Digital black hole: Undeclared internet policy in Pakistan’s Pashtun periphery

Abstract

Due to the State’s militarized policies in the war-torn Pashtun areas (ex-FATA) bordering Afghanistan, the Pakistan government’s undeclared internet policy in this region has become an obstacle in the way of both exercising the freedom of expression and the attainment of digital access as a basic human right. This is in line with the colonial legacy of keeping this area a buffer-zone, strategically rendering it an information black hole. But the criminalization of digital freedom has also triggered local protests for media-making rights. Based on interviews with ‘tribal’ students, and using critical discourse analysis in combination with Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, we examine how the Pakistani State denies the tribal students their digital rights resulting in the loss of their time and the consequences of this collective loss. We found that the local frustration could not be limited to the lack of internet. Entailing an element of passive defiance, the tribal students are deserting their ancestral land to reclaim their bodies from the goliath of the State, hampering its necro behemoth that is using them as a complicit body in a disabled space.