The South Asians are quite notorious for trying to become experts on global issues, especially the big power follies, and paying much less attention to the problems of their own region. One of their costlier omissions is the failure to understand and properly assess the civil wars in South Asian countries that have affected the lives of millions of people over the past six decades. How serious the consequences of this lapse can be is the theme of the excellent study published under the title Civil Wars in South Asia.

In their scholarly introduction to the book, incidentally the longest of the 10 chapters, editors Aparna Sundar and Nandini Sundar discuss in great detail the issues that both academics and policy-makers should address while trying to understand civil wars in South Asia. Besides analysing the civil wars in national contexts, the contributors to the volume also address "larger questions about economic development state capacity and sovereignty in South Asia."

After noting the South Asian countries’ tendency to apply the colonial remedy -- that each insurgency is a criminal action requiring policing, instead of being dealt with politically -- the editors adopt three lines of argument: 1) ‘that the study of the state can be enhanced by studying the state in the context of war’; 2) that civilian perspectives need to be kept in mind while examining wars; and 3) that it is important to see how sovereignty is contested and constituted by international actors.

The editors accept the definition of civil war as an "armed combat taking place within the boundaries of a recognised sovereign entity between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of the hostilities", and proceed to sum up the main arguments of the book. These are: as complex phenomena civil wars need to be understood within a larger political-economic context instead of a few causal factors; while in South Asia "poverty and low human development indicators co-exist with high levels of conflict" the tendency to look at aid and development as the sole remedy ought to be resisted; that the fact that wars benefit powerful actors, and sometimes the state itself, cannot be ignored; and that despite the challenges to the classical concept of sovereignty, the South Asian states manage to stick to it.

In a way this introduction offers the readers the essence of the book. Drawing extensively on the existing literature on the various issues thrown up by civil wars, and critically appreciating it, the editors have successfully advocated a multi-disciplinary approach to such conflicts. This discussion is highly relevant to Pakistan and India that have been involved with a variety of civil wars and brought indescribable suffering to their peoples by dealing with each challenge to their imagined sovereignty according to perhaps the worst part of their colonial inheritance -- treating each insurgency as simply a law and order matter.

Nandini Sundar’s contribution, "Contextualising civil wars in South Asia’, is significant for a comparative analysis of the war of East Bengal’s liberation, the Sri Lankan response to the LTTE challenge, what is described as "India’s Kashmir war" and the conflict in its northeast, the ethnic insurgencies in Myanmar, the Maoist resistance in Nepal and India, and the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal area. The variations noted in these wars as well as their common features should help in promoting a realistic attitude towards internal conflicts.

Rajesh Venugopal’s essay on the Sri Lankan civil war is an interesting study of how an authoritarian regime could garner economic gain during a civil war. A similar study on the Afghanistan war brings out the role of non-state actors and transnational organisations. The impact of the various interventions in Nepal is deeper and perhaps more lasting. A brief chapter on Britain’s attitude towards the 1971 war in East Bengal will provide vicarious pleasure to Pakistani readers in discovering that a mature foreign office could be as short-sighted as was theirs in Islamabad.

The chapter that the Pakistani readers will find most relevant to their contemporary tribulation deals with ‘The rise of jihadi militancy in Pakistan’s tribal areas’ and has been contributed by Haris Gazdar, Yasser Kureshi and Asad Sayeed, who are widely respected in this country and abroad not only for the high quality of their research but also for their integrity and courage.

This brief study exposes the flaws and shortcomings in the standard official narrative on the conflict in FATA by focusing on "the institutional dynamic and political economy of the tribal regions to understand (the) changes that have taken place over time and which have created conditions for sustained militancy." Contrary to the misconception in Islamabad about time having stood still for the tribal population, the authors have traced the ideological, social, and economic changes in the region, especially the large-scale migration of the tribals and their exposure to the world beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan and the huge impact of the long war in Afghanistan. The chapter also underlines the problems Pakistani policy-makers have created by ignoring academic research (such as Sana Haroon’s most impressive study on the growth of Deobandi influence in the tribal area).

The three final chapters offer indepth studies of local agitations in India and Myanmar and of the drift away from due process, of which India’s Armed Forces Special Powers Act is only one example; the disease has spread to other South Asian neighbours.

Civil wars in South Asia is a much vaster and more complex matter than it appears at first sight and it should continue to engage scholars in the years to come; but the foundational contribution to the study of this subject made by the present volume will not be denied. Those who believe in South Asian people’s shared destiny will be pleased to note that the research done by scholars from within the region, which is duly acknowledged in this work, stands out for the soundness of its argument, clarity of expression and an underlying commitment to a just peace.

The book is recommended as a must read for students of internal conflicts in the region. The strategists in South Asian countries could also learn much useful lessons from it provided they are able to grow out of notions of their infallibility and are amenable to independent scholars’ advice.