Invitation from Veena and Naveeda

When Cultural Anthropology approached us to set up this website devoted to recent events in Pakistan, we were very pleased to accept. It gave us the opportunity to draw people together in conversation to maintain a certain intensity of focus on Pakistan. While Pakistan has come under considerable scrutiny of late, most of these recent writings have been overly preoccupied with the threats to global security posed by Pakistan both in the form of secreted nuclear weapons and religious extremism. While not discounting the seriousness of these concerns, it seemed to us that what was missing from the singular focus on Pakistan was the regional dimension. If we cast our eyes regionally we see that several South Asian nation-states have been engulfed by various kinds of crises of late, many of which have involved the military (Bangladesh and Myanmar jump most prominently to mind). It behooves us to ask how our perspectives on Pakistan shift if we take into consideration the fragility of politics, the crisis of democracy, and the unchecked strength of the military in the region.