Carol Christine Fair

Georgetown University | GU · Walsh School of Foreign Service

Since the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul in August 2021, there has been significant 5 attention to and debate over China’s ties with the Taliban. This article traces the development of China-Taliban relations from the Afghan Civil War in the 1990’s to the present day. We find that China has consistently respected the Taliban as legitimate long-term pol...

This chapter explains the origins of the myth that militants (aka mujahideen) were involved in the Kargil war of 1999.

In this path-breaking volume, Christopher Clary proffers his leader primacy theory to explain the domestic political circumstances under which Indian and Pakistani leadership chooses peace building. Clary’s theory posits that leaders cannot respond to existing strategic incentives for peace until ‘they have consolidated authority over foreign poli...

Colonial institutions and civil war: indirect rule and maoist insurgency in India, by Shivaji Mukherjee, Cambridge (UK), Cambridge University Press, 2021, xviii+392 pp.,Illus. Index. $ 99.99

On Friday, July 1, 2022, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, the notoriously reclusive supreme leader of the Afghan Taliban, made an unprecedented appearance at a three-day gathering in Kabul. The gathering, which commenced on Thursday, June 30, 2022, was attended by some three to four thousand ulema (religious scholars), tribal elders, and Afghan so-ca...

Policy debates on strategies to end extremist violence frequently cite poverty as a root cause of support for the perpetrating groups. There is little evidence to support this contention, particularly in the Pakistani case. Pakistan's urban poor are more exposed to the negative externalities of militant violence and may in fact be less supportive o...

“DYING TO SERVE: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army by Maria Rashid, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. xiii, 267 pp. (Tables, B&W photos) US$28.00, paper. ISBN 9781503611986.” C. Christine Fair, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 95, No. 2(2022): 380-383.

“Book Review of Colonial Institutions and Civil War: Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency In India, by Shivaji Mukherjee,” Small Wars and Insurgency, Vol. 33, No. 2 (2022): 550-552.

the textual integrity of Śaiva texts such as the Linga Purān  a, which Śrīvais n  ava theologians argued contained too many interpolations to be considered authoritative. The key point, for Fisher, is that in the increasingly sectarianized public sphere of early modern South India, "the enunciatory context is not the traditional disciplines of t...

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), also known as Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) within Pakistan, is the most well-known terrorist organization based 1 in and backed by Pakistan which operates mostly in India with limited forays in Afghanistan. While LeT is most known as a proxy of the Pakistan army to execute its preferred external security policies, the organization...

One of the enigmas that I’ve sought, over years, to unravel is the precision with which Punjabi describes diverse types of animal excrement. Compared with the generic description of it in English as simply animal “shit” or “crap” or “poop,” Punjabi offers up a thesaurus of tatti.

“Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army by Maria Rashid, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. xiii, 267 pp. (Tables, B&W photos) US$28.00, paper. ISBN 9781503611986.” C. Christine Fair, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 95, No. 2(2022): 380-383.

Book review of “Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army by Maria Rashid, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. xiii, 267 pp. (Tables, B&W photos) US$28.00, paper. ISBN 9781503611986.” C. Christine Fair, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 95, No. 2(2022): 380-383.

This is a book review of Maria Rashid's Dying to Serve.

In this paper, we explore sectarian and communal intolerance in Bangladesh using a unique dataset derived from a 2017 nationally representative survey of Bangladeshi respondents, which included numerous survey items germane to this study. We find deep support for Sharia among Bangladeshi respondents, including its draconian physical punishments, as...

We employ regression analysis of 2017 survey data from 4,067 Bangladeshis to exposit the lineaments of individual support for domestic Islamist violence. Our dependent variables derive from measures of public support for the stated goals and violent means of three Bangladeshi Islamist terrorist groups. Our study variables include participation in c...

We employ regression analysis of 2017 survey data from 4,067 Bangladeshis to exposit the lineaments of individual support for domestic Islamist violence. Our dependent variables derive from measures of public support for the stated goals and violent means of three Bangladeshi Islamist terrorist groups. Our study variables include participation in c...

The utility of the Pakistani army’s domination over nearly all aspects of the state in Pakistan was brought into question following the US Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout on May 2, 2011. Pakistanis wondered how these events could have occurred right under the military’s nose. This issue paper examines the prospects for security sector g...

