1125801

research-article2022
JAS0010.1177/00219096221125801Journal of Asian and African StudiesKhan

Original Research Article

JAAS
Journal of Asian and African Studies

Ruling the Periphery: Pakistan state

1­–13
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00219096221125801
https://doi.org/10.1177/00219096221125801
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Usman Khan
Pakistan Study Center, North Minzu University, China

Shakir Ullah
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen China

Tao Rui
School of English Studies, North Minzu University, Yinchuan China

Abstract
This article examines Pakistan State’s ruling practices in Lower Dir, a peripheral region. It argues that
this peripheral region was ruled by a colonial logic of governmentality. Through a “thick” ethnography of
Lower Dir, I documented the militarized and fragmented state practices that Tsing refers to as the “sticky
materiality of practical encounters” of the local people with the state apparatuses. The study collected data
through anthropological methods such as mobile ethnography at checkpoints, casual conversations with
locals, and firsthand observations of state ruling practices in the region. This article concludes that it is the
Pakistan state’s strategic interest that keeps the region out of the mainstream, and its security status is now
even more important for Pakistan state following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021.

Keywords
Periphery, governmentality, postcolonial state practices, Pakistan, Pashtuns

Introduction
While teaching an anthropology course, I was frequently confronted with students’ incisive and
critical questions about Pakistan State’s methods and how it rules the periphery. It is worth noting
that the students in the class came from all over Pakistan that includes Balochistan, Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Islamabad, Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Sindh and had very different
perspectives on the state and its ruling practices. Students from peripheral regions, such as
Balochistan or the ex-FATA, talked about the state during their practical encounters with the state
at military checkpoints, military operations, and the military deployment in the entire border
region. As a result, their perspective of the state was more tangible than abstract, based on how
people interact with state apparatuses in daily encounters in the border region. During one of these

Corresponding author:
Shakir Ullah, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen China.
Email: ulla.shaker888@gmail.com
2 Journal of Asian and African Studies 00(0)

discussions, a student stated bluntly, Hum State ky Khilaf hain, Pakistan ky Nahi (We are against
the state, not Pakistan), which prompted me to ponder over the postcolonial state and its ruling
practices in the peripheral region. To comprehend the state’s dynamic nature and ruling practices
in Pakistan’s peripheral and border region, this article argues first that: in a militarized and war-torn
region, the state is predominantly perceived by the local people through its militarized, bureau-
cratic, and violent practices against the local people that shape their daily life. The state appara-
tuses, particularly the military, meticulously translate their power into a striking domain in the
form of checkpoints that keep a strict watch on the physical ownership of the area. The raids are
common to ensure there is no violation or trespassing of army orders in the region. The periphery
is mostly regulated by the state through a technique or method that Benjamin Hopkins (2015)
refers to as “Frontier Governmentality” or what Chatterjee (2020) calls the “rule of colonial
difference.”
Second, the state’s discursive-material and cultural imagination represents it as a sovereign or
trans-local entity in the region. Military-backed billboards, posters, paintings, and encouraging
slogans depicting the state’s historical “victories” against its near neighbor-cum enemy (India) are
all part of this discursive-material creation of the state’s national and militaristic imagination. It is
worth noting that this discursive creation of national imagination and manifestation also instills the
state’s ideological representation based on Islam and the Urdu language. This construction of offi-
cial discursive practices, as well as slogans exhibiting military strength, is part of a larger state-led
nationalizing effort in the periphery that began in the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent security
of the region. The drill is expressed both in material and imagined forms and is intermingled and
inseparable and forms complex governance in the region (Khan, 2021).
Thus, this article focuses on recent theoretical scholarship that discusses the state as “an ethno-
graphic object” and offers a grounded approach that studies the function of the state through physi-
cal encounters with the locals in the region. As a result, the deliberate suspension of “liberal rules”
in the region, to use Agamben’s (2005) phrase, as an “exceptional” zone, occurs from time to time.
This fragmented nature of the state becomes a demand for national geopolitics and security that is
a concern to the domestic and international powers. The article divided in the following sections.
In the “Methodology” section, I have described how I collected data for this ethnographic study by
spending over a year in the field. The second section briefly discusses the center/periphery dis-
course as well as the overall process by which the concept of the state has to be studied. The third
section looks at how locals interact with state institutions on daily basis and how that interaction
shapes their perception of the state as an entity. The fourth section examines the state’s discursive
practices in the periphery.

