There has been a talk of talks with the Taliban in Qatar but there is no forward movement. The US is keen to do business with the Haqqani Network but with the Pakistan not coming forward to help in the ‘game’, HN has been put on the US list of banned terrorist outfits.  

The question, therefore, is with so much happening around us in the past one year, how relevant still is this book. I think this book retains its relevance as long Pakistan remains a fertile ground for jihad, and as long as the US persists with short term pursuit vis-à-vis Pakistan.

A former CIA officer, Riedel is one of America’s foremost authorities on US Security, South Asia and terrorism. He was a senior advisor to four US presidents on Middle East, and South Asian issues. For President Obama he prepared in March 2009 an inter-agency review of policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.  

Given thus a deep understanding of the nuances of the policy and its implementation, his narrative has a ring of authority. So are his occasional observations. For instance, he remarks that US policies have contributed to Pakistan’s instability and radicalisation. He blames the Democratic and Republican administrations for the ‘muddled’ story.

‘For good reasons and bad, successive US Presidents, from both parties, have pursued narrow short-term interests in Pakistan’. His short answer to the long question who had created the fertile ground in Pakistan for global jihad is just one word – Washington.  

How and why this has happened is the subject of this book under review. It provides some thoughts on what may come next in the jihad, along with some policy recommendations on how to help Pakistan help- itself though the author is convinced that the country lies in a dangerous part of the world, and its internal politics are violent and volatile.

What complicates matters is the reality that the government in Islamabad often tries to pursue multiple agendas and to reconcile competing interests. As a result, ‘policy making tends to be impulsive, chaotic, erratic and overtly secretive’. More over, many of Pakistan’s terror groups have long-standing ties with the army and its intelligence service, ISI, making the country both a patron and a victim of the Frankenstein it helped to create, which, Bruce Riedel opines, may eventually destroy it.

Some choicest expressions Riedel reserves for Pakistan, for instance, mysterious, intriguing, fickle, and duplicitous don’t come as a surprise to an Indian reader but the fact that an American player on the Af-Pak Chessboard has used these expressions is a comment on the deadly embrace of the US and Pakistan..

26/11 mayhem is still a fresh scar for Indians.   Should another attack occur, what will be the reaction of the US?

Says Bruce Riedel, ‘Should another attack occur, the United States and the rest of the international community would undoubtedly urge restraint on India and try to press Pakistan to ‘do more’.

Will such an approach pay dividends? The author has no high hopes. “…that tactic will not work forever. It amounts to playing Russian roulette in South Asia. Sooner or later a Pakistan-based terror attack on India is going to lead to Armageddon”. (Page 117). He analyses Zia’s Jihad, Omar’s Jihad, Osama’s Jihad, and Global Jihad with clinical precision.

Tracing the growth and the flip-side of US-Pak relations since 1947, the author bluntly admits the American policy towards Pakistan has ‘oscillated wildly’. At times – under the Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush administrations – ‘the United States was enamoured of Pakistan’s dictators and embraced its policies without question.’ At other times – under Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton – ‘the United States imposed sanctions on Pakistan, blaming it for provoking wars and developing nuclear weapons’.

‘In the love-fest years’, the author frankly acknowledges, ‘Washington would build secret relationships (which gave rise to the U2 base in Peshawar and the mujahideen war in the 1980s) and throws billions of dollars at Pakistan with little or no accountability. In the scorned years, Pakistan would be demarched to death, and Washington would cut off all military and economic aid’.

Have these policies worked? The answer is a resounding no. To his credit it must be said, Bruce Riedel acknowledges this reality unhesitatingly. ‘Both approaches failed miserably,’ he says in a matter of fact tone.

From this narrative it follows that there is need for US-Pak relations to be on ‘a more constant and consistent’ footing.  This is easier said than done since as the author notes ‘Pakistan is a complex and combustive society undergoing severe crisis, which America helped create over the years’.  Also ‘America endorsed every Pakistani military dictator, despite the fact that they started wars with India and moved their country into the jihadist fold’. (Page 118) More over, deep distrust characterises Pak-US relations.

In the chapter, ‘Helping Pakistan’, the author considers various policy options and nightmare scenarios to rescue the ties between the US and Pakistan, as the two countries remain, ‘in many ways, stuck with each other’. He is however, clear that ‘none of the policy options laid out in this chapter will be easy to implement, and none can guarantee that global Islamic jihad movement will be defeated in Pakistan’.  

This pessimism is an offshoot of the reality ‘an extremely powerful jihadist Frankenstein is now roaming the word, with equally powerful protectors in Pakistan society, right up to the very top’.

Yet, Bruce Riedel is convinced that there is every reason for Pakistanis and Americans ‘to transform what has long been a deadly embrace into a union of minds with a common purpose: to defeat the jihad monster’.