My interaction with global media started in 2006, the year of al-Qaida's relocation in ex-FATA after their displacement from Afghanistan in 2001. Again Peshawar became a global media flashpoint. For coverage of the ghastly wave of al-Qaida-affiliated Taliban terrorism, parachute journalists started pouring into the city. An average of two suicide attacks were carried out each month for three consecutive years from 2007 to 2009 (South Asia Terrorism Portal, 2018). Total death tolls rose from 98 in the year 2006 to 507 in 2007, 670 in 2008, and 1,221 in 2009 (South Asia Terrorism Portal, 2018). To stop this onslaught, counterterrorism operations were in full swing in each Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) district lying in proximity to FATA. Al-Qaida, the Pakistani State and the United States were rival sovereign nodes, yet they were united in spilling blood on local streets. The dark power that they exercise was faceless, yet was felt all over to rule the population via panoptical gaze of their local intelligence, forcing civilians to police themselves under the faceless apparatus, a deathly regime of power. Taking shape of an unavoidable force to undermine whatever little freedom remains in the Pashtun Belt, this burst of violence compelled the local people to abandon their ancestral land and run for safety. Nowhere to go, they ended up in city slums and camps in parts of Pakistan. Daily life became a front line and distinguishing the oppressors from the oppressed was becoming difficult. Achille Mbembe (2003), a Postcolonial academic, powerfully describes this dark and violent rule—by multiple sovereign nodes—as the “power of death” over life that he calls “necropower” (p. 39). Living and working in Peshawar under this deathly gaze, I realized that no such thing as neutrality exists for a local journalist, as much as the canons of professional training might teach otherwise.

As the war raged on, “fixers” were the global media's only credible news connection. They were paid daily wages for risky forays in the conflict zone and offered no job security. Yet they were left with no choices. They had to work as cheap labor for lack of options. Because of intense terrorism, they even lost the ability to think about their own security or worry about retaining their news reports’ ownership.