Methodology
This article is based on 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Lower Dir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
(KP Pakistan). In pursuance of my research, I was in Dir in July–September 2018 and later from
January to September 2019. However, I have seen recent developments and practices, particu-
larly following the fall of the Kabul regime to the Taliban in 2021 (for the second time in his-
tory), which had profoundly altered the region’s geopolitical and security dynamics. It is
challenging to conduct ethnographic research in a militarized area for a lengthy period; there-
fore, I used anthropological methods like participant observation and mobile ethnography. I have
traversed and visited the military and police checkpoints numerous times that are everpresent in
the Lower Dir and one is bound to encounter them regularly while passing these military/police
checkpoints. I generally engaged in informal conversations with the locals to learn about their
regular interactions with the military and police at these checkpoints. Many of them told me that
Khan 3

they had to undergo a complex screening each time they crossed these checkpoints even the
same day.1 The main objective was to document how the military interacted with the locals at
these checkpoints how they perceived the state and what they meant by it. I observed that the
military and other state apparatuses handled the villagers harshly, under a rough-hewn discipli-
nary procedure on daily basis.

State and the center/periphery discourse

The Dir Valley is located at a confluence of the so-called settled area and borderland. It was for-
merly a princely state that was independent and ruled by Nawab of Dir during the British Raj. After
the departure of the colonial rulers, Pakistan formally annexed it in 1969. Being at the intersection
of the contentious “Durand Line,” which separates Pakistan from Afghanistan, it was also affected
by the military adventurism of state practices during the “war on terror.” Dir is therefore ruled
using colonial governing practices, much like other peripheries. However, unlike Swat and
Waziristan (Caron and Khan, 2022; Hopkins and Marsden, 2013), there is little or no literature that
has looked at state practices and the war’s effects on the area following 9/11. The state’s politics
and practices in the entire peripheral region are repressive and are strongly influenced by Pakistan
State center policies and politics toward the peripheral and borderland regions, which spans a bor-
der of about 2640 km with Afghanistan commonly known as the frontier.
Frontier is a space/concept that is misunderstood or misrepresented in popular theoretical
understanding of the state. “Frontier is a ‘complex dynamism’ that is constantly occupied, defined,
and redefined by those who hold it as well as others who seek to keep it at bay or exploit it tacti-
cally for their strategic and political goals” (Hopkins and Marsden, 2012). The politics and state
practices in the peripheries are vastly different from those in urban areas, even though peripheries
are no longer limited to mere locations that are considered to be situated in the borderland but may
also be found in a metropolitan city where people are segregated by class, racial, and ethnic dif-
ferences (Akhtar, 2022). However, in the ethnic peripheries, the state practices are aggressive and
employ violence and strict discipline in terms of and governing the people as compared to the
metropolitan areas. What the state is to the people of the periphery, or how the locals imagine and
experience the state, is a technical question that needs to be analyzed based on the practical prac-
tices of state apparatuses, or what Tsing (2011) refers to as “the sticky materiality of practical
encounters,” through which a universal conception of the state is enacted (p. 3; also see Biehl and
McKay, 2012). Social and political categories such as “legalities and illegalities,” of the behaviors
and undertakings of the local people are the creation of the state. This is done through the sticky
materiality of practical encounters, which transform, shape, reshape, define, and redefine the
political and cultural identities of the local people in both coercive and discursive techniques. The
peripheral region, therefore, is understood as the margin, and in this view, the political, discipli-
nary, and regulatory processes of exercising sovereign power over territories and subjects that are
deemed to be “Other” become manifest (Nanda, 2018). “‘[M]argins’ are a necessary entailment of
the state, much as the exception is a necessary component of the rule” (Das and Poole, 2004: 4),
and therefore: “the forms of illegibility, partial belonging, and disorder that seem to inhabit the
margins of the state constitute its necessary condition as a theoretical and political object” (p. 6):

The anthology studies, the making and re-making of the modern nation-state through state practices which
permeate the lives of people living in the margins—which are not necessarily the sites that lie outside the
state, but rather, like rivers, run through its body and are characterized by indeterminacy. (Das and Poole,
2004: 13)
4 Journal of Asian and African Studies 00(0)

