THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN FATA Most of the detainees covered in this report were from the frontier regions of Pakistan, and were living there at the time of abduction. Or, they were visiting, having resettled in the country’s urban centers, such as Peshawar or Karachi, in search of safer lives and livelihoods. FATA has been the site of militarization and a discourse of militarization since the British colonial era, and this history continues to structure governance, constitutional rights, security, and access to socioeconomic resources in the region even today.24 Keeping the past in view, this report explores how abduction and detainment reinscribed historic and contemporary forms of institutionalized violence common to the region. For FATA’s Pashtuns, the threat of abduction and detainment in Pakistan’s post-9/11 geopolitical era was not the first or only experience with militarized violence in the region. The detainees that JPP fought for are the children of a prior generation who have lived with violence their entire lives. This section will outline FATA’s contentious relationship with the state of Pakistan and show how this is an analytical perspective that is absolutely essential for understanding how and why abductions took place, detainees’ and their families’ experiences over that duration of time, and the Pakistani government’s morally bewildering choice not to rescue and protect its own citizens from egregious human rights violations. Pre- and post-9/11 FATA The British colonial romanticization of the frontier and Pashtuns as a harsh land inhabited by courageous and loyal warriors drew on contemporary anthropological discourse which saw the group as racially and ethnically predisposed to warfare.25 Such ideas and practices of governance saw fomenting much later in the first Afghan war of 1979, setting in motion global political violence that would shape detainees’ lived experiences even before they were imprisoned. Researchers of countering violent extremism, Moeed Yusuf and Arsla Jawaid, identify Pakistan’s inauguration during this period of a “state policy in creating a politico-ideological environment”, creating spaces for training youth and adult militants including recruitment drives, liaisons with radicalized mosques and media campaigns on the ‘plight’ of unfairly treated global Muslim brethren.26 Mahmood Mamdani rightfully shows that this process of radicalization took place in partnership with the US, using a network of state-sponsored madrasas and right-wing groups, as a strategy to win the first Afghan war.27 Following 9/11, extreme religio-political views of the previous decades found mainstream visibility in politics and media – by which time the state had lost control of a discourse  Ali, Imtiaz. “Mainstreaming Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas: Reform Initiatives and Roadblocks.” United States Institute of Peace: Special Report 421. Mar. 2018. 25  Metcalf, Thomas, R. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1995. 26  Yusuf, Moeed & Jawaid, Arsla. “Radicalism Among Youth In Pakistan: Human Development Gone Wrong?” National Human Development Report. 2015. 27  Mamdani, Mahmood. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. Three Leaves Press. 2004. 24 11