EXISTING THEORIES OF PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR MILITANTS have used relative deprivation arguments, the ideological affinity an individual may have with militants, or co-ethnicity with the militants.¹ Here, we put forward a new perspective from which to understand the lineaments of public support for militant groups that is moored in social psychology. In...

In this paper, we explore sectarian and communal intolerance in Bangladeshi using a unique dataset derived from a 2017 nationally representative survey of Bangladeshi respondents which included numerous survey items germane to this study. We find deep support for Sharia among Bangladeshi respondents, including its draconian physical punishments, as...

In this paper, we explore Bangladeshi popular support for covenantal pluralism, a philosophy developed by Stewart, Seiple and Hoover which dismisses banal appeals for mere co-existence while striving to forge a “robust, relational, and non-relativistic paradigm for living together, peacefully and productively, in the context of our deepest differen...

On 9 November 2016, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his ‘demonetization’ policy which rendered all Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes null and void. His government claimed that this policy, among other things, would curb stone-pelting in India’s restive Jammu and Kashmir by rendering valueless the copious illegal currency that, according to...

In this paper, we explore Bangladeshi popular support for “covenantal pluralism,” a philosophy developed by the Covenantal Pluralism Initiative at the Templeton Religion Trust. We use a novel dataset derived from a 2017 nationally representative survey of Bangladeshi respondents which included numerous survey items germane to this study. Unfortunat...

This paper explores Pakistani public opinion toward the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) (also known as Jamaat ul Dawa, or JuD), which is one of the most competent and lethal Pakistan-based and backed militant groups operating in India and elsewhere in South Asia. Building on the theory of significance quest, this study argues that Pakistanis who believe th...

Between 1978 and 1992, Sikh militants rampaged across the northern Indian state of the Punjab demanding that a homeland for Sikhs, called Khalistan, be carved from that state. The so-called Khalistanis, with Pakistan’s extensive support, waged a brutal campaign of violence that killed tens of thousands. While Indian security forces eviscerated the...

We constructed a novel dataset of violent Khalistani terror incidents perpetrated in the last decade to demonstrate the resurgence of a movement that ended in 1992. Pakistan’s notorious intelligence agency (ISI) has long supported Khalistanis and continues to do so, propping up perduring support in the Sikh diaspora. Pakistan has engineered connect...

This paper explores Pakistani public support for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT,also known as Jamaat ul Dawa, or JuD), which is one of the most competent and lethal Pakistan-based and-backed militant groups operating in India and elsewhere in South Asia. Contrary to common perceptions that Islamist militant groups are inherently revolutionary, this study...

As presidential candidates, both Barack Obama and Donald Trump promised to end the forever war in Afghanistan. Whereas Obama failed, Trump believes he has succeeded. On February 29, 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed what Washington dubbed a peace deal. To get to this point, the United States sidelined the government in Kabul, which kne...

After winning a third consecutive term as prime minister in the compromised December 2018 general election, Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League continues to consolidate one-woman rule. Throughout 2019, Hasina continued to persecute critics and opponents. Despite the deepening malaise of bad governance, Bangladesh has continued to enjoy impressive eco...

Scholars have long studied whether Islam is compatible with democracy. Quantitative analyses of survey data of Muslim polities have drawn from three broad theoretical and epistemological frameworks: civilizationalist or culturist; modernizationist, and rational choice. In this article, we contribute to this discussion by drawing from survey data fr...

or several years, American conservatives have declared war on scholars and institutions of higher learning, repining that their religious values, repudiation of science and bigotry towards others because of their race, creed, gender or who they choose to love are not welcome on campus. They have long bristled at purported ‘political correctness’, w...

About this Course: In its inception, the “war film” and its creators have played prominent roles in, inter alia, setting political agendas, advocating policies, constructing images of the enemy other, defining civilization, manufacturing consent for or opposition to war, recreating and reproducing race and gender stereotypes, and providing inform...

Indonesia is generally viewed as a moderate Muslim nation that episodically struggles with terrorism. Between 1981 and the end of 2016, Indonesia experienced 156 attacks from some 15 Islamist militant groups. However, the lineaments of popular support for Islamist militancy in Indonesia remain understudied. In this paper, we expand upon the existin...

Scholars have long studied whether Islam is compatible with democracy. Quantitative analyses of survey data of Muslim polities have drawn from three broad theoretical and epistemological frameworks: civilizationalist or culturist; modernizationist, and rational choice. In this paper, we contribute to this discussion by drawing from survey data from...

