Over the last ten years, tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians and security forces—25,051 by one count—have been killed in terrorist attacks conducted by the Pakistan Taliban and other militant groups.1 Is terrorism in Pakistan a manifestation of a society moving toward radicalism or one victimized by terrorist groups created by geopolitics? Are ordinary Pakistanis extremists?
In the West, Pakistan is characterized as a villainous, failing state that created a terrorism monster and does not do enough to fight it; it is, thus, blamed for the hazards its citizens face as well as the danger it poses to the rest of the world.2 Its citizens are thought to be irrational fundamentalists. This book takes issue with that characterization. Pakistan has its demons and more, no doubt, but it has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its present struggle with terror, by the jihadist training camps in Pakistan, and the links of some Pakistanis to attacks in the West. Its story is far more complex.
Pakistani society is multi-dimensional, but the world is most likely to see images of anti-American mobs or crowds who show up at rallies held by Islamist fundamentalists.
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Sr Priya Srivastava
In this book, I lay out the imperatives facing the Pakistani state, its strategic calculations, the attitudes of Pakistani society, and the country’s turn toward extremism. I show how the Pakistani state has helped foster militancy in the country and how the exclusionary nature of Pakistan’s Islamization— undertaken by the state more for strategic than ideological reasons, as part of its nationalist project—has mainstreamed extremist narratives. The Pakistani state has done this through manipulating the country’s laws and education system.
