Laskhar (novel)

Lashkar is a 2008 best selling novel by an Indian author, Mukul Deva. It is a fast paced Tom Clancy-esque action thriller about a fictional terror attack in Delhi, masterminded by Pakistan's Intelligence Agencies, and the Indian government's befitting retort in the form of Force 22, an elite unit of the Indian Defence Services, specialising in covert operations. The book was followed by two sequels, Salim Must Die (2009) and Blowback (2010), with a fourth and final one, Tanzeem expected for a January 2011 release.

Plot

Lashkar follows Iqbal, a young man from the small town of Lucknow in India. Iqbal is recruited at his mosque and lured across the Pakistani border to become a mujahideen for a Pakistani military proxy. A few months after he has joined and trained at a terror camp at Muzaffarabad, the October 29th, 2005 Delhi bomb blasts occur, lead by Iqbal. The Indian public is outraged, and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence sends a top secret group named Force 22 to find the bombers. Of Iqbal's team, only he and his friend Omar make it back across the Pakistani border. There, he learns that his mother and sister died in the blast. He also learns that Pakistan's military is heavily involved in the drug trade, and that they recruit mujahideen because they do not pay them as well as regular army members. Iqbal swears revenge on every person who participated in the bombing. Captain Mohommed Sami, Captain of Force 22, eventually meets with Iqbal, and they accomplished the assassination of Dawood Ibrahim.

Themes

The books is widely praised for depicting a strong Indian military response, and for its detailed accounts of military actions. It has also been praised for it's scathing criticism of the United States, the Pakistani military, and the bureaucracy of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. It has received much praise for its idealized view of geopolitics and for it scathing criticisms of terrorism.

Sources

Sources

Anderson, Jean. The Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations. New York: Continuum 2012. Deva, Mukul. Laskhar. New Delhi: Harper Collins. 2008. “Don't go after Pakistan, attack individual terrorists: Mukul Deva.” The Hindustan Times. 4 Apr. 2009. Proquest. Web. “Where fact meets fiction.” Madras Hindu Daily. 10 March 2009. Factiva. Web.