This chapter maps the historic foundations of Indian grand strategy and the obstacles that have precluded the realization of a new one. First, it describes the contours of Nehru's grand strategy, and the ways and means that India adopted in their pursuit. Second, it examines the factors that have galvanized debates about discarding these Nehruvian...

This chapter maps the historic foundations of Indian grand strategy and the obstacles that have precluded the realization of a new one. First, it describes the elements of Nehru’s grand strategy, and the ways and means that India adopted to pursue them. Second, it examines the factors that have galvanized debates about discarding these Nehruvian co...

Myanmar has consolidated its impunity, making its crimes a fait accompli. To do so, it first destabilized the legitimacy of the Rohingya as a group …

As time passes, Myanmar has consolidated its impunity, making its crimes a fait accompli. To do so, it first destabilized the legitimacy of the Rohingya as a group with a long history in the country. Second, it has taken advantage of global Islamophobia to characterize the Rohingya as Islamists and terrorists, and has allied with countries that sha...

Pakistan has always fetishised the tactical element of surprise to achieve near-term ends while paying no heed to the strategic consequences as they evolve. When Pakistan ordered the Jaish-e-Mohammed to attack a convoy of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans in Pulwama using a vehicle-borne suicide bomb on 14 February, it likely succeeded in...

To consolidate public support for its atrocities, Pakistan needs a scary neighbour. And Congress doesn't conjure up existential threats like BJP does. Protestors holding the Indian flag raise slogans against the Pulwama terror attack| PTI

Pakistan has a problem. Pakistan is obsessed with changing maps in Kashmir. Pakistan, founded on the inherently communal, non-democratic and philosophically depraved “two nation theory”, believes that it is entitled to the entirety of Muslim-majority Kashmir. This claim is not based on any defensible procedure or proclamation. After all, neither t...

In late December 2001, Masood Azhar convened a fractious meeting of his newly minted organization, Jaish-e-Mohammad in the pro-Taliban Karachi madrassa, Jamia Binori. The ISI had forged this group following the 24 December 1999 hijacking of Air India flight 814 which, after a perilous course, landed in Taliban-controlled Kandahar. After tense negot...

Sheikh Hasina stole victory in the December 2018 election by hobbling the opposition, stifling criticism, stacking the courts and election commission with her lackeys, using a “war on drugs” to target rivals, and co-opting Islamists. Meanwhile, a million immiserated Rohingyas, who fled Myanmar after a brutal crackdown, still languish in desolate ca...

or nine years, Washington has pursued talks with the Afghan Taliban to end a war that began on October 7, 2001. This week, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Trump’s special envoy for ending the war, told The New York Times that after six days of talks in Qatar, American negotiators and Taliban agreed on “a draft of the framework” for some future accord. Wa...

Piles of second-hand motorcycles headed to the bowels of Afghanistan, serpentine queues of brightly painted trucks, petrol-filled jerrycans piled up by the roadside: there’s nothing to show that this is among the world’s most dangerous roads. But, the India-built Delaram-Zaranj highway in Afghanistan has the potential to change the strategic map of...

Most scholars of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba/Jamaat ud Dawah (LeT/JuD) tend to view the tanzeem as a proxy militia for the Pakistani army. While the organization certainly performs this role, this narrow understanding undervalues the full scope of activities it performs, alongside the full range of political and social perquisites that the organization affor...

This chapter provides an historical account of LeT's ideological roots as well as its organizational and operational development, including its most recent foray into Pakistani politics despite decades of forswearing direct political participation. Even though Pakistan did not create LeT/JuD or its parent organization MDI, it quickly co-opted it an...

This path-breaking volume reveals a little-known aspect of how Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a jihadist terrorist group, functions in Pakistan and beyond by translating and commenting upon a range of publications produced and disseminated by Dar-ul-Andlus, the publishing wing of LeT. Only a fraction of LeT's cadres ever see battle: most of them are despatched...

To complement and enable its advances at the lower end of the conflict spectrum, Pakistan also strategically acquired nuclear weapons. We now know that Pakistan had a crude device around 1983-4, if not earlier. As Pakistan became increasingly confident of its nuclear capabilities, it was more emboldened to use its proxies in India, secure in the be...

