In the year 2024, 11 journalists were killed in Pakistan, bringing the total number of reporters killed since 2000 to 153. Among them, 46 are ethnic Pashtuns. Working in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, they lost their lives in reporting on the US-led “war on terror.”
Drawing from interviews with these journalists (N = 19) and using Puar’s (2017) concept of “economy of injury,” this study explores how Pashtun journalists describe violence against them. The injury is not just physical harm but rather the gradual, long-term debilitation of capacity—fear of job loss, exclusion of plurality, self-censorship, and repression of dissent. The authors argue that this media-related violence is not a consequence of the conflict but an agentive part of the state’s geopolitics. This perspective enables them to focus on the threats to public safety and free expression that the militarized status quo poses to the cross-border population. The study calls for a change in the way these journalists view resistance to violence against them during the time when the Pakistani military assumes responsibility for the “war on terror” after the pullout of the US troops in 2021.
AbbasH (2015) Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror. Routledge.
2.
Afghanistan Journalists Center (2023) AFJC Releases 2023 Annual Report on Media Freedom in Afghanistan. Afghanistan Journalists Center.
3.
AgambenG (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Heller-RoazenD, trans.). Stanford University Press.
4.
AhmedAS (2013) The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam. Brookings Institution Press.
5.
Al-GhazziO (2014) “Citizen journalism” in the Syrian uprising: Problematizing Western narratives in a local context. Communication Theory24(4): 435–454.
AndersonJ (1975) Tribe and community among the Ghilzai Pashtun. Preliminary notes on ethnographic distribution and variation in Eastern Afghanistan. Anthropos (H. 3/4): 575–601.
8.
AndresenKBalochK (2020) Reporting in conflict zones in Pakistan: Risks and challenges for fixers. Media and Communication8(1): 37–46.
9.
AshrafI (2018) How experience becomes a journalistic asset? A local reporter’s perspective to understand conflict-sensitive reporting in the troubled pashtun belt of Pakistan. Central Asia83(Winter): 173–190.
10.
AshrafSI (2021) The Dark Side of News Fixing: The Culture and Political Economy of Global Media in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Anthem Press.
11.
AshrafSIKhanAJanF (2023) Journalism as war: Tracing the predatory culture and economy of the Pak-Afghan cross-border news practices. Journalism Practice19: 1822–1838.
12.
BalochKAndresenK (2020) Reporting in conflict zones in Pakistan: Risks and challenges for fixers. Media and Communication8(1): 37–46.
13.
BennettWL (1990) Toward a theory of press–state relations in the United States. Journal of Communication40(2): 103–127.
14.
BlacksinIMitraS (2024) Straddlers not spiralists: Critical questions for research on fixers, local-foreign news work, and cross-border journalism. Journalism25(6): 1271–1289.
15.
BorthakurAKotokeyA (2020) Ethnicity or religion? The genesis of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Asian Affairs51(4): 817–837.
Committee to Protect Journalists (2024) 11th Pakistani Journalist Killed in 2024 amid Growing Wave of Violence. Committee to Protect Journalists.
20.
CreechB (2017) Bearing the cost to witness: The political economy of risk in contemporary conflict and war reporting. Media, Culture & Society40(4): 567–583.
21.
DaechselM (1997) Military Islamisation in Pakistan and the spectre of colonial perceptions. Contemporary South Asia6(2): 141–160.
22.
DaviesTIsakjeeAObradovic-WochnikJ (2024) The politics of injury: Debilitation and the right to maim at the EU border. Geopolitics. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2024.2339894.
23.
DotyRL (2011) Bare life: Border-crossing deaths and spaces of moral alibi. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space29(4): 599–612.
24.
EdwardsM (2003) The New Great Game and the new great gamers: Disciples of Kipling and Mackinder. Central Asian Survey22(1): 83–102.
25.
Express Tribune (2015) Tribespeople reliant on militant or foreign radio for news, 27December.
26.
