Browsing by Subject "Pakistan"
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Item A Game of Drones: Comparing the U.S. Aerial Assassination Campaign in Yemen and PakistanHoyt, Melanie Raeann; Hoyt, Melanie Raeann; Celso, Anthony; Ehlers, Robert; Bechtol, Bruce; Lamberson, ChristineTo combat the terrorist threat the United States faces in Yemen and Pakistan, Remotely Piloted Vehicles have been employed to deter, deflect, and defend. These RPV’s operate thousands of miles from the closest military base in states that are not officially engaged in war. In these sovereign lands, cultures that have existed for thousands of years are torn between corrupt governments, terrorist insurgency cells, and sudden death from above. Reports on whether the aerial assassination campaign has impacted terrorist activity have been interpreted very differently among analysts. This thesis will explore how RPV’s have affected foreign policy, terrorism, and the security threats these places pose to the United States. Answers to these questions directly affect the future of international law, and how war will be waged in future combat.Item A Study on the Relationship Between Security and Prosperity in PakistanHubbard, Austen Cross; Dailey, Jeffery; Ehlers, Robert; Martinez, Eduardo; Abernathy, SusanSince 2014 Pakistan has reported improvements in their security and their economy. The aim of this study is to determine if those improvements are a result of counterterrorism policies implemented that same year, along with aggressive military operations. By utilizing a linear regression model, the hope was to identify a direct negative relationship between Pakistan’s Market Potential Index scores from 2007-2014 and their reported fiscal loss due to terrorism during the same years. If a relationship exists between those two variables, then there is an opportunity to argue that Pakistan has improved their economic situation by reducing domestic terrorism within their borders. Other research on this topic only measures Pakistan’s economic loss from acts of terrorism; there is no record of research gauging the effects of reported improvements. By studying the effects of a reduction in terrorist acts on the economic potential of Pakistan, the goal is to support increased security reform in Pakistan and international cooperation in their road to stability.Item 'But you haven't told me about yourself' : women's digests in Pakistan as an affective space of belonging(2013-12) Ahmed, Kiran Nazir; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-This report demonstrates how encounters between readers, writers and editors of a low-brow genre of Urdu fiction, create an affective space of belonging. This genre is published in commercial monthly magazines (commonly known as women’s digests) that contain narratives of feminine domesticity, primarily written by and for women, in Pakistan. Drawing on ethnographic work (archival and interviews) with authors, readers and editors of two monthlies, this study traces the contours of digest community as an affective space of belonging that provides a ‘complex of confirmation and consolation’ on how to be a woman in Pakistan’s changing social milieu. It further argues that recent proliferation of cell phones has led to a new sensibility in this community that has its own rhythm of sound. Previously readers would communicate through published letters mediated by editors. However, now there is direct contact between these two groups, through cell phones. Digest narratives are now also being drawn from experiences readers share with authors over cell phone conversations. This sharing is not factual as such, but rather an affective exchange of feelings about facts. Thus, these conversations can be seen as a shared emotional experience where the lack of visual cues regarding social class, age and ethnicity (since readers and writers rarely meet each other) leads to voices becoming just that – voices that share life stories and experiences. There is thus a transient coming together of women who are mostly unrelated by kinship or ethnicity; and a sociality is formed between strangers with its own sensory feel of rhythm and sound, through the medium of the cell phone. This work contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship on how media and technology is a negotiation between material properties of technologies being introduced and the particular effects in forming new affects and sensibilities; and how dominant representations of Muslim women as a singular and stable category of analysis, can be spoken back to, by highlighting their myriad voices and understanding them beyond the usual tropes of victimhood and emancipation.Item Cotton price policy effects on domestic cotton and textile industries, trade, and sectoral economic growth in Pakistan(Texas Tech University, 1997-05) Hudson, Michael DarrenGovernment policy affects market outcomes for agricultural commodities. Many countries have long used commodity and trade policy in agriculture to reach national goals. The gains and losses from these policies are evaluated and value judgments are made as to the necessity of the policy (Helmberger, 1991). Attempts have been made to explain this process frdm a positive theory perspective (for example, Krueger, 1974; Swinnen, 1994). The global economy (led by developed or industrialized countries) has tended toward an increased degree of trade liberalization over the past two decades, e.g.. