Talibanization of Pakistan : from 9/11 to 26/11 / Amir Mir.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary: “Amir Mir’s book “Talibanisation of Pakistan : from 9

11 to 26

11” is actually a story of Pakistan’s “non-state actors” inducted into state organized Jehad that predated the process of Talibanisation under the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). It also makes clear the fact that Talibanisation was not something imported from abroad through al-Qaeda, but a sequel of the process of Islamisation of Pakistan starting from the 1980s under General Zia-ul-Haq.

Pakistan has become what it has because of the consequences of two covert wars it took part in. The first war, under General Zia, was against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan from 1980 to 1988; and the second was the civil war in Afghanistan and Jehad in Kashmir from 1990 to approximately 2001. The first blowback from the Afghan war brought about internal change in the shape of the creation of new centres of power. Certain sections of the Pakistan army that handled the Afghan war became more influential by reason of the spread of their power within civilian institutions. 1 Because of the instrumentalisation of Islam, the state began to lose a larger measure of internal sovereignty than was justified by the prosecution of Afghan Jehad through non-state actors. The political process suffered the consequences of this blowback when it returned after the death of General Zia in 1988” (p. foreword).