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Niloufer Siddiqui is a PhD candidate in political science at Yale University. Her research interests include political violence, the politics of religion and ethnicity, electoral dynamics in developing or transitioning democracies and political behavior. She previously worked at the International Crisis Group (ICG) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Islamabad and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York. She has an M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in English from Haverford College.
On May 13, more than 40 people were killed and at least 13 injured in a gun attack on a bus carrying members of the minority Ismaili Shi‘i sect in Karachi, Pakistan. This was not the deadliest attack of the year, as that dubious honor goes to a suicide bombing in a district in Sindh, which left 61 Shi‘a dead in January. Yet the brazen nature of the attack―carried out in daylight in the bustling megacity of Karachi by gunmen who reportedly boarded the bus and shot at passengers indiscriminately―was striking even in a country where over 2,000 people have been killed and 3,500 injured in sectarian attacks in the past five years.
