Pakistan’s Tug of War

About the Book

Pakistan has long been described as a failing state, but Musa Khan Jalalzai goes further — arguing that the country is actively being pulled apart by the institutions supposedly responsible for holding it together. The central conflict here is between Pakistan's military and its sprawling intelligence apparatus, including the powerful ISI and the civilian Intelligence Bureau, whose rivalry and competing agendas have paralyzed governance and fueled violence across the country.

Jalalzai, a veteran analyst of South Asian security, traces how decades of institutional dysfunction have produced a state where enforced disappearances and torture are standard tools of control, where Balochistan is effectively run as an open prison, and where the army has conducted major military operations — Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan, Rah-e-Nijat in Swat — without ever resolving the underlying causes of insurgency. He argues that the ISI has played a double game with militant groups, including alleged ties to the Balochistan Liberation Army and various Taliban-aligned factions, while publicly positioning itself as a counterterrorism partner.

The book also examines how ethnic and sectarian divisions within the security forces themselves have deepened the crisis, and how figures like Imran Khan have become flashpoints in the broader struggle for power. The Pashtun communities caught between military operations and extremist recruitment get serious attention here, as does Pakistan's deepening debt trap and economic collapse. This is a tough, unflinching look at a nuclear-armed state in serious danger of coming apart at the seams.