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Trade restrictions, however, are still a pervasive fact of life. Governments of both developed and developing countries have implemented non-tariff trade barriers (NTBs) or have otherwise manipulated market regulations to give advantage to domestic industries (Salvatore, 1993).Item A harbor in the tempest: megaprojects, identity, and the politics of place in Gwadar, Pakistan(2014-05) Jamali, Hafeez Ahmed; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-This dissertation seeks to understand the ways in which Pakistani government’s attempts to initiate large-scale infrastructure development projects in Balochistan Province have transformed its social and political landscape. Ethnographically, the study focuses on Gwadar, a small coastal town in Pakistan’s western Balochistan Province to show how colonial and postcolonial projects of progress and development suppress or subsume other kinds of lived geographies and imaginations of place. Keeping in mind the centrality of everyday experiences in generating social forms, this dissertation describes how development, transnationalism, and ethnic identity are (re)configured. It is based on ethnographic encounters that foreground the lived experiences and imaginations of fishermen from Med kinship and occupational group who occupy a subaltern position within the local status hierarchy in Gwadar. On the one hand, the promise of becoming modern citizens of the future mega city incites new desires and longings among those fishermen that facilitate their incorporation into emergent regimes of labor and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, Pakistani security forces have tightened their control over the local population by establishing a cordon sanitaire around Gwadar Port and the town. These mechanisms of control have disrupted local fishermen`s experiences of place and intimate sociality and introduced elements of exclusion, fear, and paranoia. By interrupting the fishermen`s expectations of their rightful place in the city, it compels them to think of alternate ways to confront the state’s development agenda, including peaceful protest and armed struggle. The dissertation concludes, tentatively, that the imposition of political violence by state authorities that accompanies the structural violence of mega infrastructure projects tends to create a mirror effect whereby the victims of development adopt a language of violence and a different idiom of identity.Item Masters not friends : land, labor and politics of place in rural Pakistan(2013-05) Rizvi, Mubbashir Abbas; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-This dissertation analyzes the cultural significance of land relations and caste/religious identity to understand political subjectivity in Punjab, Pakistan. The ethnography details the vicissitudes of a peasant land rights movement, Anjuman-e Mazarin Punjab (Punjab Tenants Association) that is struggling to retain land rights on vast agricultural farms controlled by the Pakistan army. The dissertation argues that land struggles should not only be understood in tropes of locality, but also as interconnected processes that attend to global and local changes in governance. To emphasize these connections, the dissertation gives a relational understanding of 'politics of place' that attends to a range of practices from the history of colonial infrastructure projects (the building of canals, roads and model villages) that transformed this agricultural frontier into the heart of British colonial administration. Similarly, the ethnographic chapters relate the history of 'place making' to the present day uncertainty for small tenant sharecroppers who defied the Pakistan Army's attempts to change land relations in the military farms. Within these parameters, this ethnographic study offers a "thick description" of Punjab Tenants Association to analyze the internal shifts in loyalties and alignments during the course of the protest movement by looking at how caste, religious and/or class relations gain or lose significance in the process. My research seeks to counter the predominant understanding of Muslim political subjectivity, which privileges religious beliefs over social practices and regional identity. Another aspect of my work elucidates the symbolic exchange between the infrastructural project of irrigation, railway construction and regional modernity in central Punjab. The network of canals, roads and railways transformed the semi-arid region of Indus Plains and created a unique relationship between the state and rural society in central Punjab. However, this close relationship between rural Punjab and state administration is not void of conflict but rather it indicates a complex sense of attachment and alienation, inclusion and exclusion from the state.Item Narratives of belonging : Aligarh Muslim University and the partitioning of South Asia(2012-05) Abbas, Amber Heather; Minault, Gail, 1939-The partition of India that accompanied that nation's independence in 1947 created the additional state of Pakistan; by 1971, this Pakistan had fractured into the two independent states of Pakistan and Bangladesh. This dissertation seeks to expand our temporal and spatial understanding of the sub-continent's partitioning by examining the experiences of a group of South Asian Muslims