The Sunday Fighter

This chapter by Laurent Gayer examines one part-time fighter or ‘intermittent combatant’ in the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) in 2013. The case of “Iqbal” both updates existing accounts of an older vanguard of MQM militants, and offers a window onto ways violence may serve as a form of labor exchange in Karachi neighborhoods. Gayer characterizes militancy as a type of ‘dirty work’ that includes collecting extortion money, land grabbing, creating public disturbances and fighting enemy groups when necessary. Whilst Iqbal joined the MQM to access opportunities for labor and reward, as a non-Mohajir he was relegated to the least appealing tasks of MQM militancy. Iqbal strategizes to avoid rather than embrace becoming a killer. Gayer elaborates on ways violence is intrinsic to and regulates political conduct in a compelling account of how one young man gains a sense of purpose and agency in a real and imagined battlefield, by living life on the edge—but not too far.