Tryst with Perfidy: The Deep State of Pakistan

by Kamal Davar

Ever since its independence in 1947, Pakistan has been running away from its roots—directionless—and has consistently traversed a myopic, self-destructive path. It has been overly obsessed with its more powerful neighbour India, which singularly looms large, albeit illogically, in all its politico-strategic formulations. Constantly whipping up tensions with India has been an existential self-defeating mission for Pakistan and its Deep State. That Pakistan, over the years, has earned the dubious distinction of being the epicentre of global terror, is an outcome directly attributable to its Deep State.
Tryst with Perfidy analyses the motivations and machinations of Pakistan’s Deep State and unravels the reasons that propel it to adopt policies and stratagems which, by conventional wisdom, are hard to fathom. It gives a fascinating insight into the policies pursued by the Deep State and its implications for regional and global security.
In this authoritative volume, Gen Davar strikes the perfect balance between surgically precise argument and a sharp writing style. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Pakistan or South Asian politics as a whole.

240 pages, Paperback

Published January 11, 2017

Reviews

[Kulveer Singh]

Falls short of being interesting.

The book is a good narration of ISI's dubious role in fomenting trouble in India, Afghanistan and across the globe. But the book maintains a verbiose repetitive narrative where the core new ideas are lost in midst of lengthy public knowledge. The style of writing seems a tad boring.

[Yash Sharma]

A State Within a State : The "Deep State" of Pakistan
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'There are armies that guard their nation's borders, there are those that are concerned with protecting their own position in society and there are those who defend a cause or an idea. The Pakistan army does all three'.

- Stephen Cohen






Tryst with Perfidy, the Deep State of Pakistan, is brilliantly researched book, and here the author revealed that what constitutes the "Deep State" in Pakistan, and how this Deep-State is guiding Pakistan to the path of self-destruction.

Basically, Deep-State means a "State within a State"- some institutions of a Nation, like its armed forces, police, bureaucracy, intelligence agencies, which controls the levers of the power in a nation, without being accountable to anyone.In Pakistan context the Deep-State means their all-powerful Army and the notorious ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence directorate).

From its inception on 14 august 1947 to till date, not even a single Prime Minister of pakistan have ever completed a full five-year term, Infact in its seventy years of Independence half- of- the- time their fragile nation was ruled by the army dictators, and that's shows that how powerful the 'Deep-State' of pakistan is.

InFact the 'Deep-State' Of Pakistan doesn't want any kind of improvement of relations between the two nuclear-powered nations i.e India and Pakistan, and also by using the 'Non-State' actors (Terrorist) to 'bleed India to a thousand cuts', they are further deteriorating the relationship between the two neighbours.

The author has also discussed that how the "Deep-state" of pakistan is playing the game of 'Cat and Mouse' with the Uncle Sam (USA), and they are also helping the Afghan Taliban to destabilize Afghanistan, and with the acquisition of Nuclear weapons with the help of China, Pakistan became the most unsafe Nuclear Power of the world.

Though the author of this book was the former army man, who served the Indian army for forty-one years, but he hasn't showed any kind of bias towards India, and he has written this book with complete honesty.

The language of the book is easy to be read, and I recommend this book to those readers who are genuinely interested in reading about Pakistan and its notorious ISI.

My Ratings : ⭐ ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

I hope you like the Review, Thanks for reading, Jai Hind.

[Sharang Limaye]

This is just a rehash of everything a well-informed person may already know about Pakistan. These 200 pages start off with a recount of the circumstances leading to the birth of India's troubled twin and then provide a brief history of the events that have shaped the nation. There's very little here that you couldn't have gleaned by surfing the net for a few hours. In addition to the lack of original content, what really is off-putting is the propagandist tone that pervades the book. The writing's very ordinary too. The real perfidy,then, is what the reader faces at the hands of the author.

[Nikita]

Picked up this book, intrigued by Shashi Tharoor's glowing blurb on the cover. Unfortunately, my experience did not match the high expectations set by Tharoor's endorsement.The book's content feels disappointingly similar to a collection of Wikipedia entries - factual but lacking depth and originality.From the onset, the narrative struggles to captivate. Each page reads like a dry recitation of historical events and political maneuvers, offering nothing particularly new or insightful. In essence, while the subject matter holds potential, the execution leaves much to be desired.

[Mohsin Nisar]

The writer is from rival agency of ISI so his criticism doesn't hold enough weight. Most of the chapters r like Wikipedia articles full of bias and one sided story.
It seems as if the writer has tried his level best to add, a book full of vengeance, to his resume for more lucrative positions in future.
It completely looked like one sided harangue.