Of relevance, the anthology attempts in highlighting the specific contexts in which biopolitics is
instituted (Agamben, 2000; Foucault, 1978). This entire state-making is shaped by intense and
pervasive militarism in the periphery, and this regime of militarism is sustained by the manufactur-
ing of fear (Ali, 2019).
Abrams (1988) claims that “the state is not the reality that lies beneath the guise of political
practice. It is the disguise that keeps us from seeing political practice for what it is” (p. 82). Abrams
(1988) says that

the “idea of the state as an embodiment of ‘res publica, a public reification’ was a historical legitimization
and construction project undertaken by political and social elites all over the world. Rather than studying
the functions of the state to demonstrate its efficacy, as Marxists wanted to do, Abrams argued for a study
of how the state proclaims its presence as a state notion,” and how this “idea” has been naturalized and
established in different communities. (p. 82)

Michel Foucault (1969) was

the other and more important critic of Marxists’ implied confidence in the state as a natural by-product of
class power. In Discipline and Punish, he advocated “cutting off the king’s head in political philosophy,”
which meant rejecting the concept of the state as a unity.

According to Foucault,

the nature of public authority had shifted from an older exterior relationship between subjects and the
sovereign to a modern interior relationship between diverse forms of government, not all of which emanated
from the state in a legal–formal sense, and the multiple subject positions that resulted from this dispersion.

This perspective on the state was then enlarged to encompass study into the “mentalities of govern-
ance in a range of domains, including institutions, knowledge generation, and, later, the ‘technolo-
gies of the self’” (Foucault, 1994). In other words, modern society is a governmentalized society.
According to Kaviraj (2012), practices of sovereignty have become more of an “internal affair,”
with states concentrating more on transforming power dynamics “inside their people rather than
battling and conquering foreign opponents.”
Thus, these theoretical approaches allowed us to see beyond, the state as a reified reality that
underpins most occurrences and interactions to seeing “the state” as both a concept projected via
institutional and symbolic practices and a sort of imagined reality originating from scattered, une-
qual, incoherent, and violent attempts to enforce governance, public order, and intelligibility upon
an “ungovernable” reality. “The state, or ‘languages of the state’, is a continuing project of projec-
tion, coercion, and persuasion that includes both the state as a more permanent, symbolic domain
and the daily realities of ongoing administration” (Hansen, 2018).

State is an everyday experience/contact

The ruling mechanism of Pakistan’s State in the peripheral region is very intense and disciplinary.
The techniques and methods employed to rule it are predominantly observed in the form of an
institutionalized militarization of the Lower Dir. The local people are subjugated to colonial-era
regulations that deny them even the fundamental rights guaranteed by the country’s constitution.
This perpetual state militarization exists in the form of military checkpoints, blocked, and barri-
caded roads, displays of military weaponry and equipment, stationed military personnel with
Khan 5

fingers on the trigger, and an aura of fear and foreboding among the people. People are stopped,
searched, detained, and interrogated indiscriminately; their legality or illegality in their native land
is judged by the ability or inability to show identity cards when stopped and searched. The state
uses the vocabulary of “protection” and “security” to legitimize its militarized presence, as well as
the accompanying surveillance and discipline, presumably to protect the lives and property of the
local populace.
This state-formation in the peripheries can be described as what Gupta (1995) called state
formation through everyday bureaucratic practices in his famous article “blurred boundaries”
and what Mbembe (2006) called the commandment, and power in the raw, where state appara-
tuses used naked force and power to regularize and discipline the local inhabitants. Commandment
strives to institutionalize itself in a fetish form to attain legitimacy and hegemony. It creates signs,
words, and narratives that are not just meant to be objects of representation. They are formally
endowed with an abundance of non-negotiable meanings and are thus officially forbidden to
transgress. Such an aura in the local region is created by the military where soldiers wielding
advanced weaponry at checkpoints dotting the countryside make the impression of being in a war
zone, a militarized zone where life is susceptible to the sovereign brutality. The following
announcement happens routinely while traveling and crossing those checkpoints installed by the
military and police:

There will be a checkpoint, so be prepared and double-check your CNIC Cards. Also, if anyone among you
has anything, for example, a USB, nail-cutter, scissor, pistol, or tablets (medicine) give it to me, so that we
can pass the detective device smoothly and quickly at the checkpoint. (Field data)