across time and space. As this dissertation will show, South Asia's partitioning includes more than the official history of boundary creation and division of assets, and more than the people's history of unbridled violence. I have oriented my investigation around a single institution, the Aligarh Muslim University, and spoken to former students of the 1940s and 1950s, whose young lives were shaped by the independence and partition of India. The memories of these former students of Aligarh University offer a lens for examining the "multiple realities" of partition and the decolonized experiences of South Asian Muslims. The educational institution at Aligarh, founded in 1875, had long been concerned with cultivating a sporting, activist, masculine identity among its students; Muslim League leaders further empowered that identity as they recruited students for election work in support of Pakistan. The students embraced the values of the demand for Pakistan that appeared to be consistent with the values engendered at Aligarh. This dissertation uncovers the history of these students throughout the 1947 partition and beyond. It explores unexpected histories of trauma among communities who "chose to stay" but later experienced a powerful discontinuity in independent India. It exposes contradictions evident in remembered histories from Pakistanis who express triumph and grief at the prospect of Pakistani independence. Finally, this dissertation assesses the position of Muslims after partition and how the "disturbances" that began in the late 1940s continue to affect them today in both lived and remembered experience. As a site for examining the "disturbances" of partition, Aligarh University proves to be a hub of a community that was and remains deeply disturbed by the changes partition wrought.Item The Pakistan National Alliance of 1977(2011-05) Suhail, Adeem; Hyder, Syed Akbar; Ali, Kamran AsdarThis study focuses on the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) and the movement associated with that party, in the aftermath of the 1977 elections in Pakistan. Through this study, the author addresses the issue of regionalism and its effects on politics at a National level. A study of the course of the movement also allows one to look at the problems in representation and how ideological stances merge with material conditions and needs of the country’s citizenry to articulate the desire for, what is basically, an equitable form of democracy that is peculiar to Pakistan. The form of such a democratic system of governance can be gauged through the frustrations and desires of the variety of Pakistan’s oppressed classes. Moreover, the fissures within the discourses that appear through the PNA, as well as their reassessment and analysis helps one formulate a fresh conception of resistance along different matrices of society within the country.Item Pakistani media, public opinion, and the downfall of Pervez Musharraf : news attribute agenda-setting, and cognitive liberation in the Lawyers’ Movement(2016-05) Bajwa, Hena Khursheed; Coleman, Renita; McCombs, Maxwell E.; Jensen, Robert; Todd, Rusell; Straubhaar, Joseph; Young, MichaelIn 2007, Pakistan saw its first popular mass protest movement in decades. Subsequently known as the Lawyers’ Movement, the protest was initiated by Pakistani lawyers in response to then dictator President General Pervez Musharraf’s decision to unconstitutionally suspend Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. This dissertation explores the second-level attribute agenda-setting effects of Pakistani news media on public opinion regarding General Pervez Musharraf, and the consequent sense of “cognitive liberation” – the collective sentiment that the public can affect social change – among Pakistanis, that eventually lead to Musharraf’s political downfall. A content analysis of 318 news stories was conducted from the English language daily The News over seven time periods between 2007 and 2008. The newspaper was selected as representative of one of Pakistan’s most powerful media groups, the Jang Media Group. The content analysis results were then compared with Pakistan public opinion polls conducted by the International Republican Institute over seven time periods between 2007 and 2008. Spearman’s Rho correlations were used to describe the relationship between the tone of The News’ descriptions in its stories and Pakistani public opinion regarding General Musharraf during the Lawyers’ Movement. Social Movement Theory was also used in a textual analysis of The News reportage to contextualize the various political processes during the Lawyers’ Movement, and also to help explain how and why the movement was different from others in Pakistan’s recent history. The results of both analyses suggested that the tone of the attributes of General Musharraf highlighted by the Pakistani press during the Lawyers’ Movement did significantly influence public opinion about General Musharraf. Further, The News’ media representation during the Movement played an important role in the shared belief among Pakistanis that they could effectively unite to oppose Musharraf’s leadership.Item Production response of cotton in India, Pakistan, and Australia(Texas Tech University, 2002-05) Carpio, Carlos EnriqueThe problematic situation confronted by the cotton sector during recent years and the increasing level of globalization has led to