On the Grand Trunk Road

Informationen zum Autor Steve Coll Klappentext From the award-winning and bestselling author of Ghost Wars and Directorate S, a trek across a socially and politically damaged South Asia Bestselling author Steve Coll is one of the preeminent journalists of the twenty-first century. His last two books, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars and New York Times bestseller The Bin Ladens , have been praised for their creative insight and complex yet compelling narratives-and have put him on par with journalists such as the legendary Bob Woodward. Now, for the first time ever, the paperback edition of On the Grand Trunk Road is finally available, revised and updated with new material. Focusing on Coll's journeys in conflict-ridden India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan as a bureau chief for The Washington Post, On the Grand Trunk Road reveals a little-seen area of the world where violence, corruption, and greed have had devastating effects on South Asians from all walks of life. Table of Contents PENGUIN BOOKS Title Page Copyright Page Introduction STATES OF FLUX Chapter 1 - Sound and Fury Chapter 2 - The Grand Trunk Road Chapter 3 - The Gravy Train Chapter 4 - Village on a Hill STATES OF MIND Chapter 5 - Enemies Chapter 6 - Through the Looking Glass Chapter 7 - Rulers Chapter 8 - Crossed Lines STATES OF CONFLICT Chapter 9 - Among the Death Squads Chapter 10 - The Boys Chapter 11 - Riding the Tiger Chapter 12 - Inside Out Chapter 13 - Secret War STATES OF PROGRESS Chapter 14 - A Shadow Lifts, a Shadow Falls Chapter 15 - DEM-o-crah-see Chapter 16 - Bombay and Beyond Epilogue: Time Bomb Acknowledgements Index PENGUIN BOOKS ON THE GRAND TRUNK ROAD Steve Coll is most recently the author of the national bestseller The Bin Ladens. He is the president of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., and a staff writer for The New Yorker. Previously he worked for twenty years at The Washington Post, where he received a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1990, traveled widely as a foreign correspondent, and served as the Post's managing editor between 1998 and 2004. He is the author of five previous books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Ghost Wars and The Taking of Getty Oil . PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R oRL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 100 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R oRL, England First published in the United States of America by Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc. 1994 This edition with a new introduction and a new epilogue published in Penguin Books 2009 Copyright © Steve Coll, 1994, 2009 

Copyright © Steve Coll, 1994, 2009 All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-101-02913-8

1. South Asia—Politics and government. 2. Communalism—South Asia.
2. South Asia—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
   DS340.C65 1994
   915.404’52—DC20 93-1994 24689753

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means
without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only
authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy
of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Introduction to the Paperback Edition

Between 1989 and 1992, when I served as a New Delhi-based foreign correspondent for the Washington Post and traveled to report the material in this book, I spent a great deal of time in Pakistan, often in the capital, Islamabad, an antiseptic planned city laid out on a grid. Almost invariably, I stayed at the Islamabad Holiday Inn, which later changed its affiliation to become the Islamabad Marriott Hotel. In that era of untroubled newspaper business models, I paid a little extra to book on the front-facing side of the fifth floor, where the rooms had vaulted ceilings and views of the Margala Hills—small, morale-lifting advantages that eased the blues that come to those who live in a hotel room for weeks at a time. Downstairs, the lounges and restaurants were scenes of the sort of camaraderie peculiar to newspaper correspondents; here, the only palatable lubricant was bottled Murree Beer, which is officially available in Pakistan’s hotels to non-Muslim foreigners, provided they are willing to attest to their apostasy by signing their names in cloth-bound ledgers.

On a Saturday in mid-September 2008, a large truck arrived at the hotel. When security guards, alert to potential terrorist bombers, approached to inspect the truck, the driver detonated a cache of explosives stuffed into the hold. The blast excavated a crater thirty feet deep, blackened the facade of the hotel, and set the building on fire. Ultimately, more than four dozen people died and more than two hundred were injured. In New York, I watched televised reports of the attack; they showed, over and over, an image of tall flames that burned brightly in the hotel’s forward windows. It was like watching your college dormitory burn to the ground.

Pakistan has provided many such images of late; there is an air of violent transformation about the place, and an accumulating sense of loss. The country has survived many challenges and even cataclysms, including the severing of half of its territory in its 1971 war with India. If the past is any guide, the country’s resilient population and considerably less impressive politicians will muddle through the present crises—a vicious Islamist insurgency waged against the government by the Taliban and al Qaeda, compounded by accelerating inflation and economic stagnation. And yet it seems fair to ask what sort of guide the past may prove to be this time around. Pakistan may be passing into a particularly dark period, even by the measure of its own shadowed spectrum—a time for which there may be no entirely reliable maps.

When I wrote On the Grand Trunk Road more than fifteen years ago, I hoped to describe—through particular landscapes, stories, and people—the texture of a profound transition on the Indian subcontinent, one shaped by the Cold War’s end and the opening of a new era of political and economic possibility. It was a time of both unusual optimism and intense violence. I wrote that the “specific reference points” of debate about South Asia’s past and future “are the instances of its sound and fury: its explosions. The themes are what this sound and fury signifies, where it arises from, and where it will lead.” It is easy to ask many of the same questions today, particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. The subcontinent of 1992 would be familiar to today’s traveler, if he or she could find a way to move about safely—Afghanistan is still crippled by war, much of it waged covertly and influenced by outside powers; Kashmir is still troubled by youthful Islamist insurgents; Sri Lanka is still gripped by extrajudicial killings, although on a lesser scale than before; Nepal is still searching f…