Mohajir Militancy in Pakistan: Violence and Transformation in the Karachi Conflict

ISBN-13: 9780415554909 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 208 str.

Nichola Khan

Opis

This book addresses the everyday causes and appeal of longterm involvement in extreme political violence in the urban Pakistan. It integrates governance and civil society issues, as well as the political and psychological dimensions of processes of mobilization and violence at micro-, meso- and macro- levels. Taking Pakistan’s ethnonationalist Mohajir party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) as a case study, the book explores how certain men from the ethnic community of Mohajirs are recruited to the roles and statuses of political killers, and sustain violence as a primary social identity and lifestyle over a period of some years.  The author contributes to understandings of violence by drawing on detailed fieldwork in areas involved in the Karachi conflict and combining perspectives from politics, history, anthropology and psychology. In the book, she also updates the current situation of social and cultural change in Karachi, which is dominantly framed in terms of Islamist radicalisation and modernisation. Competing processes, broadly co-opted by MQM and Jamaat e Islami (JI), are transforming Karachi’s cultural and visual landscape. This book injects a more critical and innovative voice into the ongoing debates about the nature and meaning of radicalisation and violence and the specific implications it has for similar conflicts in Pakistan and the developing world.

Spis treści

1. Introduction 2. The Post-Partition History of the Mohajirs in Sindh 3. The Transformation 4. Partition Reprised: Grievance, Unification and Violence5. Women in the Homeland 6. Jamaat E Islami and the IjtinLiaquatabad 7. Conclusion

O autorze

Nichola Khan is a Lecturer in the School of Applied Social Science at the University of Brighton, UK.