a greater need for understanding production and marketing systems of countries other than the United States. A better understanding of the supply and demand forces underlying cotton markets in other countries can improve policy and industry decisions in the United States. The assessment of the magnitude and direction of the global future cotton supply and demand relations could provide U.S. producers and processors useful information in appraising the potential and sustainability of cotton production and trade. The study of the cotton supply and demand forces would be useful for U.S. policymakers to design market and trade policies to sustain and develop the cotton industry. Since the activities of production, consumption and trade of cotton in the world are concentrated in very few countries, the study of the foreign cotton industry needs to focus primarily in those countries that are major participants in the global cotton market. Given the resources constraint (i.e., time, data availability, etc.) only a subset of those countries was selected for this research, and the cotton subsector in which this study focused was the production sector. Three countries were chosen: India, Pakistan, and Australia. Current information about production response' for cotton in these countries is limited. The most recent studies found in the literature for India and Pakistan date back to the 1980s, and in the case of Pakistan the eariy 1990s. Therefore, there is a need for further research to develop updated production response functions for these major-producing countries. These three countries are key players in the worid cotton market. India is the largest producing country in the worid after China and the United States, and the second consuming country after China. Although during the last decades India has not imported or exported large quantities of raw cotton, it is predicted that this country will become a net importer of cotton in the near future (FAO, 1999a). Pakistan is the third largest consuming country, and the fourth largest cotton producing country in the worid, and it is likely that it will become an importer of cotton in the future, as well (FAO, 1999b). Australia is the seventh largest producing country and the third largest exporter.Item Public private partnership in education : a case in Pakistan(2011-05) Khan, Amna; Wong, Patrick, 1956-; Bussell, JenniferPakistan had a literacy rate of 54 percent in 2008. This was considerably lower than all of its neighbors. 43 million people in Pakistan live below the poverty line of a dollar a day, and receiving quality education remains a dream for most of them. The government spends less than 3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on education, which means that little can be done to provide even basic education to all. While there is no conclusive evidence regarding the effectiveness of public private partnerships, they have been promoted as part of the national agenda on education since 2000. This report explores the effectiveness of such partnerships in the education sector in Pakistan, and analyzes the problems that these partnerships face. The focal point of the assessment is an in-depth analysis of various public private partnership programs in Pakistan, based on primary and secondary data. Primary data includes information gathered by visiting a school that was formed under one such partnership, and by conducting detailed interviews with key stake holders. Secondary data comprises of evaluation reports by donor agencies and the Ministry of Education. The primary aim of this report is to examine the effectiveness of such programs and the reasons for their success or failures. The secondary aim is to determine if active community involvement in education yields better results. Finally, this report offers guidelines to the government for designing successful public private partnerships. Findings reveal that such partnerships have varying results within Pakistan and these results depend greatly on the design of such partnerships. The author recommends that a national policy on public private partnerships be formed, and elements of accountability and performance measure be added to each contract to make the partnership more effective, sustainable and successful.Item Ramparts of empire : India's North-West Frontier and British imperialism, 1919-1947(2009-05) Marsh, Brandon Douglas; Louis, William Roger, 1936-This study examines the relationship between British perceptions and policies regarding India’s North-West Frontier and its Pathan inhabitants and the decline of British power in the subcontinent from 1919 to 1947. Its central argument is that two key constituencies within the framework of British India, the officers of the Indian Army and the Indian Political Service, viewed the Frontier as the most crucial region within Britain’s Indian Empire. Generations of British officers believed that this was the one place in India where the British could suffer a “knockout blow” from either external invasion or internal revolt. In light of this, when confronted by a full-scale Indian nationalist movement after the First World War, the British sought to seal off the Frontier from the rest of India. Confident that they had inoculated the Frontier against nationalism, the British administration on the Frontier carried on as if it were 30 years earlier, fretting about possible Soviet