ISLAMABAD: The launching ceremony of the book titled The Scorpion’s Tail, authored by Zahid Hussain, will be held today (Saturday) at Kuch Khaas.Published by Simon and Schuester, (NY, USA), The Scorpion’s Tail is based on extensive reporting inside Pakistan’s dangerous lawless regions and exclusive interviews with militant leaders and high-level military and intelligence sources. It reveals how and why the Islamic extremist groups based in Pakistan’s remote tribal territories had greatly increased their power since the start of the war on terror. Hussain has also given a first hand account of how these militants unleashed a reign of terror on US forces in Afghanistan and on both the military and civilian population within Pakistan.
Hussain is the first to reveal how a loose constellation of tribal groups has now come together to form a distinctive Pakistani Taliban, working closely with al Qaeda and the Afghani Taliban to launch increasingly sophisticated and deadly attacks on both sides of the Af-Pak border. He is also the first to chronicle in detail the still unacknowledged US war carried out in Pakistan by remote predator drones. Reporting from the scenes of a number of drone missile strikes and interviewing a number of attempted suicide bombers, he reveals the extent of anti-Americanism the strikes have stoked in Pakistan, driving a new breed of highly educated, professional, and middle-class Pakistanis into the militant groups.Distributed in Pakistan by Liberty Books, Hussain’s gripping and revelatory account is an urgent wake-up call about the blowback effects of the US war in Afghanistan and the drone campaign in Pakistan, about how volatile the situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region has become, and about the deeply troubling limitations of the current military strategy in ever gaining decisive ground against the insurgents.Zahid Hussain is an award-winning journalist and writer. His book “Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle With Militant Islam” won widespread acclaim. He lives in Pakistan, and The Scorpion’s Tail is his second book – Dailytimes
