Declan Walsh

Declan Walsh's electrifying portrait of Pakistan after 9/11 captures the sweep of this "strange, wondrous and benighted country" through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment for the New York Times and other outlets, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis--a chieftain readying for war at his desert fort, a retired spy skulking through the borderlands, and a crusading lawyer risking death for her beliefs, among others. Unbeknownst to Walsh, an intelligence agent was tracking him. Written in the aftermath of Walsh's dramatic deportation, The Nine Lives of Pakistan concludes with an astonishing encounter with that agent, and his revelations about Pakistan's powerful security state. Intimate and complex, attuned to the centrifugal forces of history, identity, and faith, The Nine Lives of Pakistan offers an unflinching account of life in a precarious, vital country.

Dispatches from a Precarious State

The Nine Lives of Pakistan

* Pakistan has never been less vital or more frightening. Within a few years the South Asian nation will become the world s fifth most populous country with 200 million mostly poor and illiterate inhabitants. But now is the time to worry. After eight years of rule under the self-professed moderate, General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan is plunging into extremism. The Taliban and its tribal allies hold sway in the lawless realm of Waziristan and along the Afghan border. Osama bin Laden may also be hiding there. Most recent terrorist plots against America and Britain, including 9/11, have been hatched in Pakistan. Sectarian bloodshed is rife. * Yet the headlines tell only part of the story. The perception of a rogue state filled with putative Islamist terrorists is wrong. Forged by great empires from Alexander to the British Raj, Pakistan is soaked with tradition and pride. Tolerance and moderation are an unspoken creed for the majority of its Muslims. And the country is peopled by a rich gallery -- militants and mullahs, of course, but also intellectuals and eccentrics; fiery women and feudal lords; dreamers and smugglers; Marxists, anarchists and sheikhs. In the outside world misunderstandings abound; only a book can make sense of it all. There has been a handful of efforts in recent years, the best written by academics. But little has been written to satisfy the general reader: about what makes this fascinating country tick, why it can be both exhilaratingly exciting and knuckle-chewingly frustrating, and why its future may be as important to a commuter in Canary Wharf it is to a wheat farmer on the banks of the Indus. * This book will fill that gap. Criss-crossing the country, Walsh will probe the big themes the growth of extremism, the nuclear scandals, the Al Qaida fugitives, the ethnic and regional strains. But if the framework is analytical, the telling is vividly personal. This will be a highly readable portrait told through the lives of the people who make Pakistan what it is.

A Journey Through Modern Pakistan

Inshallah Nation

Winner of the 2021 Overseas Press Club of America Cornelius Ryan Award The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country. Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times’s most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis—a chieftain readying for war at his desert fort, a retired spy skulking through the borderlands, and a crusading lawyer risking death for her beliefs, among others. Through these “nine lives” he describes a country on the brink—a place of creeping extremism and political chaos, but also personal bravery and dogged idealism that defy easy stereotypes. Unbeknownst to Walsh, however, an intelligence agent was tracking him. Written in the aftermath of Walsh’s abrupt deportation, The Nine Lives of Pakistan concludes with an astonishing encounter with that agent, and his revelations about Pakistan’s powerful security state. Intimate and complex, attuned to the centrifugal forces of history, identity, and faith, The Nine Lives of Pakistan offers an unflinching account of life in a precarious, vital country.

Declan Walsh

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