavenging on carcasses in South America, Central America, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya etc. It has made the entire world unsafe. You just talk about the clowns in Rawalpindi. You have been very economical with the facts. What about your clowns in the CIA and Pentagon? These clowns had no problem to incorporate Rawalpindi in the SEATO and the CENTO to contain the USSR. They had no problems when starting the disastrous Afghan wars. When these clownish vultures didn't require Rawalpindi any more we are called clowns. And please stop giving unsolicited advice to the Chinese. Unlike you they have 4,000 years of civilization behind them. They have the wisdom and farsightedness to do what they have to."

The woman was absolutely furious. She was seething with anger. I had achieved what I wanted. She responded angrily and personal attack on me contemptuously calling me that General sitting over there. My response was, please get out of this region. You have created enough problems. We will solve our own problems and peace will come. That added further fuel to the fire. She feverishly started photographing me with her camera and cell phone. She even photographed me while we were having tea. Probably an article against me is coming with my photos. I am certain that I will be indelible in her memory till her grave. Pakistanis (unfortunately less some) after that could walk with a swagger.