THE SORDID UNDERBELLY OF SINISTER PLOYS

Iqbal Malhotra's meticulously researched book, *The Bomb, the Bank, the Mullah and the Poppies*, is an important read for everyone interested in the contemporary polity of the Indian subcontinent. It exposes corruption, foreign collusions, and the systemic manipulations exercised by Pakistan's army, ISI, and the political elite

- SANJEEV CHOPRA

I was privileged to spend two months under the tutelage of the distinguished academic Stephen Cohen—the well-known author on the armies of Pakistan and India—at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, during my Humphrey Fellowship year in 2000. Cohen had popularized the remark that, "while nations had armies, Pakistan was an exception. This was a country in which the army had a nation." Back then, even Cohen did not realize the extent to which the 'deep state' had its tentacles in financial transactions and the narcotics trade. All this, and much more, comes out in Iqbal Malhotra's excellent study *The Bomb, the Bank, the Mullah and the Poppies: A Tale of Deception*. By an interesting coincidence, one of the key dramatis personae referred to in this book, General Jehangir Karamat, was a scholar in residence at the Brookings Institution at the same time. As his father had been in the ICS, I enjoyed a good rapport with him, though our worldviews were quite apart.