Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its struggle with terror. But are ordinary Pakistanis extremists? And what explains how Pakistanis think?
Much of the current work on extremism in Pakistan tends to study extremist trends in the country from a detached position, a top-down security perspective, that renders a one-dimensional picture of what is at its heart a complex, richly textured country of 200 million people. In Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State, using rigorous analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews in schools and universities in Pakistan, historical narrative reporting, and her own intuitive understanding of the country, Madiha Afzal gives the full picture of Pakistan’s relationship with extremism.
Madiha Afzal is a nonresident fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at The Brookings Insitution. Her research lies at the intersection of development, security, and political economy, with a focus on Pakistan. She is also an adjunct assistant professor of Global Policy at Johns Hopkins SAIS. She previously worked as an assistant professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr. Afzal has published in Public Choice, and is the author of a USIP special report on Education and Attitudes in Pakistan, as well as several book chapters. Dr. Afzal writes regularly for Pakistani and international publications, and has been a consultant for the World Bank and DFID. For her writing on education in Pakistan, she was named to Lo Spazio della Politica's list of Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 2008, specializing in Development Economics and Political Economy.