Ammar Rashid

Ammar Rashid (Urdu: عمار رشید; born August 16, 1986) is a Pakistani researcher, academic, political worker and organizer of the left-wing party Awami Workers Party. He has been a columnist for Daily Times (Pakistan) and Dawn News. He has taught as faculty at the Centre of excellence for Gender Studies in Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan and Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, and worked for various research institutions and civil society organizations. He ran for the National Assembly seat NA-53 in the Islamabad capital territory for 2018 Pakistani general election. Currently, he is Research Lead at the public health think tank Heartfile.

Early life and education
Rashid grew up in multiple Pakistani cities in succession, including Quetta, Karachi and Rawalpindi, and completed his secondary and high school education in Rawalpindi. He completed a BSc (Hon) in Economics and Social Sciences in 2008 from Lahore University of Management Sciences and completed a Master's degree in development studies in 2012, from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. In LUMS, he studied political economy and colonial history with Aasim Sajjad Akhtar.

Career
As a professional, Rashid has primarily been involved in teaching and research work on public policy, including areas ranging from public health to education reform, gender and development, political economy, fiscal reform, urban land policy and sub-national governance in Pakistan and other low- and middle-income countries. Previously, he has taught at the Centre of Excellence for Gender Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University and at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), Islamabad. After the 2010 floods, he worked as a Programme Officer Social Sector at the National Disaster Management Authority (Pakistan). He has also served as Research Lead at the public health think tank Heartfile. and has also worked with the World Health Organization, the Federal Board of Revenue and Alif Ailaan.

Political orientation
Rashid is a proponent of democratic socialism. He has written on and expressed support for policies like rural and urban land reform, labour-intensive and ecologically-sustainable industrialization, progressive tax and public finance reform, labour unionization, climate justice, pro-public-health food regulation, and gender desegregation.

The Emergency Times
Rashid's involvement in political activism started in 2007, when he was a student at LUMS, during the Lawyers' Movement, initiated by Pakistani lawyers against the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf following his declaration of Emergency and attempt to sack the Supreme Court. On November 7, 2007, Rashid along with 1,000 students of his university, came out to protest the emergency rule imposed by Musharraf's televised emergency announcement on November 3, 2007. After his teacher's (Aasim Sajjad Akhtar) arrest, he along with other students was also arrested during a protest at the Lahore High Court.

Major Pakistani news networks had been taken off air at the time of the Emergency, so Rashid took the initiative to start a newsletter named “The Emergency Times” (November, 2007 - June, 2008) to coordinate student and civil society protests, narrate their demands, and provide students a platform to speak about democracy and organize against emergency rule. The newsletter described itself as “an independent Pakistani student information initiative providing regular updates, commentary, and analysis on Pakistan’s evolving political scenario.” The newsletter and its linked mailing list became one of the key means of organizing and coordinating student and civil society protests against the Emergency rule during the media blackout.

Awami Workers Party
Rashid is a leading member of the Awami Workers Party (AWP) since the party was founded in 2012. He served as general secretary and information secretary AWP Rawalpindi-Islamabad from 2014 to 2016.

As political worker for AWP, Rashid was involved in the struggle for the right to affordable housing and shelter in Islamabad in 2014-2015, in which he organized legal and political resistance to the evictions of people from katchi abadi (informal settlements) driven by the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

On July 30, 2015, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) along with police, local administration and rangers, demolished hundreds of dwellings of an informal settlement in Islamabad’s I-11 sector Islamabad.

On August 2, 2015, to stop the forced evictions in Islamabad, Rashid along with Aasim Sajjad Akhtar and residents from Islamabad's katchi abadis, filed a constitutional petition in the Supreme Court to stop CDA’s eviction campaign and called on the apex court to enforce the right to housing.

It was requested in the petition that the court declare the residents of katchi abadis of the federal capital entitled to the benefits conferred under Articles 9, 10A and 25 of the Constitution. The petition asked the Supreme Court to declare that "the state is bound to provide the residents of katchi abadis shelter as per the Constitution and the National Housing Policy 2001.” On August 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the federal government and other departments to stop further demolition of houses in Islamabad's katchi abadis.

When CDA claimed it needed to demolish informal settlements as their growing Christian population would threaten the city's Muslim majority. Rashid responded that "the move was old-fashioned bigotry against minorities and working classes and that the administrative body has no right to be making decisions about the religious demography of Islamabad.”

Rashid was elected as President of Awami Workers Party Punjab in its Third Congress held on January 17, 2020 in Faisalabad.

