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Lädt ... To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistanvon Nicholas Schmidle
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Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. The author is sent to Pakistan on an assignment as a rookie journalist, having lost the chance to make it to Iran and having to settle for it's troubled neighbor. Over the course of two years, he meets leaders of the Taliban, politicians, NGOs, businessmen and the average john doe. He also has frequent brushes with the police and the dreaded ISI and it is due to their hounding that he is forced to leave the country after spending two tumultuous years. He does not say it in so many words but he predicts that it is heading towards the fate of a failed state if it is not one already. The author is sent to Pakistan on an assignment as a rookie journalist, having lost the chance to make it to Iran and having to settle for it's troubled neighbor. Over the course of two years, he meets leaders of the Taliban, politicians, NGOs, businessmen and the average john doe. He also has frequent brushes with the police and the dreaded ISI and it is due to their hounding that he is forced to leave the country after spending two tumultuous years. He does not say it in so many words but he predicts that it is heading towards the fate of a failed state if it is not one already. This is both an informative look at many of the socio-political currents transforming Pakistani society today, as well as a cracking good read. Nicholas Schmidle was in Pakistan for two of the most important years in its reccent history, a time when a long-simmering nationist insurgency flared in Baluchistan, a secular dictator was brought down by popular democratic forces, sectarian strife stewed in flashpoints across the country, ethnic violence gripped Karachi and of course various militant Islamic groups launched full-fledged war against the state. Schmidle writes about all these trends and more, relating his personal encounters with many of the key people involved (including some of the Taliban commanders in Swat). Finally he runs afoul of the intelligence agencies and is first deported and then hounded out during a second visit a few months later.
Schmidle has written a picaresque book about what Pakistan looks like today. Like a good film director he presents extraordinary pictures of political mayhem and violence interspersed with dialogue, solid character actors, and tightly focused close-ups of bad guys... However, like many movies, Schmidle's book lacks a coherent plot. Each chapter serves up a separate scene or subject, but no common thread or larger themes and ideas link the chapters together.
Freelance journalist Nicholas Schmidle takes readers to Pakistan's rioting streets, to Taliban camps in the North-West Frontier Province, and on many surprising adventures as he provides a contemporary history of this country long riven by internal conflict. With the intimacy and good humor available only to the most fearless and open-eyed reporters, Schmidle narrates the most turbulent period of Pakistan's recent history, a time when President Pervez Musharraf lost his power and the Taliban found theirs, and when Americans began to realize that Pakistan's fate is inextricably linked with our own. Schmidle entered Pakistan in February 2006, befriended a radical cleric (who became an enemy of the state and was killed), came to crave the smell of tear gas (because it assured him that he was sufficiently close to the action), was deported by the Pakistani authorities, managed to get back into the country, and was chased out a second time.--From publisher description. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)954.9105History and Geography Asia India and South Asia Other South Asia PakistanKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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