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Abstract We investigate the cross scalar linkages between every day violence and global war on terror in the context of urban Pakistan. We draw upon intensive research undertaken in the twin cities of Rawalpindi/Islamabad and Karachi to highlight how marginalized Pashtun and Bengali Rohingya communities experience state and everyday violence in the context of the global war on terror. Focusing on the gendered aspects of infrastructural and spectacular violence, we argue that every day violence too, is deeply politicised and inflected by national and global level geopolitics. Following Hannah Arendt, we conceptualize violence as a manifestation of a loss of power. Accordingly, drawing upon ethnographic evidence we demonstrate how even domestic violence takes on a public and a political valence. We argue that performances of masculinities and femininities are, in fact, imbricated with geographies of exclusion, marginalization and state policies. The routinization of violence in everyday spaces draws attention to the DNA like relationality of the local with the geopolitical at the global and national scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is significantly weakened and dislodged from former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) yet, it has relocated to bordering areas in Afghanistan under ideological umbrella of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and gets operational and logistics support through Afghan and Indian intelligence agencies. ISIS, having been greatly marginalized in the Middle East is struggling to gain foothold in Afghanistan with TTP as its proxy to execute the deadly terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The presence of ISIS in Afghanistan not only poses threat to Afghanistan but its collusion with TTP threatens Pakistan's internal security as well. Pakistan's sacrifices go in vain if cooperation from Afghanistan and the US forces is not forthcoming in defeating ISIS and TTP operating from Afghanistan. The article argues while domestic reforms and effective implementation of National Action Plan (NAP) by Pakistan is important to quell extremism and terrorism from urban centres, the cooperation from regional countries, harbouring TTP is vital for the elimination of scourge of terrorism from the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception, Pakistan has never had a clear counterterrorism policy. Following the worst terrorist attack in Pakistan's recent history, the federal government introduced the 'National Action Plan'. The plan contained 20 points covering a range of areas. There has been no thorough critical analysis of the government's recent counterterrorism policy. This paper examines and evaluates the main drive of the plan under three main categories; capital punishment; military courts and operations; militancy and financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan has a long history of patronizing militant proxies, and in recent years it has become a victim as well as a supporter of terrorism. The evolution of the jihadist insurgency in Pakistan's Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Pashtun militants leading it, efforts to counter the insurgency, and the overall strategic threats to the state have merited significant study. With some notable exceptions, less attention has been paid to the role Punjabi militant organizations and their splinters have played in bringing the insurgency to Pakistan's heartland. The involvement of these actors in the revolutionary jihad against the state gives the FATA-based actors leading this insurgency power projection capabilities throughout the country. This article helps to fill that knowledge gap by bringing a more detailed level of analysis to the understanding of how anti-state Punjabi militant networks function at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. In doing so, it illustrates that the introduction of new loci of jihad at the macro-level, simultaneous integration and atomization among militant groups at the meso-level, and greater portability of fighters at the micro-level impedes covert control by Pakistani intelligence services and decreases the utility of even sincere counterterrorism efforts by the Pakistani state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A year after assuming power, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government faced a political crisis fomented by the pro-military opposition leader Imran Khan, who mobilized his supporters to protest alleged electoral rigging in the 2013 poll. Khan had to call off the protests after the Pakistani Taliban's grisly terrorist attack on an army-run school in retaliation for the army's offensive against them in North Waziristan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balochistan is in the grip of two distinct and mutually exclusive ethnonational and religious movements that straddle important swathes of its rugged and mountainous territory. From Quetta up in the north to the coast of Makran in the south, Balochistan is being shaped by the twin forces of local nationalism and jihadist organizations. Domestically, the issue of Balochistan has remained an Achilles heel for Pakistan's policy makers culminating in five separate insurgencies in the post-colonial era. All such insurgencies had to do with the imperative of a centralizing elite and the recalcitrance of a local elite resisting assimilationist pressures. On the religious front, since 2009 Balochistan has come under increased scrutiny, with the Americans alleging that Quetta and its environs are a safe haven for the Taliban leadership, including Mullah Omar. Coincidentally, Quetta has also seen rising sectarian conflict, and the Shia-Sunni divide in the city continues to assume importance in the War on Terror. In light of the rising tide of Baloch nationalism and jihadist activism, including sectarian killings, the paper puts forth a critically oriented analysis of the twin dynamics of religious activism and ethnic conflict in Balochistan and its attendant ramifications for domestic, regional, and global security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and Islamabad's subsequent turn toward China have highlighted one of the most remarkable legacies of the Cold War: the persistence of a strategic triangle composed of China, Pakistan, and the United States. Throughout much of the Cold War, China and the United States competed to keep Pakistan within their particular sphere of influence, while Pakistan deftly took advantage of the subtle power struggle to improve its security profile vis-à-vis India. Despite persistent competition, the nations of the strategic triangle enjoyed three major convergence points: (1) the 1969–71 period, when Pakistan acted as a conduit for secret talks between Beijing and Washington, which subsequently led to mutual coordination during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war; (2) the decade following the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; and (3) the years following the 9/11 attacks in the United States, when global focus turned to Afghanistan and terrorism. This third convergence around terrorism is particularly salient, as Pakistan is increasingly viewed globally as both a source of terrorist activity and a victim of terrorist violence. In the long term, the strategic triangle may act as a modulating force that may prevent instability within nuclear-capable Pakistan, as well as constrain activities by certain Pakistani state organs that may be linked to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and clandestine support for militant organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article deals with the political transition in Pakistan: from a military coup d'état leader to a civil elect. It talks about the consequences of the war on terror and about the relationship with the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]