in legal memos and audio recordings, which comprise the primary examination and analysis in this paper. Drawing from philosopher Giorgio Agamben, the paper emphasizes that such subjective experiences of violence and resultant trauma are the result of two states of exception coalescing: the US’ suspension of human rights laws in the name of fighting a global war on terror, and Pakistan’s cooperation with this approach, having governed FATA under the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), excluding the region’s residents from the country’s legal governance structure and constitutional rights.4 Under these combined circumstances, detainees’ lives were in a state of suspension, with no recourse to rights or legal representation. As the erstwhile FATA undergoes reforms this year that will make it part of the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and integrate it under a common federal governance structure,5 the stories of these detainees and those in the previous Bagram report show the importance of human rights and socioeconomic reforms needed to address the decades of violence residents of the region have endured. Research documenting the routinized violence, risk, and uncertainty marking average peoples’ lives in FATA, to a great extent in their own voices, is an invaluable perspective for decision makers and stakeholders as they attempt to institutionalize long-term improvements in the region. That FATA today is a product of colonial rule and a failure on the part of postIndependence governments to undo historically flawed structures of governance and law is wellknown, and an accepted starting point for discussing constitutional reforms needed in the region. In the development rhetoric and language of statistics of integrating FATA within the country’s larger governance and resource allocation infrastructure, less discussed are the residents of FATA as actual people. Instead they are instrumentalized as numbers upon which if improvement can be enacted, it will raise the socioeconomic status of the country as a whole. With travel to the region restricted, and travel out of it heavily monitored, little is understood about everyday lived experience about a place that’s deliberately kept in a knowledge vacuum under the guise of security. In documenting the routinized violence, risk, and uncertainty marking average peoples’ lives in FATA, to a great extent in their own voices, this report provides aims to provide needed perspective for decision makers and stakeholders as they attempt to institutionalize long-term improvements to the region.  Agamben, Giorgio. States of Exception. Chicago. Chicago University Press. 2005.  Khan, Ismail. “The Fata merger: Towards a brave new world,” Dawn. May. 24, 2018. 4 5 3