In such scenario, I encountered a checkpoint one day when I was traveling by public transport
from Peshawar to Lower Dir. We joined a long queue of vehicles waiting to be vetted by the sol-
diers when we arrived at the checkpoint. The soldiers with their weapons and detecting devices
scrutinized at the first appearance and when it was our turn, they interrogated the driver and con-
ductor before scanning the coach with the metal detector. After that, one of the soldiers entered the
coach and began interrogating the passengers, asking questions like “who are you, where do you
come from, where are you going, do you have your CNIC (Computerized National Identity Card),
why are you going there,” and so on. Passengers were required to display their CNIC which the
soldier took in his hand and counted the passengers before counting the cards. He then told the
conductor to register all the passengers’ cards at a nearby entrance zone. These registration zones
or facilitation centers are specified areas at checkpoints where passengers must register themselves
with proof of Pakistani citizenship and their whereabouts. It is important to note that the military
created a stereotypical image of “terrorists” in their minds and the popular press as well, which is
a person with long shabby hair, a rough beard, and an appearance that does not appear “normal” in
their “standardized” image must be subjected to a detailed set of questions and other ritualistic
procedures. This “standardized” image was subsequently disseminated in the mainstream media
and popular press through military-sponsored and state-backed dramas and films. Failure to deliver
these documents could result in harsh penalties and humiliation that is not easy to digest. Locals
were more worried and concerned about their CNICs when they planned to leave their villages and
travel somewhere. Surprisingly, even before the proper announcement by the conductor, all the
passengers were alert and double-checked what the conductor had instructed. It revealed that after
repeated performances, it was now part of the local people’s cognitive schema to have all these
“legal” documents ready before embarking upon any expedition. A local person shared his views
and difficulties while crossing these checkpoints:
6 Journal of Asian and African Studies 00(0)

If I don’t have anything important, I’m usually hesitant to even go to the neighborhood market. Even
though I am a resident, I must show my CNIC five times a day if I pass through this checkpoint five times
a day. (Field data)

Local people were subjected to disciplinary power at these checkpoints, in addition to showing
themselves as legitimate citizens of the state; they were compelled to queue for lengthy periods, and
anyone who disobeyed the military orders at these checkpoints had to face severe repercussions. A
resident narrated his experience,

I was going to Swat one afternoon in July 2019. When the vehicles arrived at the Chakddara checkpoint,
they were moving at a snail’s pace in the long line. It took half an hour to get to the area where the army
soldier was waiting to examine and pass the vehicles. The soldier at the checkpoint was inspecting the
vehicles in front of us, and then it was our turn. Our car driver also started his car and gradually moved
towards the checkpoint at this ant-like speed. Seeing this the soldier on duty began insulting our driver “I
didn’t give you any indication to move, and you moved by yourself.” After insulting and humiliating the
driver, he ordered him to go back to the end of the long line, claiming that he had breached the checkpoint’s
sanctity. We didn’t say anything since we knew what was about to happen. (Field data)

The local people have been micromanaged by the military in the peripheries. At checkpoints,
these coercive state apparatuses punished, ridiculed, and taught their type of discipline to the
locals. As a result, a new state-local relationship emerged, in which local people primarily per-
ceived and imagined the state through its repressive practices. All of this took place under the
guise of security, protection, and governmentality. Foucault (1991) was the first to coin the term
“governmentality.” For Foucault, “Governmentality does not mean a negative relationship of
power, one characterized entirely by discipline and regulation; instead, the emphasis is on its
productive dimension as well.” When the relevance of this study is measured against state prac-
tices in the peripheries, it becomes evident that the purpose of the military and paramilitary is to
create fear and panic among the people, and this is what Mbembe (2006) called commandment to
rule the region. Mbembe argues that violence lies at the heart of the postcolony, which has a direct
and dramatic impact on the local population. Many such incidents occur every day at these check-
points, where state officials and local people encounter each other head-on. It results in constant
discipline and surveillance that becomes the new normal in the community. This new normality
and disciplined power get ingrained in the locals’ cognitive schema, and they are prepared to deal
with a wide range of resistance.
Here is another example: In the winter of 2019, I learned that someone had stolen the local
energy transformer in the middle of the night, leaving the entire village in dark. The location from
where the transformer was stolen was located close to an army checkpoint. As a result, there were
whispers in the village that it was an embarrassing moment for the army when someone had dared
to steal the transformer in the presence of a vigilant army unit. They started the search for the cul-
prits. The army apprehended four young boys in their twenties who were frequently seen near the
riverbank late at night. They were caught after one of them jokingly remarked in their regular gath-
ering, “We took the transformer and sold it for thirty thousand rupees.” This information was leaked
to the army, and they summoned the boys to the checkpoint. Initially, nobody knew their wherea-
bouts, but later that evening, word spread that they were in army custody and being harshly chas-
tised and tortured by army soldiers to get the truth. They were also forced to accept that they had
stolen the transformer the night before. While they were released later that evening, one of them was
unable to walk due to severe torture. They were escorted to their homes, where a local physician
treated them and prescribed medication. Nonetheless, everyone in the village was terrified, and the
village was enveloped in a mist of uncertainty and terror that night. One of the boys said,
Khan 7

