societies, ethnographers have to make accommodations that include acknowledging limitations on where one can go, what questions can be asked, and what one can eventually write about given the dangers of research and the need to protect our interlocutors.6 This recognition was fundamental to reformulating anthropological research on political violence, but it largely ignored the problem of “open secrets”—information that is widely known, and yet which people claim not to know. The importance of open secrets was a conceptual focus of older sociological writing on the conduct of politics and was recuperated in anthropology by Michael Taussig with the concept of “public secrecy,” which took up the challenge of considering the work that “not knowing” does in processes of political violence.7 What remains, however, is the problem of how one is taught what must be “not known,” because the management of dangerous knowledge is embedded in social relationships.
Despite my years of living and working in Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir before I began ethnographic research, and despite a rigorous human subjects review on maintaining the confidentiality and safety of my interlocutors, I had to be taught what constituted dangerous knowledge for them. Indeed, my attention was repeatedly drawn to the ways that people teach each other the things they need to not know in order to go about the work of living, and especially to how women passed and managed dangerous knowledge in domestic spaces. This recognition led to the arguments that I make in this book, and to the theoretical interventions that I outline in the introductory chapter. I thus suggest that conflict research needs to shed analytic light on the practices by which people reproduce dangerous knowledge as public secrets in order to better theorize the social production of all forms of modern political violence. For this reason, I have endeavored to make the moments in which secrets, lies, and uncertainties shaped my research a part of the ethnographic description and interpretive work of this book. By focusing on the social practices of managing dangerous knowledge as an analytic problem, rather than as a methodological one, I first recognized the centrality of the family as the site of social production of jihād among Kashmiri refugees in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With a deep sense of gratitude and humility, I offer thanks to the many people who shared their memories, experiences, and insights with me. I am not able to acknowledge all of the numerous people in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan without whose help and support this fieldwork would not have been possible. I am very grateful to the Kashmiri residents of Muzaffarabad, Hattian, Mirpur, Naya Kotarian, Rawalpindi, Muslim Colony, Islamabad, Murree, Mansera, and Abbottabad who extended hospitality and told me their stories. It was my great pleasure during my research to spend many hours with the families and extended families of my interlocutors, and I thank their spouses and children for their kindnesses, for conversations and sharing their opinions, and for some silliness.
I thank Khawaja Mohammad Awais, Junaid Mian, Abdul Mateen Khan, Rimmal Jamil, and Nadeem Mir for far, far more than I can say, but mostly for trust. I am especially thankful to Mohammad Awais and Rimmal Jamil for inviting me to be at home in their homes and for much good counsel. I thank Shakil-urRahaman for his contributions as a research assistant, and for many introductions. I thank the families of Abdul Hamid Malik, Mohammad Shafi, Abdul Waheed Khan, Zaffar Iqbal Mian, Altaf Hussain Qadri, Ibrahim Hydery, Abdul-urRahaman, and Hajji Qamar Ali Awan for their continuous hospitality. I thank Ghulam Muhammad Safi, Amanullah Khan, Shah Ghulam Qadir, Yasin Malik, Mohammad Qayyum Khan, Mushahid Hussain, and Tariq Masood for graciously sharing their time and their knowledge. Nadeem Akbar and Mazhar Awan exceeded their official duties and also shared bread on many occasions. I thank Zouhoor Wani and Raja Muzaffar for keeping me informed and for including me in their holiday celebrations.
For friendship, intellectual companionship, and much laughter in the company of women, I thank Homaira Usman, Shaista Aftab, and Asma Khan Lone. I am especially grateful to Homaira for the salt in the chai, to Shaista for the dream about the sandals, and to Asma for sharing her thoughts about women’s voices. I also thank Humeira Awais for trusting my friendship with her husband and Fariha Rimmal for her example of graceful strength.
The research for this book was conducted over a number of years and was supported by a several grants and fellowships. Travel grants in 1998 and 2002 to Pakistan, India, and Geneva were awarded by the South Asia Program, the Peace Studies Program, and the Anthropology department at Cornell University. Research in Pakistan between 1999 and 2001 was supported by dissertation research grants from the Fulbright Foundation and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. U.S. government restrictions on travel to Pakistan between 2002 and 2009 limited scholarly funding for follow-up research, and the Jackson School of International Studies and the South Asia Program at the University of Washington engaged in creative course scheduling that made it possible for me to make several field trips to Pakistan between 2004 and 2008. The Fulbright Foundation and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies offered administrative support, office space, and transportation to me during those field visits. I am particularly grateful to Grace Clark, who shared the hospitality of her Islamabad residence and who is always generous with her knowledge and introductions.
This research could not have been conducted without a great deal of institutional support in Pakistan. I thank the Government of Pakistan, particularly the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs, for granting research and residency permissions. I offer deep thanks to the Government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, particularly to the AJK Ministry of Refugees and Rehabilitation, for affording all possible support. I thank the Institute of Kashmir Studies at the University of AJK for extending affiliated status during my field research. I benefited greatly from the opportunity to meet with scholars at Quaid-e-Azam University and the University of the Punjab in Lahore. I enjoyed unparalleled support at the National Archives of Pakistan, and I thank the staff of the archives for their daily hospitality and their efforts on my behalf.
Friends, colleagues, and teachers around the world contributed to this book. I have had the unqualified privilege to study, work, and write in the company of outstanding people with whom distinguishing between intellectual engagement and personal support is nearly impossible. This book began as a Ph.D. dissertation in Anthropology, and I remain deeply indebted to the training of the scholars with whom I had the privilege to study at Cornell University. As members of my graduate committee, Kathryn March, David Lelyveld, and John Borneman offered years of scholarly support and have remained mentors. With profound respect, I also acknowledge Rima Brusci, Parvis Ghassem-Fachendi, Saadia Toor, and Allison Truitt, who commented on the original research proposal and remained engaged.
At the University of Washington, I have benefited from a generous and supportive community of scholars. Priti Ramamurthy, Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, and Anand Yang were unwavering in their enthusiasm for the completion of this book and in professional mentorship. I thank Purnima Dhavan, Sunila Kale, Christian Novetzke, and Arzoo Ozanloo for many conversations and insights. I thank my interdisciplinary colleagues in the Jackson School of International Studies for contributing to my understanding of the implications of my research beyond South Asian studies and also Marie Anchordoguy, David Bachman, Mary Callahan, Sara Curran, Resat Kasaba, and Joel Migdal for professional support. I also benefited from my interactions with students who came to my courses with eclectic backgrounds in political science, anthropology, Islamic studies, and international studies; they inspired me to think about how to explain my research to broad audiences. I was especially inspired by many conversations, about their work and mine, with my honors and senior thesis students: Marshall Kramer, Mohammad Bilal Nasir, Andrew Watkins, Lydia Wright, Kristen Zipperer.
Over the years, colleagues and friends in Pakistan studies contributed in myriad ways, especially Kamran Asdar Ali, Nosheen Ali, Hussain Haqqani, Rifaat Hussain, Matthew Nelson, Robert Nichols, Sayeed Shafqat, and Anita Weiss. Julie Flowerday and Mona Bhan shared many insights about doing ethnographic research in the Jammu and Kashmir region. I discussed the themes of this book in symposia and workshops at the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton, Kroc Peace Institute at Notre Dame, Quaid-e-Azam University, the Stanford Humanities Center, the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, the University
