Open AccessPerspectives on Race, Gender and Power Differentials in Lived Experiences of Failed Suicide Bombers in Pakistan
Author(s) -
Munir Ahmed Zia Rao,
AUTHOR_ID,
Rubeena Zakar,
AUTHOR_ID
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
pakistan journal of social research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2710-3137
pISSN - 2710-3129
DOI - 10.52567/pjsr.v3i4.66
Subject(s) - terrorism , ethnic group , ideology , power (physics) , gender studies , politics , criminology , coercion (linguistics) , sociology , militant , race (biology) , political science , social psychology , psychology , law , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
The study documents lived experiences of failed suicide bombers in Pakistan. It describes the influence and impact of social structures like gender, geography race and ethnicity with reference to their experiencing of suicide bombing. The study also characterizes the power relations in their interactional contexts entailing in unquestioning submission and support to militant organizations. Owing to ideological charged conditions and overwhelming existence of terrorist organisation certain regions and ethnicities in Pakistan exhibit unusual inclination to suicide terrorism. The article also argues the strategic necessity and ideological under pining of feminizing suicide terrorism in Pakistan by terrorist outfits. Feminizing of suicide terrorism in Pakistan is driven by out of strategic and political expediency. Women in Pakistan are enlisted mostly by means of physical and emotional coercion, exploitation of familial ties and patriarchal influences. The lived experiences of the male and female suicide bombers gathered from in-depth interviews and secondary data delineate the factors and process of ‘zombification’. Keywords: Female suicide bombers, Suicide bombing, gender, race and ethnicity, terrorism, power.