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. This is not just a book for someone wanting to find out about Pakistan, although it performs that job admirably. It is also a richly observed study of how humans respond to the extraordinary pressures of a sometimes-choking society; empathetic, but hard-nosed and never veering into hagiography. If there is a flaw, it is simply that Walsh’s eviction has left him unable to cover the country’s shifts since 2013. It is a sadder place now, with the military controlling politics again, abducting critics with abandon and stifling the once-boisterous press. Perhaps The Nine Lives of Pakistan will inspire others to follow in Walsh’s footsteps. And if someone at the ISI reads it, they might wonder: is having a reporter like this around such a bad thing for the country, nosy and annoying as they may be? The Diplomat’s Shah Meer Baloch interviewed Declan Walsh about his latest book, Pakistan, regional politics, media freedom, and more. Below are excerpts.

SHAPIRO: You know, beyond the violence and struggle that you chronicle in the book, what made you love Pakistan enough to devote a decade of your life to telling its story? From Salman Taseer to Anwar Kamal Khan, as you showed, most Pakistani politicians have contradictory public and private identities. What are the consequences of these contradictions on Pakistani politics and society? Although he correctly assumes that Jinnah cuts an elusive figure in Pakistan, remembered yet unknown, he then proceeds to fill in the gaps with incomplete or embellished facts. Case in point: he postulates based on the following line from Jinnah’s speech that he wanted a secular, not a theocratic homeland. “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state.” They provide readers with the chance, if they are willing to read with an open mind, to deeply introspect on their individual and national lives and reflect upon where and how they need to make amends to progress collectively. The Nine Lives of Pakistan is worthwhile reading for those looking to understand an alternate viewpoint and gain an outsider reporter’s perspective on the multiple complexities that make Pakistan, Pakistan. Walsh is a gifted writer with the talent of a smart-bomb. His timely and trenchant book has significantly set the bar higher for future foreign correspondents interested in writing about Pakistan.At first glance, Pakistan seems to be filled with stark contradictions. An observant Muslim may say his or her prayers then guzzle whiskey after dinner; even socially liberally people might hide important details about their lives from their own families. Westerners often take these contradictions for hypocrisies. But after a while, I started to see them through the lens of public and private spheres that allow a kind of tolerance. In Pakistan, and perhaps South Asia more generally, many people enjoy greater freedoms and more permissive lives than outward appearances suggest. Their neighbors or parents or village mullah may well be aware of this – the important thing is not to rub it in everyone’s face. This isn’t always a force for good, and it can certainly retard social progress, but it’s not all bad either. A man cleans portrait of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in Karachi. Photograph: Rehan Khan/EPA A number of foreign correspondents based in Pakistan have made their name by writing insightful books in the last four decades. Emma Duncan’s Breaking the Curfew, Christina Lamb’s Waiting for Allah, and Owen Bennett-Jones’ Pakistan: Eye of the Storm were all published to rapturous praise. Declan Walsh’s perceptive and provocative book The Nine Lives of Pakistan - Dispatches from a Divided Nation is the latest addition to this growing list. Emma Duncan’s pioneering book provided the introduction, and later the framework, to Walsh on writing about Pakistan.

