ASIA 387

author's immediate visits and experiences, it is necessarily episodic, but this is

compensated for by the comprehensive understanding of the Indo-China region that
the author has built up during these years. It has the faults and the merits of a piece of
journalism of this kind: while it lacks the continuity that a straight political history 6f
the period would have provided, it has the insight and vividness that is rarely present
in standard political histories. One of the inevitable consequences of .this 'reportage'
style is that crucial periods in the development of the Indo-China war, periods when

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the reporter happened to be absent, are missing: particularly the Diem years, the
events surrounding the downfall of Diem and the critical period of the T et offensive.
But these latter periods have been well covered by other eye-witness accounts, and it
could conversely be argued that the author has done a particular service in covering
other important but less extensively reported periods; notably the period of the spring
1972 north Vietnamese offensive and the twilight period after the cease-fire agreement
of 1973. In this sense the book fills a useful gap.
Like many other books of this genre (and there are many such where Indo-China is
concerned) its strength lies in its descriptive immediacy and at the same time its
tangential insights into political events of the time. For those who are unfamiliar with
the subject, it provides a readable picture of what the war was like and what the region
is like. This is valuable. On the other hand, it must be said that its bitty and episodic
characteristics can make it only of-occasional use to those who are closely interested in
the region. For example, while the surveys of Laotian and Cambodian political history
are necessary for the purposes of the book, they go over ground that has been covered
in countless similar books.
A word of criticism should be raised against the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon' (as,
for example, 'the Anglo-Saxon press' on page 162). This term, while it no doubt
usefully served the polemical interests of de Gaulle in his time, is one that is used too
freely and loosely by European writers, and that has helped to create a dangerously
misleading geopolitical image. As such, the term should be denied intellectual
respectability. Another criticism is the tendency of the writer to slip into what might
be called the' Indo-China myth'; that is, the inclination to give a romantic gloss to the
Franco-Vietminh war in particular, creating out of a sordid and bitter struggle an
unrealistic image of Biggles-like camaraderie overlaid with an exotic, and peculiarly
French, haze of opium, voluptuousness, cynicism, violence, and betrayal. This
romanticising tendency is perhaps a uniquely Vietnamese contribution to the
phenomenon of 'orientalism', understandable given the deep and disturbing
impression Indo-China has made on European and American visitors, but ultimately
distorting and unhelpful.
University ofHull C. J. CHRISTIE

In Afghanistan's Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations. By Selig

Harrison. .N ew York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 1981.
(Distrib. in UK by Zed Press.) 228 pp. £15' 95. Pb: £5' 95.
THIS is essentially a study of the Baluch people and their tribulations and emergent
nationalism-.Selig Harrison was a good choice to study this comer of the world, a
trouble-spot of more than local significance, for the Carnegie Endowment's
'Programme for Journalists' on current affairs. Much of his information has been
gathered by interviewing of leaders or spokesmen, at home or in exile, and it is
interesting to have photographs of them as well as to hear their words. A useful set of
maps shows patterns of population, natural resources, and ethnic distribution, over the
whole area where the Baluch live. Like Kurds and many others, they are divided by
388 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

modem frontiers; of their roughly five millions the majority are in Pakistan, under
Panjabi domination, while a million or so live in Iran. It was by force that the larger
part of their homeland was incorporated in Pakistan when British rule ended, and it
has been treated, as Bangladesh was, as a colony. It is controlled by a mostly Panjabi
bureaucracy and garrison, settlers have moved in to occupy land; and coal, oil, gas are
being extracted for the benefit of outsiders. By the early 1960s there were the makings
of a guerrilla resistance; this came to life in 1973 when Bhutto abruptly dismissed the

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provincial ministry, and four years of bitter fighting followed before most of the
insurgents had to draw offinto camps in southern Afghanistan.
Harrison introduces us to a bewildering variety of leaders and movements and
political viewpoints. The two main alternatives before them have been to press for an
equal place within a restructured, federal Pakistan, or to fight for full independence.
Older leaders like Bizenjo have been finding themselves caught between Panjabi
obduracy on one hand and impatience among their younger generation on the
other-students especially who in the fighting days formed a strange amalgam with
illiterate tribesmen. A Baluch intelligentsia has been growing, far more than was
allowed on the Iranian side. It seems that the Shah pressed Bhutto to resort to violence
in 1973, for fear of disaffection spreading across the border. In both countries
communists, in line with Soviet thinking, have advocated a united front of
progressives of all provinces, instead of breakaways by national minorities .. This has
won them little favour among the Baluch; and the Soviet occupation of friendly
Afghanistan was a shock. Nevertheless, Harrison found a generally sympathetic
feeling towards the Soviet Union, largely because its American rival has been so
blatantly the patron and arms-supplier of dictatorial regimes in both Islamabad and
Teheran. His own conclusions are cautiously modulated. He is convinced that Baluch
nationalism has genuine roots and growing strength, and that despite tribal divisions
unity has been advanced by the advent lately of 'a broadly accepted high-level Baluch
leadership' (p. 71). He has doubts about whether natural resources would be adequate
to make a free Baluchistan viable, as sanguine patriots believe; and he stresses another
difficulty, that nearly half the Baluch population of Pakistan lives outside its homeland,
chiefly in Sind. A federation of these two provinces has many advocates however (p.
179). It might well be the best solution. In his final chapter, on great power interests,
Harrison offers sage advice to his countrymen not to act on the assumption that a
Soviet intervention in Baluchistan is inevitable, but to work towards a political
settlement for the whole region that could pave the way for Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan.
V. G. KIERNAN

NORTH AMERICA
Energy and the National Defense. By Howard Bucknell III. Lexington, Ky:
University Press a/Kentucky. 1981.235 pp. $19.50.
ALTHOUGH he gives due space to 'international dimensions', Dr Bucknell, a former
submarine commander, has written a book for Americans, sketching the American
energy scene and its relationship to American national security. He has also, and
consciously, written a short, somewhat superficial book, offering a vast topic to a wide
readership. He surveys the physical and technical prospects for energy demand and
supply in the United States into.the twenty-first century, touches more briefly on the
associated economics, exposes what he takes to be the military implications, and still
has much of his space to devote to the system and process of American energy politics.