expansion, tribal raids, and Afghan intrigues. This emphasis on external menaces proved costly, however, as it blinded the British to local discontent and the rapid growth of a Frontier nationalist movement by the end of the 1920s. When the Frontier administration belatedly realized that they faced a homegrown nationalist movement they responded with a combination of institutional paralysis and brutality that underscored the British belief that the region constituted the primary bulwark of the British Raj. This violence proved counterproductive. It engendered wide-scale nationalist interest in the Frontier and effectively made British policy in the region a subject of All-Indian political debate. The British responded to mounting nationalist pressure in the 1930s by placing the Frontier at the center of their successful efforts to retain control of India’s defence establishment. This was a short-lived stopgap, however. By the last decade of British rule much of the Frontier was under the administration of the Indian National Congress. Moreover, the British not only concluded that Indian public opinion must be taken into account when formulating policy, but that nationalist prescriptions for the “problem” of the North-West Frontier should be enacted.Item Repatriation and state reconstruction : tracing the agency of Afghan returnees in the face of human insecurity(2015-05) Wojdyla, Stella Maria; Hindman, Heather; Miller, PaulSince the beginnings of the Afghan refugee crisis, aid agencies have provided consistent and substantial relief to Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. However, the response was framed by the assumption that mostly short-term humanitarian aid is re-quired because refugees will return to Afghanistan once the conflict ends. This report challenges the "conflict-refugee" concept by focusing on refugee agency in the face of human insecurity and the complexity of Afghan population movements, which include transnational networks, mixed migration, and hybrid identities. The discussion concentrates on the period from 2002 to 2005, when UNHCR facilitated sizable surges of voluntary returns while the Afghan state was still in the initial reconstruction phase. Regardless of UNHCR's repatriation program, the refugee crisis persisted as a significant number of repatriates decided to return to Pakistan and Iran or cross the border repeatedly. To explain the causes and consequences of this phenomenon of refugee backflows, I offer the following argument: The backflow of repatriated refu-gees consisted of both voluntary and forced migrants. Voluntary migrants continued ex-isting practices of circular migration to pursue their preferred livelihood strategies. Forced migrants, however, responded to human insecurity in Afghanistan with migratory coping strategies as their only available form of agency. This distinction has several implications for future reconstruction and repatriation efforts: On the one hand, reconstruction plans should integrate the potential constructive effects of voluntary migration. These effects include remittances, the transfer of human capital, as well as the reduction of pressures on the labor market, infrastructures and so-cial services in the transitional state. On the other hand, UNHCR should only facilitate repatriation once a minimum level of human security on all levels is guaranteed to ensure safe and dignified returns and prevent continued forced migration.Item Silence and madness : resistance in Pakistani drama serials(2016-05) Haque, Madiha; Hyder, Syed Akbar; Kumar, ShantiThis MA Report examines the drama serials Dastaan (2010) and Humsafar (2011-12). Although Humsafar is set within contemporary Pakistan, Dastaan is a period piece about the 1947 Partition. Audiences have drawn comparisons between both serials due to the actor Fawad Khan's involvement. However, my site of analysis will be the main female characters within these serials. As women primarily make up the audiences for serials, drama serials tend to be about their everyday lives in domestic spaces. Dastaan deviates from this, however, as it is more a serial about the main character Bano and her relationship with the nation-state of Pakistan. Dastaan subverts the colonial and Partition era notion that women's bodies are representations of the nations and communities they come from; instead, each of the main male figures in her life become representations of Pakistan's contradictory dimensions. This liminal space of conflict and contradictions within the newly independent Pakistan robs Bano of her "sanity." Alternatively, Humsafar is about the trials the main character Khirad faces when a misunderstanding disrupts her marriage. Khirad’s strategic utilization of silence drives the serial's plot forward. I argue that both serials demonstrate ways that women enact resistance against normative notions of nationalism by breaking away from the hegemonic languages of sanity, patriarchy, and nation.Item Time series models of the electrical conductivity measured at the Manchar Lake in Pakistan(2010-05) Zehra, Syeda Mahe; Barnes, J. Wesley; Pierce, Suzanne A.The Manchar Lake in Pakistan is in danger. So are the native fisher folk that populate the area and lake. The lake is undergoing water quality degradation due to both a decrease in the amount of freshwater inflow and an increase in the polluted agricultural run-off. The fish in the lake are dying