20. 20
Defeat is an orphan appeared an
interesting book and I bought it with
great expectations on 8th
May 2018.
Reading the book was a big
disappointment .
First books like these are bad reading
because they are part of some PR or
psy ops exercise and designed to
project one state at the expense of the
other .
In 2011 a similar book ,possibly
sponsored by the Pakistani state was
published projecting Pakistan as a hard
state etc .
So here he have India-The Hard State
renamed as “Defeat is an Orphan” .
Myra Macdonalds may be a good
Reuters journalist where she might
21. 21
have done very well for herself , but
she is not qualified to make
statements like page 27 where she
states “Pakistan-lost the Great South
Asian War” .
This is a good political pamphleteering
but bad writing.
On page-29 she fallaciously claims that
Pakistan lost the raison d etre of its
existence in 1971 when Bangladesh
was created.
Had she carefully read HV Hodsons
book The Great Divide she would have
realized that Mr Jinnah was happy with
an independent Muslim Bengali state
in 1947 but East Pakistan was forced
on him by Congress and Mountbatten.
22. 22
On page 33 she inflates Pakistans
56,000 PWs in East Pakistan to 90,000.
On page.45 she is ill informed about
circumstances in which Pakistan Army
chief General Jahangir Karamat was
literally sacked for corruption in
Ukrainian tanks deal and forced to take
early retirement in late 1988.As a good
journalist , her facts should have been
more accurate.
On page-45 again she makes
statements reeking with extreme bias
like branding Musharraf as an outsider
with few connections in the Punjabi
dominated army . By and large till 1999
Pakistan Army was not as ethnically
biased as Ms Myra would like readers
to believe.
23. 23
Musharraf had been educated in
Punjab and culturally considered
himself a Punjabi and was no means
the outsider that MsMyra would like
the reader to believe.
If she had read Punjab history she
would have known that Punjabs rulers
preferred non Punjabi Hindustani
Hindu army chiefs as early as Ranjit
Singh in 1820s when he imported Tej
Singh from Meerut as Sikh army chief.
In chapter on Kargil War Myra glorifies
Indian Armys Siachen infiltration which
in reality was a pointless foray which
has gained no strategic advantage for
India apart from phenomenal
expenditure and unnecessary loss of
lives for both India and Pakistan.
24. 24
Page 53 Ms Myra wants us to believe
that Kargil was Pakistans greatest
defeat since 1971 .
Now I agree that Kargil was a blunder
but to call a brigade size series of
actions as the greatest defeat is an
overstatement that only someone as
exalted and revered like a reuters
journalist can commit.
On page 56 Ms Myra proves her total
lack of military knowledge when she
calls Pakistan army sangars
“impregnable”.
On page 60 she demotes Pakistani
retired general Majeed Malik from
lieutenant general to major general.
On page 153 she mistakes Dogras for
Sikhs when she discusses repressive
25. 25
Dogra punishments to Muslims of
Kashmir.
On page 154 she calls Gulab Singh a
Sikh state servant a Sikh ally.
On page 154 she is wrong when she
states that Sikhs were defeated by
British whereas Sikhs were defeated by
a private company English East India
Company.
Myra Macdonald fails to analyse that
India failed to appropriately respond to
Bombay attacks. This figures nowhere
in her projection as a great power.
Agreed that her brief possibly was to
carry out image building of Indian
states strategic superiority which she
has brilliantly and sometimes dumbly
done in this so called book.
26. 26
On page 212 she passes statements
that prove her total ignorance of
history of Pakistani Pashtuns.
Like she states that Pashtuns were
discriminated against in Pakistani
military , or words to that affect,
whereas Pashtuns occupied significant
positions in Pakistani militarys officer
corps till at least 1977 and even today
large number of Pashtuns serve in the
Pakistan army .
In the armoured corps specially , there
were a large number of armour
officers and there were very few NCO
or JCO non Pashtun instructors in
Pakistans Armor School before 1971.
On the same page 212 she makes
another seriously wrong statement
27. 27
that “Pakistan retained the British
system for managing the Frontier “.
As a matter of fact Pakistani states
founder Mr Jinnah ordered Operation
Curzon in 1947 withdrawing the
complete regular army from Pakistans
tribal areas which was a major
strategic reversal of the British system.
But Myra wants to give the Pakistani
state no credit even if she is in gross
violation of known historical facts.
Myra throughout her analysis forgets
how brilliantly Pakistani military
usurper deceived the USA at a
strategic level in Afghanistan and did
not deploy a single battalion to
interdict Taliban infiltration all along
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the 1500 km border between
Afghanistan and Pakistani Baluchistan.
On page 254 we again find Ms Myra
not knowing her history .
She forgets or does not know that Dr
Iqbal in a letter to Times of London
stated that he never advanced the
concept of a Muslim state in British
India but a Muslim province inside
British India .
Myra forgets that Pakistan was a
creation of British manipulation and
Mr Jinnah and Iqbal etc were mere
pawns in the British game.
Myra forgets the core fact that
Pakistan and India are the most
dangerous strategic imbalance in
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South Asia and can trigger a global war
at some stage.
Myras strategic vision is myopic to say
the least. She does not see the clear
writing on the wall that Pakistan and
India are fighting an undeclared war
with no winners and biased journalists
who claim to be military specialists,
calling it a Pakistani defeat is neither
factual nor in good taste.
Above all her analysis is superficial and
fails to note that Pakistan and India are
two dangerous flashpoints and playing
a dangerous game of brinkmanship
that can lead to a nuclear war at any
moment.
30. 30
Myra totally ignores the Pakistan-China
axis which may nullify all of Myras
ambitious hopes of demise of Pakistan.
I am no fan of the Pakistani state and
have been far more critical than Myra
about Pakistan.
But Myras book under review is biased
, one sided , myopic , non factual and
above all lopsided in analysis.
A big disappointment.
