Indian readers will be left apoplectic at this ‘concise history’ of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, 1947-2106 by veteran Pakistani diplomat, Abdul Sattar, who served as both Pakistan’s ambassador and high commissioner to India, as foreign secretary, and twice as foreign minister of his country. They would be well advised to remember the lines of the Scottish poet, Robert Burns:
“Oh, wad some Power/The giftie gi’e us/To see oursels as ithers see us.”
Ambassador Sattar belongs to the Partition generation. He grew to manhood with the Pakistan movement, absorbed all the perceptions and prejudices about India that were common to that generation, and then spent a professional lifetime battling India in various forums, ranging from the Shimla meeting of 1972 to several verbal duels in the UN, to the post-Kargil years of Vajpayee and Musharraf, including the Agra summit of 2002 (that almost succeeded). The last 14 years, 2002-16, however, of...
