Book Launch: Pakistan’s Wars – An Alternative History | Dr. Tariq Rahman

This book studies the wars Pakistan has fought over the years with India as well as other non-state actors. Focusing on the first Kashmir war (1947–48), the wars of 1965 and 1971, and the 1999 Kargil war, it analyses the elite decision-making, which leads to these conflicts and tries to understand how Pakistan got involved in the first place. The author applies the ‘gambling model’ to provide insights into the dysfunctional world view, risk-taking behaviour, and other behavioural patterns of the decision makers, which precipitate these wars and highlight their effects on India–Pakistan relations for the future. The book also brings to the fore the experience of widows, children, common soldiers, displaced civilians, and villagers living near borders, in the form of interviews, to understand the subaltern perspective.

A nuanced and accessible military history of Pakistan, this book will be indispensable to scholars and researchers of military history, defence and strategic studies, international relations, political studies, war and conflict studies, and South Asian studies.

About the author:

Tariq Rahman has two doctoral degrees: Ph.D (1985) and D.Litt (2014) from the University of Sheffield. He has published 8 books, over 60 articles and several book reviews. He was the first Pakistani to be honoured by one of Germany’s highest awards for academic research called the Humboldt Research Award. The President of Pakistan conferred upon him the Pride of Performance in 2004 and the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 2013. He is a Salzburg Seminar fellow (2017), a member of the Common Room at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, a visiting fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics and has been the incumbent of the Pakistan Chair at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark and the Peace University in Castellon, Spain. He retired as Director of the National Institute of Pakistan Studies at QAU and is now Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.

This book launch session will be moderated by Dr. A. H.Nayyar.