From the archive: How western travel influencers got tangled up in Pakistan’s politics

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  This is The Guardian.

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  The Guardian Archive Long Read.

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  Hi, I'm Samira Shackle and I'm the author of How Western Travel Influences Got Tangled Up in Pakistan's Politics,

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  which was published by The Guardian Long Read in 2020.

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  So I first came across the story.

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  I was traveling back and forth to Pakistan a lot, working on a book.

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  And I noticed that everyone I spoke to practically from my older relatives who lived there down to younger friends

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  working in the media were all talking about this trend of Western influencers,

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  predominantly young white women coming to Pakistan and doing this very sort of promotional tourism content.

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  It was quite sort of jarring to the sorts of things that I was covering,

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  you know, terrorism, recovery from years and years of urban violence.

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  And I was very intrigued at what this was about and started paying closer attention to it.

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  I 'd noticed that some people were really happy about this, particularly the older relatives I mentioned,

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  really happy to see a positive view of Pakistan being portrayed to the world as they saw it.

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  Whereas some other people I knew, the more media savvy maybe,

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  were a bit more sceptical about the types of narratives that were being pushed and the types of access

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  to very restricted areas that these women appeared to have.

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  When I started looking at some of this content, I myself was really surprised that there were these videos.

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  Showing the admittedly incredibly beautiful landscapes in areas like Balochistan,

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  where I, as a journalist and as a person of Pakistani heritage,

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