Understanding the tortured history of Pakistan's revisionist agenda with respect to India is critical to appreciating the utility of LeT and other militants to Pakistan's deep state. For this reason, this chapter provides a brief history of the independence movement, the inherent communal ideologies that Pakistan's proponents mobilized to achieve a...

Generally, writers on terrorism, particularly Islamist groups, frequently adduce that terrorists are poor, uneducated, and/or come from criminal backgrounds. Speaking of Islamist militants, writers have long argued that madaris are responsible for producing scores of Muslims ready to kill and die for their faith. Various governmental efforts to cou...

Given Pakistan's strategic commitments and the risk aversion of policy-makers in the United States and India, what options exist for these states to deal with LeT specifically, or more generally, the problem of Pakistan's reliance upon terrorism as a key foreign policy tool? Admittedly, the options are few and not without risk. In this chapter, I l...

After providing a brief overview of the present-day Indo-Iranian relationship, this chapter explains the ongoing bilateral efforts to forge significant Indo-Iranian relations using three levels of analyses. First it examines structural factors, especially shifts within the international system. A second level considers domestic developments in Iran...

United States President Donald Trump has waged a systematic war on the American press, which is a priceless pillar of our immiserated democracy. He has decried any media outlet other than Fox News and its allies dispensing right-wing cant as "fake news". The US president has dubbed the media (with the exception of Fox) the "enemy of the people". He...

In America, democracy has never been but a dream deferred. The 'founding fathers' owned and raped those human beings they deemed subhuman because of their race; seized land from Native populations in what can only be described as genocide and believed that only white male landowners should vote. America was literally founded upon white, Christian c...

Fords testimony: Women need to run for office because powerful men will fight to maintain privilege https://www.firstpost.com/world/christine-blasey-fords-testimony-women-need-to-run-for-office-because-powerful-men-will-fight-to-maintain-privilege-5… 1/23 Christine Blasey Ford's testimony: Women need to run for ofce because powerful men will ght to...

Indonesia is generally viewed as a moderate Muslim nation that episodically struggles with terrorism. Between 1981 and the end of 2016, Indonesia experienced 156 attacks from some 15 Islamist militant groups. However, the lineaments of popular support for Islamist militancy in Indonesia remain understudied. In this paper, we expand upon the existin...

Support for Islamist violence among Muslims-howsoever varied-is theoretically and practically important because scholars have demonstrated that popular support for terrorism may explain where terrorist events occur even though the mechanistic details of this predictive utility are disputed. For this and other empirical and theoretical reasons, scho...

Pakistan Elections: Doesn’t Matter Who Becomes PM, Army Will Reign The political pundits are busy pondering the outcome of Pakistan’s much-watched general election to be held on 25 July, Wednesday, and opining about the potential implications of this important event. Indeed, there are important things to observe. First, the election has focused t...

While there have been many scholarly inquiries about the sources of support for terrorism among Muslim publics, to date, scholars have generally not asked whether or not gender predicts support for Islamist militancy. Instead, most scholars and officials assume that “men of military age” are the most important segment of interest. Instead, gender i...

Public opinion research shows there is considerable, albeit varied, support for Islamist terrorism among the world's Muslim populations. To identify respondent-level determinants of support for suicide bombings (and other forms of political violence) perpetrated by Islamist militants, scholars have used country-specific and multinational surveys sa...

Little has been written about the political party of the LeT, the Milli Muslim League, and what has been written has been misleading. Some authors have suggested that the MML reflects Pakistan’s sincere desire to defang its nastiest militant group by shunting its stalwarts and cadres into a useful political role, whereby it can counter the army’s c...

In this chapter, I map out India’s quest for a new grand strategy and the impediments that have precluded a new grand strategy from fructifying. I first describe the lineaments of Nehru’s grand strategy and the systems and procedures that India adopted in to pursue them. Second, I exposit the factors that have galvanized a debate about jettisoning...

The year 2017 witnessed continued challenges to the credibility and competence of the so-called National Unity Government in Kabul. President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah competed over the perquisites of power rather than collaborating to secure a viable future for their country. US and NATO forces remained at a stalemate with the Taliban, wh...

In this chapter, I map out India’s quest for a new grand strategy and the obstacles that have precluded a new grand strategy from fructifying. I first describe the lineaments of Nehru’s grand strategy and the systems and procedures that India adopted in to pursue them. Second, I exposit the factors that have galvanized a debate about discarding the...

