A History of Islamist Militancy in Pakistani Punjab

A History of Islamist Militancy in Pakistani Punjab PDF Author: Arif Jamal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780967500997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Punjabi Taliban is the newest focus of terrorism experts in the West. The organization first drew attention after the 2007 Red Mosque crisis in Islamabad. A six-month standoff between the government and radical Islamic fundamentalists headquartered in the mosque ended violently with a raid by Pakistani troops. The assault resulted in the deaths of more than 100 militants and the army's commanding officer. After the crisis, groups calling themselves the Punjabi Taliban claimed responsibility for many terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. This report profiles the Punjabi Taliban, also known as the Deobandi Islamist extremists. They are based in Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan. Tracing the history of Islamist radicalism in the province, the report argues that Punjab is the most radicalized region in the country and that most of the Islamist and jihadist groups in Pakistan are based there. The report also looks at the future of the Deobandi radicalism in Pakistan.

A History of Islamist Militancy in Pakistani Punjab

A History of Islamist Militancy in Pakistani Punjab PDF Author: Arif Jamal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780967500997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
The Punjabi Taliban is the newest focus of terrorism experts in the West. The organization first drew attention after the 2007 Red Mosque crisis in Islamabad. A six-month standoff between the government and radical Islamic fundamentalists headquartered in the mosque ended violently with a raid by Pakistani troops. The assault resulted in the deaths of more than 100 militants and the army's commanding officer. After the crisis, groups calling themselves the Punjabi Taliban claimed responsibility for many terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. This report profiles the Punjabi Taliban, also known as the Deobandi Islamist extremists. They are based in Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan. Tracing the history of Islamist radicalism in the province, the report argues that Punjab is the most radicalized region in the country and that most of the Islamist and jihadist groups in Pakistan are based there. The report also looks at the future of the Deobandi radicalism in Pakistan.

Jihad as Grand Strategy

Jihad as Grand Strategy PDF Author: S. Paul Kapur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199768528
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Islamist militants based in Pakistan have played a major role in terrorism around the world and pose a significant threat to regional and international security. Although the Pakistan-militant connection has received widespread attention only in recent years, it is not a new phenomenon. Pakistan has, since its inception in the wake of World War II, used Islamist militants to wage jihad in order to compensate for severe political and material weakness. This use of militancy has become so important that it is now a central component of Pakistani grand strategy; supporting jihad is one of the principal means by which the Pakistani state seeks to produce security for itself. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the strategy has not been wholly disastrous. It has achieved important domestic and international successes, enabling Pakistan to confront stronger adversaries and shape its strategic environment without the costs and risks of direct combat, and to help promote internal cohesion to compensate for its weak domestic political foundations. Recently, however, these successes of Pakistan's militant strategy have given way to serious problems. The militant organizations that Pakistan nurtured over the decades are increasingly exceeding its control; continued support for jihad diverts scarce resources from pressing domestic projects, impeding the country's internal development; and the militant campaign's repeated provocations have led India to adopt a more aggressive conventional military posture. As Paul Kapur shows in Jihad as Grand Strategy, these developments significantly undermine Pakistani interests, threatening to leave it less politically cohesive and externally secure than it was before. Thus, despite its past benefits, the strategy has outlived its utility, and Pakistan will have to abandon it in order to avoid catastrophe. This will require not simply a change of policy, but a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of the Pakistani state.

Faith-Based Violence and Deobandi Militancy in Pakistan

Faith-Based Violence and Deobandi Militancy in Pakistan PDF Author: Jawad Syed
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349949663
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
This book documents and highlights the Deobandi dimension of extremism and its implications for faith-based violence and terrorism. This dimension of radical Islam remains largely ignored or misunderstood in mainstream media and academic scholarship. The book addresses this gap. It also covers the Deobandi diaspora in the West and other countries and the role of its radical elements in transnational incidents of violence and terrorism. The specific identification of the radical Deobandi and Salafi identity of militants is useful to isolate them from the majority of peaceful Sunni and Shia Muslims. Such identification provides direction to governmental resources so they focus on those outfits, mosques, madrassas, charities, media and social medial channels that are associated with these ideologies. This book comes along at a time when there is a dire need for alternative and contextual discourses on terrorism.

