Review - Neither A Hawk Nor a Dove

Disappointment and disillusionment are the virtues of the pessimists who love to bask in them to reaffirm their sadistic outlook of life. So when I as a self-proclaimed Optimistic–General of World Optimism Council tell you that the book “Neither A Hawk Nor A Dove” by Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was a major disappointment for me, you know I’m not just saying it for the sake of saying it, I have been tormented by something painful that must have hurt my soul.

Enough of the theatrics, I picked up the book because of two primary reasons:

1.       It promised to give an insider’s view of the backchannel settlement of the Kashmir agreed upon by India and Pakistan around 2006-07.
2.    The drama that unfurled in India when Mr. Kasuri was here to promote his book and his subsequent appeal that his book was not a Pakistani propaganda, rather an attempt to bridge the gap in the Indian and Pakistani narratives about our shared history.

The books starts with Mr. Kasuri delving into his family history and his relations with various people of political importance that ‘helped shape his perspective and also in his working as the Foreign Minister of Pakistan’. While this section was a bit boring as most local actors (not all, exceptions obviously defying the conclusion) were unknown to me and thus I was unable to connect to it.

The book moved quickly through Pakistan’s history and the apparent ‘threat’ that it felt therefore from India. At this point I was feeling empathetic and thought that maybe their concerns regarding our capabilities were not as baseless as we in India think of them to be. Although it is to be noted that while the author did refer to growing radicalization that has reached cancerous levels in Pakistan, he betrayed his promise of telling an unbiased account of wars and conflicts between India and Pakistan. The official Pakistani narrative had a strong presence even though the tone had been watered down to make it believable to the people ignorant about it. (More on that soon).

The first half of the book deals exclusively with Pakistan’s History and Concerns, India and the Details of the Kashmir framework. This part was in my opinion the core subject matter and unlike me if you are not as obsessively in love with the printed word, I can safely suggest you to rip off the book in half and throw away the remaining part.

First half part is filled with details and quotes (which sometimes include entire passages of press statements printed in small print so as to tone down how much of the book is a collection of press reports around that time). Filled up with hopes of knowing the inside details of the settlement, that could never see the light of the day, I was pained to notice that the insider’s account that the author had promised was nothing but his (and other leaders) journey of navigating bureaucratic hurdles and reaching the settlements. The details revealed nothing new apart from what I had known previously from newspaper reports (in all fairness, Mr. Kasuri repeated points out in the book that while in office he intentionally had made sure the broader details of the agreement kept reaching the press so that a consensus could be built gradually towards implementing them when the time came).

Moving on to the second part, which was nothing less than a torture inflicted upon me in the form of lengthy and often repetitive passages, it is filled up with Mr. Kasuri’s assessment of Pakistan army as well as relations with US, Afghanistan, China and other countries. This is the part where Mr. Kasuri takes off his mask of an unbiased commentator and burns it while dancing gleefully around it. He praises Pakistani army and justifies its undue interference in their political system in such a blatant fashion that would make General Raheel Sharif look like an agnostic. To those impervious to the influence of Pakistani army in the country, apart from yielding undue political influence and a running an intelligence agency whose description ranges from super-powerful to super-shady, the Pakistani army has huge investments in the countries businesses, malls, banks as well as other economic and commercial enterprises.

This is more hurtful considering that in the beginning Mr. Kasuri proudly showcases his democratic heritage and his commitment to it. I don’t mind his loyalty to General Musharraf but then his constant praise of the army, including their numerous coups and paranoia of India, baffles me. On one hand he paints up a promising picture of a future where India and Pakistan overcome their differences into an era of mutual co-operation while on the other hand he supports the Pakistani paranoia developed and perpetuated by the India-centric elements of Pakistani Army.

Apart from these two glaring shortcomings the book is as boring as the other memoir that I read previously (Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton), filled with endless personal anecdotes (which a lot of times don’t make any sense, apart from maybe generating nostalgia for the author while he was working on the manuscript). The need to own up achievements in such cases is so overwhelming that the writer does not mind ruining the readers experience with the unending barrage of ‘I’s.

So my dear reader, in case you have managed to read through all this and if this review has not been enough for you, pick up the book at your own risk.