The Political Economy of Pakistan's 'War on Terror'

Abstract

Studies on the impact of terrorism on an affected country's economy tend either to be discussed from a comparative cross-country perspective in development terms, a method considered unreliable and highly speculative (Sultan, 2013), or related more to the counter-terrorist measures adopted by developed (rather than developing) countries where detailed economic data is more readily available. Typical of the former approach is the World Bank's 2011 Development Report: 'Conflict, Security and Development', which broadly canvasses the ways conflict, violence and insecurity have impacted on and impeded the economic development of 'fragile' states. These are states that are deemed institutionally incapable of protecting their citizens from violence and oppression, and constitute, ostensibly in the World Bank's perspective, most of the non-developed world (World Bank, 2011). While the violent situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is alluded to as 'consuming the attention of global policy makers' (World Bank, 2011), the report's focus is more on Africa than Asia. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan simply figure as a statistic in the selected World Development Indicator tables of comparative socioeconomic data for 135 economies (World Bank, 2011). In so far as terrorism is mentioned, it is undifferentiated as one of several 'new forms of violence' characterizing twenty-first century conflict.