The army tortured us and recorded a video in which we confessed under duress of having stolen the
transformer and selling it in a nearby village. We confessed because we didn’t want to face the harsh
punishment. (Field data)

The next day the police filed an FIR (First Information Report) against them. The FIR included
a video of their confession as well. The villagers requested that the army should declare these
young boys innocent and also declare that they cannot be held responsible for the act because they
were not professionals who could dismantle the transformer and remove the parts that they were
alleged to have sold in the market. According to the villagers’ view, no one could ever do this act,
without proper WAPDA (Water and Power Regularity Authority) training. Later that day, the police
transported them to the nearby main army compound. Local elders escorted them to the compound,
where they were released at the behest of several powerful and political persons. However, it left
an indelible impression on the boys’ personalities throughout the village. They hardly returned to
the side of the army checkpoint after that, and if something suspicious happened in the village, the
police and army were the first to question those young boys. They were so horrified by the incident
that they no longer wanted to discuss it with anyone. One of them reluctantly shared,

What we discuss may be heard by the army, and we are powerless to intervene because it is the state
(hukumat), and they have the authority to do anything, anywhere, with anyone. (Field data)

These militaristic and suppressive practices of the state in the peripheries were essentially relics
of colonial governmentality or “colonial rationality,” in which state administrators utilized quasi-
traditional and quasi-modern methods of regulating, taming, and dominating the local population.
The state is positioned as a container of violence that legitimizes violence and suppression under
the pretense of national security and the protection of the masses. The universal “Human Rights”
rules have been suspended or confined to pages only. These have never been given any importance
in the region. The region was ruled through colonial rationality of governance, and mindset in the
postcolonial state. The state has passed an exceptional ordinance, namely, Actions an Aid of Civil
Power Ordinance, 2019, issued by the provincial governor on 5 August. It is almost a reproduction
of two regulations promulgated by the president in 2011 for FATA (Federally Administered Tribal
Area) and PATA (Provincially Administered Tribal Area). A legal cover was given to several deten-
tion centers set up during the military operations in different regions (Shah, 2019). As Mohsin
Dawar, a member of the National Assembly (MNA) from North Waziristan in the APC (All Party
Conference) in Islamabad held in September 2020, said,

The implementation of the Actions and Aid of Civil Power Ordinance converts the whole Pashtun region
into FATA in the opposite direction. Despite extending the legal laws that were denied to the people of
FATA, the state has now changed the entire KP province into a state where these liberal and so-called
human rights are no longer relevant.

As a result of the pervasive militarization of the region, there was a heavy deployment of the
military everywhere in the aftermath of 9/11, which also materially classified the places that
became no-go areas and functioned as something called VIP route or Sarkari line and places. To
give an example from the field, I noticed that a one-way road is separated into three lines at every
checkpoint. The two lines, one on one side and the other on the other side, were spared for com-
mon traffic, where the soldiers check and question the locals. In this classification at checkpoints,
the central route on the road is reserved for “officials,” particularly military vehicles that follow
the VIP line are never stopped or questioned by military personnel or police, and they pass through
checkpoints without having to produce any identification to establish that they are legal citizens,
8 Journal of Asian and African Studies 00(0)

