Alimia, Sanaa. 2022. Refugee Cities: How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 248pp. ISBN: 9781512822793

Keywords: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Migration, Development

Alimia has provided a book that is long overdue, on a topic that has been chronically understudied. Refugee Cities: How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan provides detailed ethnographic accounts of Afghans living in the coastal mega city of Karachi and the border city of Peshawar to construct how their lives have been shaped – and more importantly are shaping – urban Pakistan today. The author frames these as “micro histories” (xv) and follows the lives of key contributors to construct Afghan narratives.

The book is divided into three parts. The first details the history of British colonial policies bleeding into the Pakistani state, the second provides ethnographic accounts of Afghan lives in Karachi and Peshawar, and the third is a continuation of the author’s previous work on the mobility of the border through the United Nations-funded Proof of Registration (POR) cards issued to Afghans in Pakistan (Alimia 2019). 

The first chapter detailing the background and history of Pak-Afghan relations dating to colonial times – though very well done – is the buffer before the more exciting ethnographic work that follows. The author does not bring anything entirely new to that discussion, and most readers familiar on the topic will already be quite aware of colonial policies shaping current Pakistani laws. There could have been a more direct linkage to how the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901 shaped exclusion of Pakhtuns in the border area, or how the Durand line is a meaningless border for the Afghan government. This chapter could have further benefitted from an ethnographic entry about how interlocutors felt about the Durand Line and movement across it, rather than summarising official government policies that are more readily accessible online. However, as Alimia points out, “…borders are not just ‘there’ as premade lines on a map, rather borders (and thereby sovereignty) get made through acts of “border performativity.”” (30). Border performativity is brilliantly exemplified through POR cards discussed in-depth in Chapter 5.

Chapters 2 and 3 focus on Karachi, with the second chapter discussing the settlement of “Camp-e-Marwarid” and its issues with water. Camp-e-Marwarid is on the far outskirts of the city on the Super Highway, another 21 kilometres further beyond the major area and transit point of Sohrab Goth, which for most Karachiites lies at the city limits. The chapter explicates quite well Karachi’s status as a city with a phenomenally high inflow of migrants, following all the way from the British Raj’s expansion of the city as a seaport, the creation of Pakistan, and the waves of Afghan migrations that occurred after political strife in Afghanistan in the 1970s and later 80s. It also demonstrates how successive governments have been unable to solve ethnic strife in the city – and have instead instigated them for political gain. As one of Alimia’s interlocutors mentions, it was after the 1985 and 1986 riots that Afghans were further pushed out of Sohrab Goth to Camp-e-Marwarid. In fact, we learn that Camp-e-Marwarid was set aside for Afghans in the 1980s, and Pakistanis came later (44). Alimia posits as well then that the building of Camp-e-Marwarid is the “…evidence of an early, purposeful attempt to spatially separate noncitizen refugees from citizens and enact a form of social exclusion” (44), keeping separate Afghans from Pakistani Pakhtuns. Camp-e-Marwarid for most of its existence has received little to no infrastructural support from the government, and hence basic services are virtually non-existent.

Chapter 3 is similar to the earlier chapter in terms of the l