Frontline Pakistan

Frontline Pakistan PDF Author: Zahid Hussain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Veteran Pakistani journalist and commentator Zahid Hussain explores Pakistan's complex political power web and the consequences of Musharraf's decision to support America's drive against jihadism, which essentially took Pakistan to war with itself. Conducting exclusive interviews with key players and grassroots radicals, Hussain pinpoints the origin of the jihadi movement in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the long-standing and often denied links between militants and Pakistani authorities, the weaknesses of successive elected governments, and the challenges to Musharraf's authority posed by politico-religious, sectarian, and civil society elements within the country. The jihadi madrassas of Pakistan are incubators of the most feared terrorists in the world. Although the country's "war on terror" has so far been a stage show, a very real battle is looming, the outcome of which will have grave implications for the future security of the world.

The Scorpion's Tail

The Scorpion's Tail PDF Author: Zahid Hussain
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439157863
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
A deeply reported account of the war against Islamic extremists in Pakistan and battles being fought in the remote tribal regions. The war in Afghanistan has raged on longer than any war in US history, and far from suppressing the insurgency being waged by radical Islamic militants, it has led to stronger alli­ances among al Qaeda, the Taliban, and a host of once-autonomous militant groups and has inspired a flood of new recruits. In addition to reclaiming control of substantial territory in Afghanistan, the militants have now taken the fight deep within Pakistan—threatening to totally destabilize that nuclear-armed state—and are launching attacks on the US homeland. Why has the insurgency been so irrepressible? Is this a war that can be won? Can we expect a wave of attacks within the United States more sophisticated than the attempted bombing in Times Square? Nothing can be understood about the prospects for the war and the threat to the US homeland without understanding how Pakistan has become the epicenter of the insurgency and why the rise of militant groups there has escalated out of control despite major offensives by the Pakistani military and an intensive secret US Predator drone war against them. Based on extensive reporting inside Pakistan’s dangerous lawless regions and exclusive interviews with militant leaders as well as high-level military and intelligence sources, Zahid Hussain, one of the most respected reporters working out of Pakistan, chronicles how and why the Islamic extremist groups based in Pakistan’s remote tribal territories have greatly increased their power since the start of the war and unleashed a reign of terror on US forces in Afghanistan and on both the military and civilian population within Pakistan. He is the first to reveal how a loose constellation of tribal groups has now come together to form a distinctive Pakistani Taliban, working closely with al Qaeda and the Afghani Taliban to launch increas­ingly sophisticated and deadly attacks on both sides of the Af-Pak border. He discloses how they draw support and a steady flood of recruits from deeply entrenched support networks in major Pakistani cities, and how they have recruited would-be US attackers, including Faisal Shahzad and Adnan Shukrijumah, accused of plotting to bomb the New York City subway. He is also the first to chronicle in detail the still unacknowledged US war carried out in Pakistan by remote Predator drones, and, reporting from the scenes of a number of drone missile strikes and interviewing a number of attempted suicide bombers, he reveals the shocking extent of anti-Americanism the strikes have stoked in Pakistan, across the range of the population, due to civilian deaths, driving a new breed of highly educated, professional, and middle-class Pakistanis into the militant groups. His gripping and revelatory account is an urgent wake-up call about the blowback effects of the US war in Afghanistan and the drone campaign in Pakistan, about how volatile the situation in the Af-Pak region has become, and about the deeply troubling limitations of the current military strategy in ever gaining decisive ground against the insurgents.

Islam in Pakistan

Islam in Pakistan PDF Author: Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069121073X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
The first book to explore the modern history of Islam in South Asia The first modern state to be founded in the name of Islam, Pakistan was the largest Muslim country in the world at the time of its establishment in 1947. Today it is the second-most populous, after Indonesia. Islam in Pakistan is the first comprehensive book to explore Islam's evolution in this region over the past century and a half, from the British colonial era to the present day. Muhammad Qasim Zaman presents a rich historical account of this major Muslim nation, insights into the rise and gradual decline of Islamic modernist thought in the South Asian region, and an understanding of how Islam has fared in the contemporary world. Much attention has been given to Pakistan's role in sustaining the Afghan struggle against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, in the growth of the Taliban in the 1990s, and in the War on Terror after 9/11. But as Zaman shows, the nation's significance in matters relating to Islam has much deeper roots. Since the late nineteenth century, South Asia has witnessed important initiatives toward rethinking core Islamic texts and traditions in the interest of their compatibility with the imperatives of modern life. Traditionalist scholars and their institutions, too, have had a prominent presence in the region, as have Islamism and Sufism. Pakistan did not merely inherit these and other aspects of Islam. Rather, it has been and remains a site of intense contestation over Islam's public place, meaning, and interpretation. Examining how facets of Islam have been pivotal in Pakistani history, Islam in Pakistan offers sweeping perspectives on what constitutes an Islamic state.

