Cold War US strategic needs drew Pakistan into the anti-Communist alliance.

Evidence

Pakistan has been the fulcrum of international politics in South Asia since its painful birth during Partition in 1947. Beset by territorial disputes, regional rivalries, a religious politics enshrined in the country’s very creation as a homeland for India’s Muslims, and an unstable democracy frequently collapsing into periods of military dictatorship, it has struggled with the contending demands of its own national identity and the pressures exerted by outside forces in pursuance of their own strategic ends. Pakistani domestic and foreign policies have from the start been shaped by a felt need for parity with neighboring India. Specific disagreements with India, such as the dispute about the fate of Kashmir after independence, led Pakistan to search for international relationships that would aid its own security. In the early years after the Second World War, Pakistani anxieties met with the U.S. desire for client states in South and Southeast Asia to combat the regional threat from the Soviet Union. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 385

Categorization

• XREF: Provides the political-historical grounding for reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist — Changez’s arc depends on Pakistan’s client-state status under Cold War and later US policy. — connects to: Pakistan’s Cold War clienthood aligned it against Third World anti-imperial sentiment; Cold War geopolitics directly shaped Pakistan’s literary and political landscape — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 391; Post-Partition Pakistan suppressed leftist writers to court American Cold War support — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 391 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Pakistan’s Cold War clienthood aligned it against Third World anti-imperial sentiment; Cold War geopolitics directly shaped Pakistan’s literary and political landscape — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 391; Post-Partition Pakistan suppressed leftist writers to court American Cold War support — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 391 (+1 more)