Book Review: Salman Masood in ‘Fallout’ Reveals Pakistan’s Political Drama and Military Influence

This reviewer went to several well-known, well-stocked bookstores but was unable to find a copy Fallout: Power, intrigue and political upheaval in Pakistan. What is even more shocking is that there are hardly any non-fiction or fiction books about Pakistan. And some claim that Pakistan’s literary fiction is superior to that of India. Then I realized that you hardly read anything about Pakistan in the newspapers; There’s the same brain-dead parroting of the usual right-wing foghorns, but no update on our closest neighbor, from whom we were actually “separated at birth.” It undoubtedly has everything to do with the government and its policy of freezing relations with Pakistan.

When I got this book I was fascinated. The book is a summary of Pakistan’s last decade with a focus on the civil-military power struggle as manifested by former international cricket star Imran Khan. It is a collection of columns by Salman Masood, a correspondent for The New York Times since 2003 and editor of The nation since 2020. It throws you into the middle of the action, without warning, explanation or background of the dramatis personae. It’s confusing at first, even for a news junkie, but it’s a gift in the sense that you’re immediately and easily swept into the wild waters of a fast-flowing narrative stream.

Before I started reading, I thought: What an excuse to take your columns and lazily compile them into a collection. Only big bores do that. However, when I finished Stand outI had to take my hat off to Masood and marvel at how well his collection came together to form a meaningful and flowing narrative of the last decade.

It works because (a) it’s never boring; (b) it is not a comprehensive academic study of an institution like the army or the free fall of Pakistan’s economy, but a comprehensive overview of “The Project”, which Masood claims was the army’s plan, Bringing Khan to power, and his ultimate souring; (c) it focuses on two key players, Khan and the army chief from 2016 to 2022, General Qamar Javed Bajwa; (d) the 59 chapters, each of which is column-long (probably 700-1,000 words), are easy to read and provide pause; (e) Masood writes well, better than most Indian columnists, and this is perhaps a tradition that comes from the martial law era of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977-88), when journalists had to tell you something without it to say directly.

A fight from the start

It’s not hard to decipher what’s going on in Pakistan: it’s been a struggle for supremacy between the military and the political class from the start, and it never ends well for civilians because sooner or later the military realizes it doesn’t want or can’t let go of the power, no matter how much it wants to. All you really need is a nice episodic retelling of the events, written with a cynical eye, namely Masood’s Stand out is something like Chronicle of a Death Foretoldin this case, the recurring death of democracy. Reading about this political implosion is like watching a car crash in slow motion.

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In the book, The Project begins in 2011 – although Khan has been on the fringes of politics since 1996, earned iconic status through a brilliant Test career in the 1980s, and captained the team that won the World Cup in 1992, cementing his status status through the construction of the country’s first cancer hospital – but it only gained momentum in 2014 Stand out begins. Nawaz Sharif is prime minister again, and the army is fed up with him and his business associates. It is also fed up with former President Asif Zardari, the wily widower of Benazir Bhutto, and it seems that the general public is also fed up with these dynasts who cannot solve Pakistan’s problems.

The main problem: the economy

The main problem is the economy. The military doesn’t want to take on a problem that is too difficult Fauji (warlike) spirits that need to be fought. The Panama Papers (remember those?) come to the rescue and Sharif has to go. Khan is the new, squeaky-clean savior.

General Bajwa keeps talking about letting the civilian population take precedence in politics. But things are not that simple; The army is already involved in many tasks in the civilian economy, and retired generals expect the same benefits as their superiors. The Pakistani army behaves economically like the US army in a Muslim country: it is unable to withdraw.

Then there is Khan himself. Although he eventually comes to power thanks to the rabid small-town masses, he and his team don’t know how to fix the economy (aside from the World Bank’s politically unwelcome prescriptions, like increasing the… electricity tariffs). As Khan fails to govern, he goes into strongman mode, spreading religious nationalism and economic populism. It’s not difficult, after all, everyone in the world does it, be it next door in Narendra Modi’s India or on the other side of the planet in Donald Trump’s America.

However, populists need an enemy. For Khan it will be the USA. It is a compelling foe given how much of a fair-weather friend it has been to Pakistan, whether after the withdrawal of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from Afghanistan in 1989 or after its own withdrawal in 2023. China has been another reliable friend , albeit a more usurious one (given the management of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in which Pakistan’s infrastructure is built with Chinese loans at high interest rates and by employing exclusively Chinese infrastructure companies). So it is not difficult to convince your followers that the USA is the great Satan.

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Side by side, Khan tries to regain some power from Bajwa and his gang, a pointless endeavor. Significantly, in April 2022, Khan refused to heed the US call to cancel a trip to Russia (which invaded Ukraine in February this year), and in the same month lost a no-confidence motion and was removed as prime minister.

However, a month later, the house of the Lahore Corps commander was attacked by Khan’s followers and burned to the ground. The army, in its infinite wisdom, courts-martials the corps commander.

Khan is thrown in prison on fairly unconvincing charges and an election takes place without him. Strangely, the authorities not only banned his party and removed its election symbol, but also banned the Internet on election day. And yet his faction of independents is far larger than that of the other parties. Buoyed by his success, Khan refuses to share power and remains in prison, and this is where the narrative ends, although the story is far from over. You should probably expect a few more corps commanders to get slapped around. This is where the downward spiral of civil-military relations in Pakistan has brought us.

Masood writes ironically and succinctly and brings together all the nuances of a current political situation in a postmodern comedy. There is an anecdote about a minor politician’s confrontation with the army; We in India don’t hear much about lower-ranking politicians unless they rape or run over someone.

I just wish I could get my hands on more books Stand out.

Aditya Sinha is a journalist and author based in Gurugram.