On 28 January 2020, Islamabad police arrested Rashid, along with three other members of the Awami Workers Party, Ismat Shahjahan, Nawfal Saleemi and Saifullah Nasar, member of the National Assembly Mohsin Dawar, and 23 other protesters from the National Press Club Islamabad at peaceful demonstration for the release of Pashtun peace activist Manzoor Pashteen. Rashid and the other protestors were accused of entirely concocted charges of sedition against the state while Ismat Shahjahan and Mohsin Dawar were released on 29 January, the Additional District and Sessions Judge refused to grant post-arrest bail to 23 protesters and sent them to jail. Rashid and the protesters appealed the decision in the Islamabad High Court where they were granted bail by Chief Justice Athar Minallah on February 3, 2020. The Chief Justice, summoned the Islamabad City Magistrate, to provide an explanation for placing sedition and terrorism charges on peaceful protesters. On February 17, 2020, to comply with IHC orders, Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Hamza Shafqaat informed the court that all charges against the 23 protesters had been dropped.

Rashid has also supported various protests of the Aurat Azadi March held since 2019.

General Elections 2018
Rashid contested for the 2018 Pakistani general election on National assembly seat NA-53 in federal capital Islamabad.

His electoral campaign revolved around an agenda of “social justice, democracy, gender equality, secularism and environmentally sustainable development”. Rashid vowed to revive left-wing politics by bringing back ideological convictions to politics.

His election manifesto focused on solving Islamabad's water crisis, increasing the minimum wage in line with inflation, policies for low-income housing, and allocation of 10% of GDP for education.

During the 2018 election campaign, Rashid along with his party workers, were not allowed to bring election materials into Islamabad with ‘security’ as the excuse despite parties like Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) being allowed to advertise all over the Capital. According to Pakistani newspaper The Nation, this incident strengthened the narrative that these elections were engineered. "

Support for student politics
Since his university days, Rashid has been a strong supporter of young people’s involvement in politics and has consistently advocated for the restoration of student unions and campus democracy in Pakistan.

Rashid has also expressed solidarity with the organizers of the Students Solidarity March along with other notable personalities like Iqbal Lala (father of the late Mashal Khan, Bushra Gohar, Jalila Haider, Nida Kirmani, Jibran Nasir, Farooq Tariq.

On April 13, 2019, Rashid voiced support for the Mashal March to honor Mashal Khan who was killed by his fellow students in university campus on false accusation of blasphemy. Rashid called for structural reform of what he described as the rotten education system that produced Mashal's killers.

On October 24, 2019, a large number of students, political workers and activists gathered for the Students Housing Rights March in Islamabad, to protest against CDA for its forceful eviction of students from private hostels in the capital. The March was organized by Progressive Students Federation (PRSF), Student Hostelites Association (SHA), and supported by Awami Workers Party (AWP). Rashid said on the occasion that the evictions were a symptom of, "the broader crisis in higher education which includes funding cuts for the HEC, fee hikes, endemic and widespread harassment as evident from University of Balochistan’s case and the COMSATS management's high handedness, which led to a student Inam’s death at COMSATS University Islamabad."

On November 29, 2019, Rashid performed at the Students Solidarity March, 2019 in Islamabad where thousands of students marched towards Parliament to demand the restoration of student unions in the country, as part of countrywide student protests.

Revolutionary Music
Rashid is also a musician. His music is a mix of acoustic, classical, folk and rock, and he regularly performs revolutionary songs and poetry at protests, rallies and events organized by his party, trade unions, students and women’s groups and progressive people’s movements.

During his campaign for the 2018 Pakistani general election, Rashid released a campaign song and music video titled ‘Chehre Nahi Samaaj Ko Badlo’ (Change society, not just the faces in charge), which he produced along with fellow leftwing Pakistani musician and academic Shahram Azhar.

For Aurat Azadi March 2020, Ammar composed the socialist-feminist anthem “Hum Inquilab Hain” (We are the Revolution) written by Ismat Shahjahan and sung by Areej Hussain and himself.

Study Circles and Political Schools
Rashid has long been involved in political education with the AWP and its allied organizations. Along with other AWP members, he has helped organize several political schools and study circles around the country to raise awareness about social, economic and political structures of inequality along with methods of organizing progressive political resistance in Pakistan.

On September 2, 2018, the second day of AWP's political school, Rashid delivered a lecture on `Capitalism: On the Roots of our Economic Crisis'. He gave a detailed examination of the economic history of capitalism, encompassing colonialism, industrial capitalism, the neoliberal era, and the inherent contradictions in capitalism that create cyclical economic crises.

Articles
Rashid has published and continues to publish regular articles on student politics, development, feminism, political economy, environment etc. in newspapers and magazines (Daily Times (Pakistan), Al-Jazeera, TRT World,  Dawn News, The Express Tribune, The Guardian, Pakistan Today ). He has also published his research in journals like Third World Quarterly, and the Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association, among others.