Ordering Violence by Paul Staniland

Author:Paul Staniland [Staniland, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Table 5.5 Pakistan and four key Islamist militant groups

Political goals and fears guide the allocation of coercion and compromise in Pakistan. The military’s tight embrace of Lashkar-e-Taiba accords with the argument: the group maintains a distance from Al-Qaeda while consistently and publicly signaling its “commitment to the integrity of the Pakistani state and its diverse polity.”167 Combined with its tactical usefulness as a strike arm against India, as shown in Mumbai and Indian-administered Kashmir, this makes it an armed ally of the military. Consequently, Jaffrelot has argued that “as long as the LeT does not attack Pakistan, the army is likely to protect the movement in order to use it again.”168

The contrast with Al-Qaeda, with operates both in the Northwest and beyond it, is instructive—the Pakistan military has attacked Al-Qaeda and assisted American operations against the group, while largely leaving LeT alone. As with Al-Qaeda, there are Islamist groups that have been repressed; they are currently, to be clear, somewhat underrepresented in the dataset as collection continues. The Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and Al-Qaeda have all faced repression; below I examine some of these cases in more detail to explore when the military does crack down on self-identified Islamists. The overall pattern, however, is striking and consistent with my argument about the historically rooted ideological project of the military and much of the civilian establishment.

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