Afghan Refugees, Pakistani Media and the State

Afghan Refugees, Pakistani Media and the State
Author: Ayesha Jehangir
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2023-12-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1003822355

Drawing on the frameworks of peace journalism, this book offers new insights into the Pakistani media coverage of Afghan refugees and their forced repatriation from Pakistan. Based on a three-year-study, the author examines the political, social and economic forces that influence and govern the reporting practices of journalists covering the protracted refugee conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Through a critical discourse analysis of the structures of journalistic iterability of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, the author distils four dominant and three emerging frames, and proposes a new teleological turn for peace journalism as deliberative practice, that is to say practice that by promoting transparency and accountability (recognition) and challenging dominant power-proposed narratives and perspectives (resistance) encourages public engagement and participation (cosmopolitan solidarity). The author also privileges an analytical approach that conceptualises the nexus between digital witnessing and peace journalism through the paradigm of cosmopolitanism. The author finds routinely accommodated media narratives of security that represent Afghan refugees as a ‘threat’, a ‘burden’ and the ‘other’ that, through reinforcement, have become an incontestable reality for the public in Pakistan. This book will appeal to those interested in studying and practicing journalism as a conscientious communicative practice that elicits the very public it seeks to inform.

Extremism and Counter-Extremism Narratives in Pakistan

Extremism and Counter-Extremism Narratives in Pakistan
Author: Sadia Nasir
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2023-05-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000889173

The book provides an extensive analysis of extremism, extremist narratives and counter-narratives and their role in consolidating exclusive religious, cultural and social identities in Pakistan. Focusing on the construction and institutionalization of extremist tendencies, the book studies the process of the adoption of the narrow interpretation of religion and society, which subsequently was equated with national identity. It looks at the efforts of counter-extremism narratives, which tend to focus on violent extremism while overlooking non-violent manifestations. The author highlights that the main issue with counter-narratives is the difficulty in presenting extremism and its narratives as a threat since they have been normalized with the state being part of facilitating and building them. A valuable and much-required contribution to the existing literature on extremism and narrative building in Pakistan, this book would help students, academics and policymakers in identifying the limitations of counter-narratives in Pakistan, while providing them with a detailed overview of extremism and extremist narratives. It will also be of interest to researchers studying Security Studies and Asian Politics, especially in the context of South Asia.

Pakistan's War on Terrorism

Pakistan's War on Terrorism
Author: Samir Puri
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2012-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136577432

This book examines Pakistan's strategies in the war against Islamist armed groups that began late 2001, following the 9/11 attacks. The significance of the war inside Pakistan can hardly be understated. Starting in the tribal territories adjacent to Afghanistan, Pakistan’s war has come to engulf the majority of the country through a brutal campaign of suicide bombings. Thousands of Pakistani lives have been lost and the geostrategic balance of the region has been thrown into deep uncertainty. Pakistan's War on Terrorism is an account of a decade-long war following the 9/11 attacks, that is yet to be chronicled in systematic fashion as a campaign of military manoeuvre and terrorist reprisal. It is also an analytic account of Pakistan’s strategic calculus during this time, both in military and political terms, and how these factors have been filtered by Pakistan’s unique strategic culture. This text will be of great interest to students of Asian Politics, Terrorism and Political Violence, and Security Studies in general.

Refugees and the Politics of the Everyday State in Pakistan

Refugees and the Politics of the Everyday State in Pakistan
Author: Elisabetta Iob
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2017-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351395998

The Partition of India in 1947 involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise Hindu or Muslim majorities. The Partition displaced between 10 and 12 million people along religious lines. This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the resettlement and rehabilitation of Partition refugees in Pakistani Punjab between 1947 and 1962. It weaves a chronological and thematic plot into a single narrative, and focuses on the Punjabi refugee middle and upper-middle class. Emphasising the everyday experience of the state, the author challenges standard interpretations of the resettlement of Partition refugees in the region and calls for a more nuanced understanding of their rehabilitation. The book argues the universality of the so-called 'exercise in human misery', and the heterogeneity of the rehabilitation policies. Refugees’ stories and interactions with local institutions reveal the inability of the local bureaucracy to establish its own 'polity' and the viable workability of Pakistan as a state. The use of Pakistani documents, US and British records and a careful survey of both the judicial records and the Urdu and English-language dailies of the time, provides an invaluable window onto the everyday life of a state, its institutions and its citizens. A carefully researched study of both the state and the everyday lives of refugees as they negotiated resettlement, through both personal and official channels, the book offers an important reinterpretation of the first years of Pakistani history. It will be of interest to academics working in the field of refugee resettlement and South Asian History and Politics.