Gen.Zia,the wily military dictator who ruled Pakistan for much of the 1980s, was famous for, among other things, his gleaming teeth, which he used to dazzle visitors with a smile that left them guessing about his true intentions.
So it was in July 1982 when Gen. Vernon Walters, an envoy sent by President Ronald Reagan, delivered a stern message to Zia. The United States had “incontrovertible proof,” Walters said, that Pakistan had accelerated its nuclear bomb program, despite assurances to the contrary.
Zia, Husain Haqqani writes in “Magnificent Delusions,” reacted with feigned shock. He had “no knowledge” of such a program, he assured Walters. “Pakistan might not be a large or important country,” he declared with a straight face, but it was “an honorable one.”
Walters left the meeting nonplused, but with a sense of grudging admiration. “Either he really does not know,” he wrote later, “or he is the most superb and patriotic liar I have ever met.”
Patriotism, lies and wrenching disappointment are the interweaving coils of “Magnificent Delusions,” a sweeping survey of the tumultuous relations between Washington and Islamabad since Pakistan’s founding in 1947. Since the American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, the alliance between the two countries has been sickly, with a racing pulse but little heart. Mr. Haqqani’s scholarly history suggests that the condition is genetic, rooted in the very DNA of their relationship.
At its heart, he argues, is a set of fundamentally mismatched expectations. The United States enrolled Pakistan in its global wars against Communism, beginning in the 1950s, and against Al Qaeda after 2001. But the true interest of Pakistan’s generals lay elsewhere: in pursuing their old rivalry with India.
The result is a seesawing, frequently unhappy relationship. The Pakistanis alternate between supplication and indignation in their demands for American wheat, weapons and hard cash. And the Americans — estimated to have given the country $40 billion over the decades — grow frustrated, and fret about Pakistan’s nukes and jihadi-friendly policies.
Mr. Haqqani is eminently qualified to tell this story. He was Islamabad’s ambassador to Washington from 2008 to 2011, when he was forced to quit amid sulfurous accusations from the Pakistani military that he was kowtowing to American power. Facing potential treason charges, he cannot return to Pakistan, and is now a professor of international relations at Boston University.
Mr. Haqqani denies the military’s accusations, but his cold-eyed disdain for its corrosive policies over the decades permeates his tale. “We sought U.S. aid in return for promises we did not keep,” he concludes. “Pakistan wanted to be able to act like Hafez Assad’s Syria while demanding that the United States treat us like Israel.”
His history relies heavily on American cables and memoirs, which serves well to illuminate some episodes, like the Nixon administration’s disgraceful approach to Pakistani atrocities against civilians during the 1971 war in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). But at other times, the lack of Pakistani voices feels one-sided, underplaying American ingratitude and prejudices.
And there is a disappointing lack of detail from the recent period when Mr. Haqqani himself was a central participant in the action. We learn little new about the crisis over Raymond A. Davis, the C.I.A. contractor who killed two people in Lahore in January 2011. Instead, Mr. Haqqani settles scores with rivals while giving a soft ride to his ally President Asif Ali Zardari.
It is a reminder that Mr. Haqqani is not just a scholar of the Pakistani stage, but a player on it, too — and one who wishes to return one day.
An ill-fated return from exile, also with an American connection, forms the backdrop to “Getting Away With Murder,” Heraldo Muñoz’s book on the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Ms. Bhutto was killed in a bombing in December 2007, 10 weeks after she returned to Pakistan with the blessing of the George W. Bush administration. In 2009, the United Nations dispatched Mr. Muñoz, a Chilean diplomat, to illuminate this murky affair.
He quickly found himself wading through a morass of manipulation and intrigue: Spies lurk around every corner; his quarters are bugged, and his email is intercepted; a former Bhutto bodyguard is shot in strange circumstances. Hospital doctors say they have been warned against discussing Bhutto’s wounds. The crime scene has been sanitized, and police officers lie to his face.
Even the government of President Zardari — Bhutto’s widower — seems to be ambivalent about his efforts.
As a diplo-sleuth, Mr. Muñoz provides some revealing detail on this important story. But, alas, he is no Agatha Christie. A dutiful rehashing of Pakistani history is insightful but sprinkled with careless errors. And, ultimately, he fails to go much further into Bhutto’s death than his well-regarded United Nations report.
Instead, he posits this poetic idea, drawn from Spanish literature: that she was killed by “the village,” a dastardly confluence of the various forces arrayed against her. But that still leaves unanswered the central question: Who ordered the hit?
Fiction offers more supple tools for plumbing the mysteries of Pakistan, and a new novel, “The Prisoner” (thus far published only in South Asia), is a welcome addition. Written by a former cop, Omar Shahid Hamid, “The Prisoner” is a racy tale about the police in Karachi, the gloriously chaotic seaside city.
“The Prisoner” is modeled on thinly disguised real-life events and people, and the story is framed by the kidnapping of an American journalist similar to Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed in 2002. It suffers from clunky dialogue that is used to explain the city’s byzantine politics.
But otherwise, the novel is a gripping portrayal of a casually corrupt city filled with gunslinging cops, seedy politicians, hypocritical jihadis, ruthless spies and even a hooker with a heart of gold. Although it does not aspire to high literature, “The Prisoner” offers gritty insights into how Pakistan works at ground level, and how dangerous it is: This month, a hard-boiled Karachi cop named Chaudhry Aslam, who inspired a major character, was killed by the Taliban.
It’s a reminder that, as so often in Pakistani fiction, the real world is never far.
MAGNIFICENT DELUSIONS
Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding
By Husain Haqqani
415 pages. PublicAffairs. $28.99.
GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER
Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination and the Politics of Pakistan
By Heraldo Muñoz
Illustrated. 268 pages. W. W. Norton & Company. $26.95.
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