Under the Gun: Political Parties and Violence in Pakistan

 

Political violence between parties is endemic to Pakistan, both during and between election cycles. In the sprawling, multiethnic megacity of Karachi, which is flooded with guns from the period of the Soviet-Afghan war, both the Awami National Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement have engaged in assassinations, extortion, and violent protests in recent years to protect the physical and economic turf of their ethnic constituencies. 

In the same city, the Pakistan People’s Party let an ethnic militia do its dirty work. In Punjab, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz campaigned alongside leaders of a violent sectarian group in order to get more votes. And in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the same Awami National Party that used violence in Karachi has run for office peacefully. 

Through resourceful case studies, Siddiqui teases out the differences among these four parties. She looks at how local authorities variously struggle to keep the peace. Where state capacity is weak, parties will use violence when they have the support of an ethnic, religious, or ideological constituency that tolerates or even rewards them for doing so. Finally, a party’s organizational strength explains whether it may deploy its own supporters to attack rivals or get help from sectarian militias or criminal gangs

Book reviewed by Andrew J. Nathan

 PS: Soon to come to Portugal. The incidentes from the last Sunday are just the first signal. The lider of the bangladeshi community, Rana Taslin Uddin, explained to TVI that it was a right-wing party "that has a branch in  Vila Nova de Mil Fontes" that came to Lisbon to settle some accounts with members of a left-wing party. 

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List of grenade attacks in Sweden

Peaceful Sweeden accepted around 1 million refugees, many from Síria, around 2015. Today, it's the second country in Europe, in the list of homicides with guns. Granades attacks are also commun. The gang violence is mostly between groups of second-generation imigrants.

"(...) While gun homicides were on the rise in the 2011–2018 time span, according to a study at Malmö University, the number of hand grenade attacks had shown a strong increase in the same period and a total of 116 hand grenade detonations were recorded (...)"