Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Political Science

Advisor

Susan Woodward

Committee Members

Julie George

Zachary Shirkey

Subject Categories

Comparative Politics

Keywords

Counterinsurgency, Pakistan, Statebuilding

Abstract

In the wake of the War on Terror in 2001, starting with the ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Pakistan's semi-autonomous border region, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the adjacent province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) became the primary battleground between Pakistan's state and various Taliban groups (collectively called Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP)). Although FATA and KP shared similarities, such as their geography and ethnic composition, they also exhibited differential sovereign control by the Pakistani state because of the legacy of direct and indirect British colonial rule before the country's independence in 1947. The Taliban insurgency acted as an exogenous shock to this dichotomous system, precipitating a statebuilding process in Pakistan. This dissertation examines how colonial legacies of governance shape endogenous statebuilding processes during and after a counterinsurgency. Drawing on inductive research and a comparative analysis of subnational regions, it explores how the state responded to the challenge to its authority by the insurgency not only through negotiations and coercion but thereafter through a structural transformation—most notably, the integration of FATA into KP and the reconfiguration of local political orders. It finds that endogenous statebuilding is a contextual, iterative, non-linear, and negotiated process. This stands in contrast to externally driven models of statebuilding, which assume a linear, top-down, technocratic process unfolding on a tabula rasa. This dissertation highlights the negotiated and uneven nature of state authority in frontier regions and contributes to the debate on postcolonial statehood and counterinsurgencies. These insights offer practical implications for designing more context-sensitive governance and statebuilding strategies in conflict regions.

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