unlike ordinary citizens. When military and VIP motors and other vehicles arrive at the check-
point, the soldiers in them blow the whistle promoting the soldiers on duty at the checkpoint to
salute and remove the stoppers. The general public and their vehicles are constrained to move to
the extreme left to make room for the official vehicles. This causes panic among the locals, and
the state officials have thus built themselves as something significant and apart from the common
people in their areas. This is a routine activity in the region, where state apparatuses have given
open freedom in a manner that acts distinguishably and such usage of power differentiates the
periphery from the metropolitan area.
Such practices of the state apparatuses are found to be contradictory even within state appara-
tuses, and it has been observed that the military wielded extra administrative power and kept an
upper hand over the police and paramilitary forces. There are numerous cases of the military, par-
ticularly its spy wing (ISI), bypassing the power of other state forces. To understand it further, let’s
share a story from the field. It was evening, and I was leaving my home to attend a funeral prayer
when I saw that police personnel yelling at someone dressed in civilian attire in the mob. This led
to a traffic jam as a result of the incident and saw people rushing toward the scene. When I arrived
at the location, I saw a red car followed by a double-cabin vigo dragging the police-erected stopper
at the checkpoint. When the policeman on duty saw this, he stopped the car and vigo for breaking
the “rules and regulations,” and started inquiring, as they generally do with ordinary people. He
asked the driver “who are you, why have you done this?” Instead of responding to police interroga-
tion, the person emerged from the car, shouting, scolding, and humiliating the police sepoy with
phrases like Me ap ky wardi utarnga, ap mjy ni janty me kon hu (I will remove your uniform, don’t
you know who I am). The person quickly identified himself as a major in the army currently
employed as a secret intelligence officer by ISI. He got out his phone and began filming and pho-
tographing the police on duty. There were many people present, and the argument between the
person and the police sepoy became increasingly heated. The police said, Ap ky maty pe nahi leka
ha k ap kon ha (It is not written on your forehead who you are), and added, “You have violated the
‘rules and regulations’, and if you do not stop, I will have to open fire on you.” This irritated the
person further, so he phoned someone, and another double-cabin Vigo arrived, with people dressed
in civilian clothes and arms. They entered the room inside the checkpoint, and subsequently, we
learned that the officer (police officer) in command of the checkpoint was asking his police sepoy
to apologize to the person who described himself as an army major. The police sepoy declined, and
we later learned that they had reached an agreement to settle the issue.
Not only this, but I have observed army soldiers entering primary and secondary schools, as
well as colleges, to assess teacher performance. They also arranged training sessions in schools and
colleges to show students how they will rely on themselves if a “terrorist” attack occurs. They have
also taken over many schools and institutions, stationing themselves in those buildings. These are
the material and practical practices of the state that occurred in the periphery which regulate and
rule the local populace.

Discursive construction of the State

The peripheral region, which is regulated by a colonial logic of governmentality, is signified in a
form called discursive state practices (Gupta, 1995), but these discursive practices are also milita-
rized such as the installation of billboards with the Pakistani national flag, depicting the state’s
ideology and nationalism. Furthermore, these billboards represented and illustrated military power
and “victories” in major wars, particularly those fought against India. This discursive-material
practice was necessitated by the Pakistani army in the region in the aftermath of 9/11. This imme-
diately reflects a perspective that the region was formerly controlled by non-state entities and that
Khan 9

Figure 1. Displays a text written in Urdu and Arabic. What does Pakistan mean? La illaha illalah Muhamad
ur Rasool Ullah (there is no God, but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. The picture was
taken during fieldowork in Lower Dir). It was captured while conducting fieldwork in Lower Dir.

the Pakistani state had reclaimed control over it. Such practices in the region also demonstrate the
state’s national and trans-local appearance. During the fieldwork for this study, I noticed the green
and white Pakistani flag everywhere that manifests a centralized national consciousness. It was
spray-painted on buildings, roadside homes, gates, and shops, and even hung from trees. As the
flag represents the state’s ideological arm, it serves as a daily reminder of the state as well as for
the locals to inculcate the state motto in mind. It was also frequently accompanied by printed slo-
gans such as Pak Army Zindabad (Long live the Pakistan Army). A casual visitor could get the
impression that the locals are fervently patriotic and devoted to their military, but a closer examina-
tion reveals that the situation is quite different, and the places were forcibly painted and installed.
As one shopkeeper puts it,

We don’t know why, but it was an army order passed down through the market president that we must paint
the shop shelters with the Pakistani flag. We have no idea what it implies. We have spent our own money
and have received no assistance from the government to date. We must pay three thousand Pakistani rupees
if we do not obey the order. (Field data)

Throughout the region, a marginalized area—as far as the state’s benevolence is concerned—is
awash with images and spray-painted symbols representing the state as the only authentic mode of
identification and national culture. In this way, the state discursively imagines, conceptualizes, and
represents its power in localized contexts. Such practices are commonly observed in the peripheral
region. This discursive technique included billboards and commercial advertisements promoting
the Pakistan national state idea, as well as slogans claiming that the military is the only legitimate
and powerful force capable of safeguarding the region in the interest of security. Figure 1 is an
example of such practices.
Such pictures and symbols are common in the peripheries, and this picture is interesting in at
least three aspects. First, the image depicts the Islamic conceptual construction of the Pakistani
state, in which Islam is co-opted for the state’s national project. The picture includes the first
10 Journal of Asian and African Studies 00(0)