FahmySSalamaMAlsabaM (2024) Shattered lives, unbroken stories: Journalists’ perspectives from the frontlines of the Israel–Gaza war. Online Media and Global Communication3(2): 151–180.
27.
GilbertP (2012) Afghanistan – the “great game” without end?International Journal of Leadership in Public Services8(1): 59–72.
28.
HoodbhoyP (2005) Afghanistan and the genesis of global Jihad. Peace Research37(1): 15–30.
29.
JanF (2015) International broadcasting as component of US public diplomacy (a case study of voice of America’s DEEWA Radio). Dialogue (Pakistan)10(2): 153–165.
30.
KempfW (2003) Constructive conflict coverage-A social-psychological research and development program. Conflict & Communication2(2): 1–13.
31.
KhanA (2003) Profile of journalists in Peshawar: Development of the concept, theoretical and methodical dimensions, and results. In: KhanA (ed.) News Media and Journalism in Pakistan and Germany. Owais Publishers, pp.113–135.
32.
KhanA (2011) The “Afghan Beat”: Pukhtoon journalism and the Afghan war. In: JalazaiZJefferesD (eds) Globalizing Afghanistan. Duke University Press, pp.79–94.
KotišováJ (2024) The epistemic injustice in conflict reporting: Reporters and ‘fixers’ covering Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine. Journalism25(6): 1290–1309.
35.
KotišováJDeuzeM (2022) Decolonizing conflict journalism studies: A critical review of research on fixers. Journalism Studies23(10): 1160–1177.
36.
MalterudKSiersmaVDGuassoraAD (2016) Sample size in qualitative interview studies: Guided by information power. Qualitative Health Research26(13): 1753–1760.
37.
MaqboolN (2021) The electronic media economy in Pakistan: Issues and Challenges. PIDE Knowledge Brief35: 1–8.
38.
MitraSPalmerLSeoS (2024) What am I doing here? Self-reflexivity in cross-border journalism research. The International Journal of Press/Politics30(2): 618–634.
39.
MurrellC (2014) The vulture club: International newsgathering via Facebook. Australian Journalism Review36(1): 15–27.
40.
PalmerL (2018) ‘Being the bridge’: News fixers’ perspectives on cultural difference in reporting the ‘war on terror’. Journalism19(3): 314–332.
41.
PalmerL (2019) The Fixers: Local News Workers’ Perspectives on International Reporting. Oxford University Press.
42.
PalmerL (2022) News fixers at the digital interface: Precarious labor and international journalism in the 21st century. Communication, Culture and Critique15(1): 52–68.
43.
PriviteraGJ (2013) Research Methods for the Behavioral Sciences. SAGE.
44.
PuarJK (2017) The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Duke University Press.
45.
RashidA (2008) Descent into Chaos: The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Penguin.
46.
RasulAMcDowellSD (2012) Consolidation in the name of regulation: The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) and the concentration of media ownership in Pakistan. Global Media Journal12(20): 1–15.
47.
RasulAProffittJM (2013) Diversity or homogeny: Concentration of ownership and media diversity in Pakistan. Asian Journal of Communication23(6): 590–604.
SarfarazNMoawiaHJabbarHA (2022) Pakistan’s strategic depth in Afghanistan ambivalence after the Taliban-U.S. agreement of 2020. Pakistan Journal of Social Research4(1): 551–560.
52.
SeoS (2016) Marginal majority at the postcolonial news agency: Foreign journalistic hires at the Associated Press. Journalism Studies17(1): 39–56.
53.
ShahSFAGinossarTWeissD (2019) “This is a Pakhtun disease”: Pakhtun health journalists’ perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to polio vaccine acceptance among the high-risk Pakhtun community in Pakistan. Vaccine37(28): 3694–3703.
54.
ShahSFAMurphyBEJoyceTA, et al. (2024) “I don’t get sick leave”: Small-market newspaper journalists’ perceptions of the impact of occupational stressors and organizational support on their mental well-being. Newspaper Research Journal45(4): 472–491.
