(2024). Policing “Crises”: Postcolonial Lawfare and the Criminalization of Dissent in Pakistan. In, Criminalization of Dissent in Times of Crises, Ronco, A. and Sellmini, R. (eds.).
This chapter considers the convergences between colonial “lawfare”, (post)colonial counterinsurgency, and domestic policing to explore how such convergences facilitate the criminalization and punishment of dissent and activism within contemporary undemocratic or authoritarian contexts. Using colonial-era legislations found in Pakistan, I explore how such frameworks are deployed as part of a postcolonial state’s overarching counterinsurgency warfare against citizens. I employ postcolonial perspectives to show how such colonial institutions legitimise and weaponise the state’s militarised lawfare against its people and frame socio-political activism and critical resistance as conspiracies amounting to national security threats, revealing continuities between colonial and postcolonial policing of resistance. Such securitized narrative-framing, coupled with the deployment of colonial-era techniques of control, further ensures an ongoing conflation of “police power” and “war power”.
(2023). Crossing Red Lines: Exploring the Criminalization and Policing of Sedition and Dissent in Pakistan (with Jan, A.). In, Southern and Postcolonial Perspectives on Policing, Security, and Social Order, Cavalcanti, R., Squires, P. and Waseem, Z. (eds). Bristol University Press.
Sedition laws were crucial for imperial control in the mid-19th and 20th centuries, criminalizing political dissent and nationalism in British colonies. A century-and-a-half later, the laws continue to be applied to discipline and deter government critics. In Pakistan, the application of the law of sedition has intensified in reaction to civil society protests and social movements challenging state violence and injustices against marginalized communities. Although sedition has been approached in critical historical, legal and political scholarship on South Asia, we unpack how the threat and application of this law continues to shape the lived experiences of civilians impacted and rendered insecure as the postcolonial state seeks to pacify resistance to its authority and discipline dissidents. We develop existing understandings of how criminalization serves as a weapon for postcolonial states, where regimes have remained inherently insecure and regime insecurity becomes a lens through which such criminalization of activism and dissent may be understood.
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(2022). ‘VIP culture’ and the provision of policing and security in postcolonial Karachi. In, Policing in the Global South, Watson D. et al. (eds.). Routledge.
This chapter empirically explores the unequal and unfair distribution of police resources in the postcolonial city of Karachi. In post-independence Pakistan, Karachi has suffered from rapid urbanisation, population growth, and underdevelopment. Karachi’s public security apparatus (including the police) has been similarly disorganised and mismanaged. Nevertheless, the police have been expected to grapple with organised crime, terrorism, and ethnopolitical violence. Simultaneously, the police have been burdened by a ‘VIP culture’ that promotes and sponsors an unequal distribution of police resources to benefit the local elite. This not only creates metaphorical barriers between affluent and marginalised communities but also encourages police corruption and informal practices. This chapter argues that selective securitisation processes, driven by Pakistan’s VIP culture and strengthened by the political elite, have been misappropriating the public–police infrastructure, which demonstrates the continuation of the institution’s colonial legacy. This chapter concludes by recommending the decolonising of policing in former colonies.
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(2021) Infringements or Safeguards? Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Measures and a Divided Civil Society. In, Counter-terrorism and civil society: Post-9/11 progress and challenges, Manchester University Press.
This chapter examines Pakistan’s counterterrorism measures and the implications these have had on its civil society (CS) in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. It is primarily interested in secular CS entities that have interfaced with the state apropos to its terrorism, counterterrorism and security policies since the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014. By analyzing some of the main events that led to the development of Pakistan’s security culture pre- and post-9/11, and by focusing on three case studies that highlight the relationship between the state and CS with respect to Pakistan’s counterterrorism measures, I argue that CS responses to counterterrorism measures have been varied. In some instances, CS entities have chosen to rely upon and endorse counterterrorism structures to further their own interests rather than civilian institutions due to the lack of legitimacy held by the latter. In other cases, where counterterrorism measures work against certain sections of CS, civil society has actively opposed terrorism-related security policies. This chapter further argues that these mixed responses result from civil society’s strategic interests and a desire to feel empowered and secure. As a result, CS does not form a united opposition to problematic counterterrorism policies and practices in Pakistan. Responses of activists, groups, and movements have been conditional and context-specific. Therefore, it is unlikely that there will be major changes in Pakistan’s counterterrorism policies to protect the combined interests of its CS at large.
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