and some fish species are becoming extinct, the people living on and around the lake are facing severe health risks, migratory birds are no longer stopping at the Manchar Lake and agriculture in the area is also suffering. This report focuses on time-series modeling and analysis of water quality data from Manchar Lake. We evaluate data for three sites within the Manchar Lake and complete time series models and analysis for two sites. Particular attention is given to the Electrical Conductivity data of the lake. The approach to modeling and time series analysis provide an example of potential uses of measured data to recognize shifts in water quality within the context of potential insights and recommendations about lake management in the area.Item The unintended consequences of border politics(2010-12) Jackson, Jeffrey Stephen; Minault, Gail, 1939-; Louis, RogerThis report explores the reasons why the Pakistan tribal areas have become a haven and hotbed of radicalism and the steps being taken to reestablish control and to promote peace and stability in the region. It begins with a brief overview of the recent history (1893 to Partition) of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, followed by the political and cultural ramifications in the area due to the creation of Pakistan. Religion, tribal customs, socio-economic development and the unique political relationship between the FATA and the central government must be considered when forming policy recommendations and planning future engagements. The article concludes with an examination of recent initiatives by the U.S. and Pakistan to pacify the area, to include short term and long term strategies, and describes the ramifications of failure.Item Urban poverty in Pakistan(2011-05) Zaidi, Syed Hashim; Wong, Patrick, 1956-; Bussell, JenniferThis report analyzes the spatial shift occurring in the nature of poverty in Pakistan. Given the rapid urban growth in Pakistan, poor families residing in cities are confronted with limited employment opportunities, poor living conditions, minimal access to services, and face environmental and health risks. Macroeconomic factors such as slow economic growth, Structural Adjustment Programs, food inflation, low job creation rate and housing crisis have all contributed to the rise in urban poverty. The weak local government structure and a lack of community involvement in governance decisions have only worsened the situation. With a burgeoning urban population, it is imperative that the government introduces a holistic pro-poor development package that focuses on interventions in the education, labor and housing markets across Pakistan.Item Urbanization, Islamization, and identity crisis : the role of Pashtun women’s mourning in the construction and maintenance of identity(2012-05) Schweiss, Amy Ann; Shirazi, Faegheh, 1952-Despite prohibitions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad strictly forbidding the practice of dramatic acts of public mourning, Muslim women have persisted in wailing performances throughout history and across boarders. Pashtun social ethics require women to participate in visitation exchanges commemorating sorrowful and joyous events experienced by members of their social circle known as gham-xadi exchanges. These exchanges, which involve performative mourning rites, affirm a woman’s place in society through the maintenance of complex social networks. This research examines the role ritualized mourning performances play in the construction and maintenance of ethnic and religious identities among Pashtun women living in Pakistan. It explores the opposing pressures of Islamic prescription and Pashtun traditions regarding funerary rites and women’s mourning, arguing that social changes taking place in recent decades have caused these pressures to come into increasing conflict with one another. While urbanization and the shift from an agrarian to an industrial based economy in Pakistan has led to the amplified importance of wailing performances, globalization and growing exposure to the West has revitalized anxieties surrounding proper religious practices. The process of Islamization occurring through constitutional and educational reforms in Pakistan compounds this anxiety. These tensions have created an identity crisis among Pashtun women in Pakistan who are then forced to reconcile these disparate demands resulting in the layering of their identities.Item Utilizing Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) in a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan(2015-05) Ernst, Emily Marie; Hindman, Heather; Miller, PaulThe Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is an extremist organization operating within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northern Pakistan. The organization poses a significant threat to Pakistani sovereignty, and so far Pakistani military efforts to contain the TTP have been largely unsuccessful. This paper examines previous Pakistani efforts through the lens of counterinsurgency theory. It then argues Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) theory provides a viable alternative method to counter the TTP in FATA. CVE would be more inclusive of the traditional Pashtun tribal structure that is dominant in these areas, and implementing a CVE plan in Pakistan would allow for a stronger counterinsurgency operation because of this inclusivity.