Development citizenship in the Age of Terror: the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement in Pakistan

Many lessons might be learnt about the borderland as a transnational place in the Global South in our era of paranoid hyper-nationalism. Gramsci’s insights teach us that the rehabilitation of a dissident population as a preventative measure by militaries is no different when it comes to combating the ‘first elements’ of insurgency. This article examines the response to these measures by a single social movement that has been borrowing development and human rights norms from the international setting to expose the failures of the new regime, post-pacification, for nearly two decades. Our participants, selected by the PTM (Pashtun Tahafuz Movement or Pashtun Protection Movement) itself for their experience of conflict in Waziristan, ultimately show us how ‘an unprecedented concentration of hegemony’ is required for the task of rehabilitating populations in the historically liminal places between Afghanistan and Pakistan.