The Shias of Pakistan

The Shias of Pakistan PDF Author: Andreas Rieck
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190613483
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The Shias of Pakistan are the world's second largest Shia community after that of Iran, but comprise only 10-15 per cent of Pakistan's population. In recent decades Sunni extremists have increasingly targeted them with hate propaganda and terrorism, yet paradoxically Shias have always been fully integrated into all sections of political, professional and social life without suffering any discrimination. In mainstream politics, the Shia- Sunni divide has never been an issue in Pakistan. Shia politicians in Pakistan have usually downplayed their religious beliefs, but there have always been individuals and groups who emphasised their Shia identity, and who zealously campaigned for equal rights for the Shias wherever and whenever they perceived these to be threatened. Shia 'ulama' have been at the forefront of communal activism in Pakistan since 1949, but Shia laymen also participated in such organisations, as they had in pre-partition India. Based mainly on Urdu sources, Rieck's book examines, first, the history of Pakistan's Shias, including their communal organisations, the growth of the Shia 'ulama' class, of religious schools and rivalry between "orthodox" "ulama" and popular preachers; second, the outcome of lobbying of successive Pakistan governments by Shia organisations; and third, the Shia-Sunni conflict, which is increasingly virulent due to the state's failure to combat Sunni extremism.

Jihadism in Pakistan

Jihadism in Pakistan PDF Author: Antonio Giustozzi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755647378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Pakistan is host to the largest concentration of jihadist groups in the world. Since the 1980s, the Pakistani state has been accused of sponsoring local jihadist groups and sending Pakistani volunteers to support them. This book is based on almost 114 interviews, conducted mainly in Urdu and Pashto, from within Al-Qaeda and affiliated jihadist groups. It examines the relationship between the Pakistani security agencies and Al-Qaeda, and how they both became entangled and used by the local jihadists they were themselves trying to exploit. The interviews paint a picture of the shifting strategies and priorities of the different jihadi groups in the early 21st century, covering their ideological objectives, their agreements and disagreements over tactics, as well as pressure from rival militant groups and internal factionalism. The book is the most in-depth study of jihadism in Pakistan, and Antonio Giustozzi highlights the strategies global jihadists deployed after 9/11 and how Al-Qaeda tried to manage the largest jihadist group in Pakistan, the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The book also covers other key issues in South Asian security, such as the impact of Islamic State on Al Qaeda's power after 2014, why Al-Qaeda continue to back the TTP, and what is happening with the groups focused on taking jihad to Kashmir and India.

Pakistan's Drift into Extremism

Pakistan's Drift into Extremism PDF Author: Hassan Abbas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317463285
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This book examines the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan, particularly since 1947, and analyzes its connections to the Pakistani army's corporate interests and U.S.-Pakistan relations. It includes profiles of leading Pakistani militant groups with details of their origins, development, and capabilities. The author begins with an historical overview of the introduction of Islam to the Indian sub-continent in 712 AD, and brings the story up to the present by describing President Musharraf's handling of the war on terror. He provides a detailed account of the political developments in Pakistan since 1947 with a focus on the influence of religious and military forces. He also discusses regional politics, Pakistan's attempt to gain nuclear power status, and U.S.-Pakistan relations, and offers predictions for Pakistan's domestic and regional prospects.

The Cambridge History of Terrorism

The Cambridge History of Terrorism PDF Author: Richard English
Publisher:
ISBN: 1108470165
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 719

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Book Description
An accessible, authoritative history of terrorism, offering systematic analyses of key themes, problems and case studies from terrorism's long past.