Kalma2 of Islam, which states, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of
Allah” which is written after the question, “What is the meaning of Pakistan?” Second, in addition
to the state’s religious representation, the picture’s colors are green and white, which reflect the
Pakistani national flag. Third, Urdu and Arabic are employed in the depiction. Urdu denotes
Pakistan’s national language, whereas Arabic denotes the country’s Islamic foundation. Together,
they highlight the Pakistani state’s religious nationalism. By doing so, the state demonstrates its
united, monolithic, and homogenized nation-state idea, which aims to homogenize a varied popu-
lation to carry out a centralized nation-building effort. In addition to this logic of institutionalizing
discourses and narratives to create national consciousness, the army has explicitly promoted its
narrative of security and protection to the local people accompanied by written slogans that are
boosting and legitimizing the army’s presence in the region. It is the TMA (Tehsil Municipal
Authority) that painted all roadside signs with national flags and phrases emphasizing the army’s
presence and legitimacy as part of a security project. For example, some slogans I have observed
written on the walls and buildings in the region while conducting fieldwork for this study were Pak
fauj qoum ky hero ha (Pak army is the nation heroes), Ghuyar qabayal qoum ky wafadar hain (The
brave tribal are loyal to the nation), Ghuyar Qabayal na hameesha pak fauj ka sat dya ha (the
courageous tribal always sided with the Pak military), Pak fauj humy tum par mukamal etimad ha
(Pak military we entirely trust you,)3 and so on. Following the 9/11 incident, the military took over
the area for security reasons, but this time their activities became more vicious. In February 2018,
a civil rights movement called the Pakhtun Tahafuz Movement4 (PTM, Movement for the Protection
of Pakhtuns) emerged in the former Tribal Belt. Formerly the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement (MTM)
due to its roots in the Mehsud tribe in Waziristan, the PTM challenged military presence in the area
and its military operations to eliminate terrorists from the region. PTM questioned the Pakistan
military establishment’s historical role in making and harboring such groups in the region. As a
result, to demonstrate its legitimacy in the region, the army has pushed certain locals to oppose the
PTM, and they have also been given orders to promote army presence in the area in response to
local demand to keep the region “safe” from “terrorists.” Following this logic of rule, even after
Pakistan’s independence in August 1947, the state in the border region relies largely on coercion to
rule the region and its people. The Pakistani state, like its colonial predecessors, relies on domi-
nance and power (Guha, 1997). It regulates and rules the region with mutual indifference. Political
categorizations, prejudices, and demonization of local culture, history, and politics are just as sup-
pressed now as they were under British colonization. The colonists’ primary goal in the region was
maintenance of security, and Pakistan’s postcolonial state objective is not much different, which is
why we have seen a prolonged and ongoing rule of exception. This is how the state’s meanings are
created through its everyday fragmented, exclusionary, violent, and discursive practices, and this
is how the local people perceive the state as a violent container distinct from urban zones.
To return to the students’ perspectives from the beginning, this article argues that these perspec-
tives and views on the state stem from the personal and collective experiences of people living in
the peripheral region, which affect their cognitive makeup. These critical queries about the state
and its manner of controlling and ruling are not hypothetical inquiries; they are real experiences of
the people who witness a different state, one that rules the territory and its people by employing
exceptional practices.

Conclusion
The article discusses Pakistan state ruling practices in Lower Dir. The state excercises its power in
the raw and commandement to rule the region and its people. Historically, the colonial empire
purposefully and consciously kept the borderland/peripheral territory apart from the “civilized
Khan 11

