Preface

Summary

While exploring Pakistani politics in this last decade I have incurred countless debts to colleagues, associates, interlocutors and friends. With their counsel I have learned to decipher Pakistan's society and polity and to begin to understand the ways its histories frame its future. As a prelude to my private thanks, I hope they recognize in this rendering of constitutional politics their energies as much as my own.

Many people helped me to locate and understand source materials, to learn to interpret their absences when they were inaccessible and to navigate the labyrinths of judicial procedure, including a score of attorneys at the high courts across Pakistan and Bangladesh. I am particularly obliged to retired Justices Fakhruddin Ebrahim, Anwar ul Haq, Aftab Hussain, Dilawar Mahmood, Dorab Patel and K.M.A. Samdani in Pakistan, and K.M. Subhan and Kemaluddin Hossain in Bangladesh, all of whom patiently described the vagaries as well as the constancies of judicial and constitutional history. A host of politicians, party organizers, diplomats and bureaucrats of every political stripe have given me countless hours of their time for this and many other endeavors. My colleagues among Pakistan's journalists and untiring civil rights activists have long piloted me through their country's argumentative national politics. Additionally, friends and readers on several continents provided provocative comments on portions of this manuscript.