WALSH: There have been these questions about Pakistan and its survival really right from the very beginning. The country, of course, was formed in 1947 when then-British India was cleaved in two. And so Pakistan ever since then has faced one crisis after another. And the crises have been the product of identity issues, problems about the role of religion in the country, power struggles between the military and civilian leaders. So Pakistan has really struggled since its creation to have one long period of stability and calm. And for better and for worse, the period that I was there was really one of the most turbulent periods. By the end of Walsh’s time in Pakistan, the winner in this epic struggle is clear: the ISI and the military machine that stands behind it. “It seemed to boil down to one hard truth: the military always wins,” his realises as he prepares to leave, never to return. “When the ISI men come to the door, the illusion of a democratic state melts away.” Apart from his silky prose, Walsh’s accurate portrayal of events and objective evaluation of his characters forces the reader to proceed with breathless attention. His characterizations are spot-on: the Bhutto family saga is described as “part Greek tragedy and part The Godfather”; police officer and encounter specialist Chaudhry Aslam is termed as Karachi’s Dirty Harry; his chapter on Asma Jahangir is titled-the wonderful Senorita; ex-spy “Colonel Imam” saw himself as a “kind of Pakistani TE Lawrence”; Pakistan’s roller-coaster relationship with United States is referred to as a forced marriage based on shared interests rather than values and devoid of any affection- rather punctuated with dispute and betrayal. The Munir Commission report, authored in the aftermath of anti-Ahmedi riots in 1953, could not have been written in today’s Pakistan due to the prevailing religious bigotry. In 2013, Pakistan was gearing up to witness its first civilian transfer of power, having been ruled over for more than half the years since independence by the military.WALSH: So that's a chapter about Asma Jahangir. She was Pakistan's most prominent human rights activist. She came from a fairly well-to-do family in Lahore but had spent her life on the streets of the country, standing up for the dispossessed, for minorities who are being discriminated against, for women who had suffered and still suffer heinous crimes. And more generally, she stood for civilians against the country's military. This is - Pakistan's a country where the army has been in charge directly for about half of the country's history. And for the rest of the time, frankly, the military has pulled the levers of power, indirectly. Generally it was an interesting read with some well drawn out vignettes of some well and some lesser well-known figures through Pakistan’s history. Walsh is an engaging writer who can hold the readers attentions. Unlike many Western journalists who focus more on a country crippled grappled with terrorism and religious extremism, you have deconstructed Pakistan in an unprecedented way in the book while depicting ethnic and religious identities and their looming threats over the country and the powerful military playing the shots. How do you see the future of Pakistan? His most eventful encounter, however, is with an ex-agent of an intelligence agency who had tailed him during his stay in Pakistan but later left the service and settled in exile in an European capital; he meets Walsh, recalls events which convinced him that he had been tailing him but- most importantly- drops hints which provide clues to the author about the ‘undesirable activities’ due to which he was expelled. Actually, this character, in a way, confirmed what the author already suspected: it had to do with his visits to and reports about Balochistan which possibly led to his abrupt expulsion. But I came to realize that the conflict had an importance greater than its size. It was a product of a powerful fault line that runs deep across the length of Pakistan – the tension between the marginalized people of the peripheries and a powerful, army-dominated center. There’s been periodic uprising by disgruntled Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Balochs, always directed at Punjab and military-centric governments. And that, in turn, stems from the great unresolved question: what do they all share, as Pakistanis? The original idea – Islam – is clearly not enough.

SHAPIRO: Declan Walsh told me he happened to be in Pakistan during a particularly explosive period. But then, the entire history of the country is a parade of fragile episodes. I find “valiant” dispatches by foreign correspondents, who visit Pakistan while wearing bulletproof vests and staying at five-star hotels, unwittingly amusing. Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif made a pertinent point about writing on Pakistan from the standpoint of a foreigner. “If you spend enough time with Pakistan’s military and civilian elite, you catch some of their paranoia, and start seeing yourself drowning in rivers of blood.” Hence, while reading this account, I found myself surgically dissecting the text for any hint of confirmation bias or preconceived notions. The common denominators in the chaotic events that Walsh recounts are also what constitutes the Achilles' heel of Pakistan – religion and army. This book charts the trajectory of the creeping post-9/11 radicalisation and the rising Deep State, “the semi-visible iceberg of army garrisons, military spies and their political satraps”. Exocitism over nuance DECLAN WALSH: When I started to write the book, I thought, of course, about the big characters, the Pervez Musharrafs, the Benazir Bhuttos, the people that I had really covered intensively over the years. But then I realized that I had learned most, actually, in a way from what I called the sort of second-tier characters of the country's dramas - police chiefs, spies, a tribal chief. These were people who lived dramatic lives and were willing to open up those lives to a stranger like me. There was nothing inevitable about Pakistan’s association with extremism. After wrestling with the issue, Jinnah recommended a secular republic from his deathbed. After Partition in 1947, Walsh explains, imams lost their sway in society, sinking to a status somewhere between a teacher and a tailor in the villages.

WALSH: Oh, there were so many things. You know, one of the most extraordinary things about being a reporter in Pakistan is the sort of access that you get to people across society. This - here was this country where ministers would, you know, return my phone calls, even late at night and personally. But more than that, when I went out traveling around and turned up in any random village, people really wanted to speak. They wanted - not only were they generous with their hospitality and welcoming in but they wanted you to step into their lives. And they wanted to at least give their point of view or even more. The scale of the struggle for women’s rights is encapsulated by Asma Jahangir, a crusading lawyer whose first client – an eloping lover – is murdered in Jahangir’s office by her own mother. (In “our folklore… the man who stops two lovers from meeting is evil,” yet in real life they “may be killed”, Jahangir wonders in sorrow.) Through Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a preacher whose company Walsh “enjoyed, jihad puffery aside”, you learn of the rise of the Pakistani Taliban. In a chapter entitled “The Good Muslim”, Walsh contrasts the life of the senator Salmaan Tasser, a “hard-charging, money-grubbing sinner”, with the bodyguard who assassinated him for trying to save minorities who had been sentenced to death on dodgy blasphemy laws.

Dhamaal is a form of spiritual rapture, but Walsh describes it as “a kind of religious rave” and regards the shrine as having a Las Vegas aesthetic, which has extremely different connotations. He seems to be overstretching analogies here to make foreign customs palatable to western readers.Do you think new geopolitical alignments and Pakistan’s inclination toward China and the enmity for India will bring more oppression for ethnic minorities in Pakistan amid the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)?