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Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands
Author(s): Shahzad Bashir (Author), Robert D. Crews (Author), Amin Tarzi (Author), Gilles Dorronsoro (Author), Sana Haroon (Author)
- Publisher: Harvard University Press
- Publication Date: 4 May 2012
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 294 pages
- ISBN-10: 0674065611
- ISBN-13: 9780674065611
Book Description
In the West, media coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan is framed by military and political concerns, resulting in a simplistic picture of ageless barbarity, terrorist safe havens, and peoples in need of either punishment or salvation. “Under the Drones” looks beyond this limiting view to investigate real people on the ground, and to analyze the political, social, and economic forces that shape their lives. Understanding the complexity of life along the 1,600-mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan can help America and its European allies realign their priorities in the region to address genuine problems, rather than fabricated ones. This volume explodes Western misunderstandings by revealing a land that abounds with human agency, perpetual innovation, and vibrant complexity. Through the work of historians and social scientists, the thirteen essays here explore the real and imagined presence of the Taliban; the animated sociopolitical identities expressed through traditions like Pakistani truck decoration; Sufism’s ambivalent position as an alternative to militancy; the long and contradictory history of Afghan media; and the simultaneous brutality and potential that heroin brings to women in the area. Moving past shifting conceptions of security, the authors expose the West’s prevailing perspective on the region as strategic, targeted, and alarmingly dehumanizing. “Under the Drones” is an essential antidote to contemporary media coverage and military concerns.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“The 13 essays in this volume (each by a specialist) seek to shed light on a society that, while stereotyped as monolithically savage and medieval, is actually bewilderingly complex as it adapts to modern force.” –Publishers Weekly, 2nd March 2012
” Under the Drones will not displace the notions that Western observers often associate with the Afghanistan-Pakistan region-mindless cruelty, female oppression, and a flourishing opium economy. But the book will help readers to make sense of the economic and social forces that motivate the actions of the borderlands’ inhabitants and to understand that the local population is not an empty slate to be written upon by agents from the outside.” –Karunesh Tuli, ForeWord, 1st September 2012
About the Author
Shahzad Bashir is Lysbeth Warren Anderson Professor in Islamic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Robert D. Crews is Associate Professor of History at Stanford University. Amin Tarzi is the Director of Middle East Studies, Marine Corps University. Faisal Devji is Reader in Indian History and Fellow of St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. Jamal J. Elias is Class of 1965 Endowed Term Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
