Zainab Najeeb

This research project examines the shifting social and political lives of Pashtun women displaced from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to the city of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) during the 2014 Pakistani military Operation Zarb-e-Azb. By integrating feminist and political anthropology, I examine how Pashtun women navigate growing tensions between traditional Pashtunwali identity, change in legal status, and political activism in an environment structured by crisis discourse. Central to my study are questions about the state’s use of “crisis talk” (Masco 2017) to control Pashtun mobility and displacement’s transformative impacts on Pashtun women. Through ethnographic research with female students at the University of Peshawar, I explore how education serves as both a state instrument and a platform for self-determined resistance. This project aims to highlight how the intersection of higher education and activism engender new “modes of attachment” (Khan 2010) and political agency for Pashtun women after becoming displaced subjects. By documenting Pashtun women’s experiences, I aim to problematize reductive narratives of the “passive” displaced woman, highlighting the complexity of resilience, contributing to anthropological discourse on gender, crisis, and resistance in the Global South.