Defense & Foreign Affairs Handbook on Pakistan

Pakistan: a Pivotal State at a Critical Time:The most comprehensive and timely compendium of facts, figures, names, addresses, history and contextual data, yet published on Pakistan, with full and uniquely rich material on Pakistan s defense forces, defense industry, intelligence services, and much more. Pakistan is facing one of its most challenging decades since independence in 1947. The threats may appear to be less than clear, but Pakistan is, indeed, a nation on the edge. Many of the critical challenges facing Pakistan today, however, are not of its own making. If Pakistan was to fall into chaos or paralysis because of these potential crises, then there would be severe strategic ramifications for the global community, as well as for Pakistan's neighbors. And despite a trend of positive economic, political, and social indicators in Pakistan over the past decade, many external observers, without looking at these positive underpinnings, claim that Pakistan may become a 'failed state' and that it has not been a true 'ally of the US in the war on terror'. Such emotive journalism merely makes balanced policymaking toward South Asia more difficult in capitals around the world. The South Asian region and the international community must ask what the ramifications could be of a social, economic, or sovereign collapse of Pakistan. The process of expanding a more strategic understanding of Pakistan and its place in the South Asian and global balance is very much one of the functions of this book.