Few scholars have done as much as C. Christine Fair to educate the academic and policy communities worldwide about how Pakistan has tragically undermined its own national security since its independence. The Literature of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba vivifies one of the most dangerous terrorist groups employed by Pakistan. Through carefully translated texts that let its protagonists speak for themselves, Christine Fair and Safina Ustaad have illumined the cancer afflicting Pakistan while leaving the non-Urdu speaking scholarly community in their debt.
C. Christine Fair is Professor, Security Studies Program, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, USA. She previously served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a senior research associate at the United States Institute of Peace. Her most recent book is In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Hurst/OUP, 2018/2019). She has authored, co-authored, and co-edited several books, including Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War (OUP, 2014), Pakistan's Enduring Challenges (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Policing Insurgencies: Cops as Counterinsurgents (OUP, 2014), Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh (Routledge, 2010), and Treading on Hallowed Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred Spaces (OUP, 2008), among others.
Safina Ustaad is a freelance translator, poet, and conceptual artist based in Providence, Rhode Island, with a Master's in Theater Studies from Brown University. Ustaad has translated for various academics and journalists researching militancy and political violence in Pakistan.