Description
What are the impacts of security sector reform agendas designed and supported by
foreign donors and international partners on coercive arms of the state, especially
domestic law enforcement agencies in hybrid and other ‘non-democratic’ regimes?
This paper explores the geopolitics of police militarisation in South Asia. Using the
case of Pakistan, it builds on earlier works on the impacts of colonial
rule/governance on contemporary policing (Waseem 2022), to explore how
international relations and neo-colonial interests might shape public policing in
postcolonial societies. It explores how geopolitical interests evolving during and in
the aftermath of the Afghan war, and thereafter, the global ‘war on terror’, allowed
Pakistani regimes (civil and military) to rely on a host of global actors and
international assistance mechanisms to further police militarisation in the country,
in pursuance of counterinsurgency, ‘countering violent extremism’ and
‘counterterrorism’ strategies, at the cost of generating further insecurity and state
repression. In doing so, it seeks to investigate the intersection of local and global
actors and forces in the militarisation of policing in contemporary South Asia.
