Webs, Walls, Watchmen: Counterinsurgency Policing and Digital Authoritarianism in Pakistan

Digital authoritarianism and counterinsurgency policing are evolving in tandem, yet their relationship remains critically unacknowledged. 

This paper attempts to explore the role of counterinsurgency policing in initiating and enabling digital authoritarianism. By investigating internet monitoring and governance, the introduction of cybercrime legislation, and the development of smart policing technologies in Pakistan, this paper identifies three pathways through which counterinsurgency policing serves as a foundation for digital authoritarianism: transnational networks, domestic policymaking, and historically entrenched patterns of pacification and population control. 

This paper relies upon fieldwork conducted in Pakistan, including interviews and observations in the cities of Lahore and Karachi. It suggests that counterinsurgency policing practices rooted in colonial logics of governance and surveillance have allowed states such as Pakistan to cement authoritarian control in today’s digital era through a variety of institutions, processes, and legal frameworks. This is producing a chilling effect in both physical and digital realms, demonstrating evolving techniques of population control and policing in an era of digital authoritarianism. 

Zoha Waseem is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. 

She researches on policing, repression, digitalization, and urban violence, with a focus on Pakistan and South Asia. 

She is the author of the book, Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters, and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial Karachi.