spheres,” and the region’s only function was to administer it as a security zone (Hopkins and
Marsden, 2012). The entire frontier was deliberately organized as a result of this exercise of
supremacy and rule, and it is now known around the world as a “security zone” or a “black hole”
in popular discourse. The British Raj had categorized the entire frontier into the so-called settled
and ungovernable zones. Not only the terrain but also the individuals who lived on the borderland
were divided into distinct categories based on who belonged to which region (Hopkins and
Marsden, 2012). As this article discussed, after gaining independence, Pakistan has followed in the
footsteps of the colonial empire, ruling the entire border region in the coercive manner as its pre-
decessor. The made-in-Britain categorization of the local people and the territory remains intact,
and official policies in ruling the region are harsher and more militarized than before.
This article argued that the State’s methods of the ruling are fragmented and oppressive, and its
style of governance is based on practical encounters and frequent contact with the local population.
The state apparatuses, notably the military, have absolute regulatory power over the territory, and
it is this absolute power that has mentally molded not only the local people but also the state appa-
ratuses. In the peripheries, for example, the army has greater control over the police, judiciary, and
civil administration. This has seen in the incident mentioned in this article, a person posing as a
major in the army’s secret intelligence agency abused a police sepoy on duty at a checkpoint.
Pakistan has a strategically significant long North-western border that stretches along the
Afghanistan border. A similar technique of administering the border region has been observed in
Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, and the entire disputed Durand Line with Afghanistan. The logic of
administering the territory is intrinsically colonial, with Pakistan opting to preserve it as a security
zone. The heavy deployment of the military is conspicuous by its presence and the state provides
the army with unbridled power to rule and exercise its legal authority. This colonial mentality of
dominating and ruling the region has been even more apparent in the aftermath of 9/11.
This article also pointed out that the state commands these peripheral areas with an iron hand and
that the entire region especially the ex-FATA is controlled as a security zone by the state’s centrist
policy. For example, even political figures like Ali Wazir, an MNA from South Waziristan, and others
who have been critical of the military’s role and ruling policies have been detained for several months,
and the state is hardly moved even if they are members of Pakistan’s Legislative Assembly. For exam-
ple, Ali Wazir is from the border region, which is why “liberal legislation” of Pakistan Constitution
such as parliament has the right to free its members immediately, but the National Assembly Speaker
does not have such power in this case. Furthermore, he remained imprisoned even though Supreme
Court granted him bail.5 Many “extraordinary” examples exist, such as Ali Wazir, where “liberal laws”
are not followed, and the entire region operates under the rule of exception. These and other state poli-
cies and practices, as well as their disciplinary and ruling practices, are discussed in this article, dem-
onstrating that the region and its people were still ruled through a colonial legacy. As a result, the
people of the area are excluded in various ways from enjoying freedom, and they are denied basic
human rights. Last but not the least, it is the Pakistani State’s strategic interest that keeps the region and
especially the peripheries out of the mainstream, and the region’s security status is now even more
important for Pakistan following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul back in August 2021.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD
Usman Khan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0841-7989
12 Journal of Asian and African Studies 00(0)

Notes
1. During fieldwork, I observed people in their regular gatherings in villages, where they congregate in
markets, mosques, and other places to share their daily interactions and experiences. Discussions at
these gatherings normally center on politics (both local and global), as well as the region’s security situ-
ation. These are the places where I spent most of my time. Being a local of the area and having visited
and passed through these checkpoints multiple times in a single day, I likewise encountered the same
experience.
2. (Islam) The formal content of the shahada (declaration of faith): “There is no God but Allah, and
Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
3. I have observed these slogans in my visit to Bajaur, another Tribal district connected to Lower Dir.
4. PTM is an anti-war organic social movement known as the Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM)
established in January 2018. The movement transformative event was the extrajudicial killing of a
young Pashtun in Karachi that backfired in favor of the MTM. On 13 January 2018, the police killed
Naqeebullah Mehsud in alleged police encounter along with other “militants” in Karachi. However, as
per his family claims and Facebook account, he was a shopkeeper and aspiring model, and investigators
found no evidence against him regarding any militant links. Media started to condemn this incident and
helped to mobilize (intentionally or accidently) Pashtun youth to raise their voice for justice for the mur-
der of Naqeebullah. Pashtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan also joined this movement,
and it became an ethnic civil rights movement known as the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement-PTM (Pashtun
Protection Movement). Thus, PTM emerged as a youth-led non-violent movement for the protection
of Pashtun human rights, freedom, and safety in the FATA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Baluchistan,
and across the country. Now it has become a symbol of resistance for all minorities inside Pakistan
against regime’s suppression and injustice (Jafri, 2021). To counter the PTM narrative and resistance, the
Pakistan’s military particularly the establishment wing started its campaign in the whole Pashtun belt,
from settled to ex-FATA in the form of discursive representation. It included billboards, fixing national
flags everywhere accompanied with written slogans that supported and boosted military might and jus-
tification of presence in the region.
5. https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/973993-ali-wazir-granted-bail-in-another-hate-speech-case.

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Author biography
Usman Khan is Research Fellow at the Pakistan Study Center, North Minzu University, Ningxia, China. He
also teaches Anthropology at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. His research area covers colo-
nial and postcolonial states, social movements, border regions, development, and Pashtuns of Pakistan.
Shakir Ullah is a Research Fellow at School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Southern University of
Science and Technology Shenzhen China. His research interests include: Anthropology and Development,
Climate Change, Balochistan.
Tao Rui as an Associate Professor at School of English Studies in North Minzu University China. her research
interest includes: Anthropology and Languages.