Refugee Cities: How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan
By Sanna Alimia
University of Pennsylvania Press, US
ISBN: 978-1512822861
248pp.

Since the end of the 1970s, Afghans have sought refuge in many countries — including Pakistan, which accommodates a large number of Afghan refugees today. The reason for seeking shelter was the global geopolitics of the past four decades, notably the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, and the so-called ‘war on terror’ of the 21st century.

With changing geopolitics, the Afghans’ lived experiences in Pakistan have also changed. Tracing the history of Afghan migration to Pakistan, political scientist Sanaa Alimia provides first-hand narratives of Afghan refugees in her recent monograph Refugee Cities: How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan.

Although the book’s central argument revolves around Afghan refugees’ struggles and place-making in the cities of Karachi and Peshawar, it also discusses the broader urban and national politics of Pakistan. In undertaking this project, Alimia challenges the modern notions of citizenship and belonging.

After providing a historical background to the changing status and perception of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, the author argues that the portrayal of Afghans changed from heroes and holy warriors during the Russian invasion and the rise of the Mujahideen in the 1980s, to violent, tribal and uncivilised people during the so-called ‘war on terror’ in the 2000s.

A monograph argues that Afghan refugees in Pakistan have transformed space into place, imbuing it with emotional, social and material investment

These narratives about Afghans — and Pakhtuns, generally — are a colonial legacy that has remained in the postcolonial state of Pakistan, and they continue to influence Pakistan’s policies towards Afghan refugees and Afghanistan.

Alimia documents the Afghans’ struggle for basic needs, such as access to water, electricity, education and health, which they claim as insaani haqooq, or their right as human beings. It is this constant struggle and engagement with other social actors that makes Afghan refugees part of the urban milieux.

To set the struggles of Afghan refugees within the Pakistani context, Alimia provides a detailed account of the state and private sector’s anti-poor bias, which has impacted the lives of millions of Pakistani citizens by demolishing their homes, among other forms of mistreatment. The author also discusses how Afghan refugees transformed Karachi and Peshawar, or — in their own words — gave these cities lives.

The book ends with an analysis and comparison of the different forms of documents issued to Afghan refugees and the reasons — as well as the politics — behind issuing such documents. Situating the idea of identity documents in global politics, the author argues how these serve as tools for surveillance, exclusion and eventually identification, which leads to harassment of Afghan refugees.

Alimia argues that Afghan refugees in Pakistan have transformed space into place, imbuing it with emotional, social and material investment. This investment, she argues, comes in many forms, such as friendships, marital relationships and common struggles alongside Pakistani citizens for their basic needs.

Afghan refugees experience an emotional attachment to the cities because of these investments and they become urban citizens. They have transformed and expanded the boundaries of the cities by building houses, shops, roads, mosques and sanitation systems in the areas where they live.

For example, one research participant from Peshawar, also the matriarch of her family, states that Afghans built Peshawar with their own hands and gave it life. It is because of these marital, social and emotional attachments to these cities that the Afghan refugees demand their labour to be recognised. They are not claiming a ‘Pakistani’, but ‘Peshawari’ or ‘Karachiite’ identities.

The Afghans living in refugee camps are not the only ones demanding access to basic human needs. Around 60-70 percent of Karachi’s and Peshawar’s citizens live in informal housing known as katchi abadis. These numbers reflect what architect and city planner Arif Hasan calls the “anti-poor bias” and he argues the housing crisis is unresolved because of an ideological choice not to make life better for the poor and the lower-middle class.

This boundary between the outsider and insider, or the rich and the poor, within the city is created to deal with populations that may disturb, in anthropologist Liisa Malkki’s words, the national order of things.

Conducting ethnographic research, supported by historical and archival studies, Alimia has been able to situate the struggle of Afghan refugees within broader postcolonial studies in the global South. She argues that, as a postcolonial state, Pakistan’s “Afghan question” is not separate from the views of British colonialism, which depicted Afghanistan and the territories bordering it through the simplified prism of Pakhtun ethnolinguistic and tribal tropes — tropes that would reappear in both the Soviet-Afghan war and the ‘war on terror’.

The author’s postcolonial approach has indeed enabled her to provide an alternative to what it means to be a citizen in an informal urban setting such as a refugee camp or a goth [village]. Her findings and analysis are aligned with the available literature on Afghan refugees, including that published in the 1980s and recently published scholarly works. With citizens and non-citizens living in informal settings as her interlocutors, she convincingly argues for the possibility of belonging to the city without belonging to the nation.

Alimia has raised and answered important questions not just about Afghan refugees, but also about governance and class struggles in Karachi and Peshawar. But although she uses the postcolonial approach to deconstruct the image of Afghan refugees in the context of the two global wars, at times she does not question scholars’ hidden assumptions about certain historical events.

For example, she does not question — although she discusses it — the label ‘Soviet-Afghan War’ which scholars use when they talk about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. With the United States, Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf countries’ deep involvement in the war against the Russians, it was not the ‘Soviet-Afghan War’ anymore. All these countries, which participated in the two-decade war in Afghanistan, should play their roles in assisting Afghan refugees — and also the Pakistani state — in finding a permanent solution for their struggles.

Refugee Cities is a micro-history and narrative of lived experiences of Afghan refugees and Pakistani citizens alike. The book covers the struggles of these people in place-making in urban Pakistan and will be of great interest to anyone who wishes to know more about informal settlements and the urban and national politics of the Pakistani state in dealing with the poor and the non-citizens.

The reviewer studies at the University of Edinburgh and is interested in the history of Muslim communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially those on the peripheries. He tweets @msnadiri

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, December 11th, 2022