On 6 March 2017, the Twittersphere in New Delhi lit up with the claim that Major-General (Retd) Mahmud Ali Durrani confessed that the Mumbai attacks of 2008 were executed by a terrorist group in Pakistan. In the pieces that India’s various media ran, his ostensible honesty was greeted with endless enthusiasm. After all, Durrani served as Pakistan’...

While there have been many scholarly inquiries about the sources of support for terrorism among Muslim publics, to date, no scholar has sought to empirically demonstrate whether or not gender predicts support for Islamist militancy. Instead, most scholars and officials assume that "men of military age" are the most important segment of interest. Ge...

In this article, I mobilize key JuD publications to demonstrate that while the JuD preaches murderous jihad against non-believers outside of Pakistan, it collaborates with the state in trying to dissuade Pakistanis from undertaking violence within the state, whether against state or non-state targets, to include Pakistan’s various religious minorit...

Public opinion research shows there is considerable, albeit varied, support for terrorist tactics among the world’s varied Muslim populations. Data from the Pew Research Center demonstrated that in 2014, 47 and 46 percent of Bangladeshis and Lebanese respondents, respectively, approved of suicide bombing, compared to only 5 and 3 percent of Tunisia...

On June 26, U.S. President Donald Trump will hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At first glance, the two might seem aligned. Modi heads the Hindu nationalist Bharitya Janata Party, which has sustained criticism [2] at home and abroad for its divisive rhetoric about India’s Muslim citizens, who number some 189 million [3]. The Trum...

On 26 June, Donald Trump and Narendra Modi will meet in Washington. While the two have spoken at least three times since Trump’s election, this will be their first meeting. Many Hindu nationalists in India and the United States supported Donald Trump’s candidacy, at least in part, because they applauded his anti-Muslim campaign rhetoric and hoped t...

Bangladesh, one of the world's largest Muslim countries, is generally viewed as a success story with a strong tradition of secular democracy. Unfortunately, this assertion rests on a weak empirical foundation. Since becoming independent from Pakistan in 1971, democracy and secularism have been consistently undermined. Moreover, since 2000 Banglades...

Bangladesh, one of the world's largest Muslim countries, is generally viewed as a success story with a strong tradition of secular democracy. Unfortunately, this assertion rests on a weak empirical foundation. Since becoming independent from Pakistan in 1971, democracy and secularism have been consistently undermined. Moreover, since 2000 Banglades...

How natural disasters affect politics in developing countries is an important question, given the fragility of fledgling democratic institutions in some of these countries as well as likely increased exposure to natural disasters over time due to climate change. Research in sociology and psychology suggests traumatic events can inspire pro-social b...

In this essay, I take on the circulating wisdom that Bajwa will somehow be a positive change for the institution he runs and the major policy levers he will control. I first assess the issue of the balance of power between civilian politicians and the army. Here, I argue that the army's views of these issues are pre-eminent and will remain so for t...

More than fifteen years have passed since the United States launched operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly with the support of Pakistan. During this period, the Americans scaled up and then scaled down troop deployments and investments in Afghanistan’s economy, infrastructure, civil society, and armed forces, but never managed to deal with the simp...

Since 1947, Baloch have resisted inclusion into the Pakistani state and have waged several waves of ethno-nationalist insurgency against the state. Scholars of Pakistan and Baloch nationalist leaders alike generally assert that Pakistan's ethnic Baloch are more secular than other Pakistanis, more opposed to the political Islamist policies pursued b...

Since 1947, Baloch have resisted inclusion into the Pakistan and have waged several waves of ethno-nationalist insurgency against the state. Scholars and Baloch nationalist leaders alike generally assert that Baloch are more secular than other Pakistanis, more opposed to the political Islamist policies pursued by the state, and less supportive of I...

The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan. By Aqil Shah . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. 416 pp. ISBN: 9780674728936 (cloth). Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence. By Steven I. Wilkinson . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015. 304 pp. ISBN: 9780674728806 (cloth). - Volume 7...

This research brief is based on a nationwide RESOLVE Network survey designed to address this gap. The survey instrument presented respondents with vignettes of actual terrorist attacks perpetrated by three important militant groups: the Jagrato Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB); Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), an Al-Qaeda affiliate; and Da’esh. The ins...