Scapegoating the refugee
Pervez Hoodbhoy
HERDED like cattle, over 1,700,000 Muslim refugees — more than twice the number of Palestinians evicted in 1948 by Zionist Israel — are presently being expelled from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. A compliant caretaker government wants all undocumented Afghans booted out of the country.
Taking this a step further, the Balochistan caretaker information minister declared earlier this week that, in line with the state’s decision, even those Afghans with legal documents would be expelled. Who runs the state is clear.
Once these unfortunates cross the Torkham border, hell awaits them. Large numbers have never visited, much less known, the famine-stricken land to which they allegedly belong. Hundreds of thousands were born on Pakistani soil but could never acquire documents.
Pakistani authorities gave but 30 short days to sell off possessions acquired over a lifetime, decreed that only Rs50,000 per family could be carried in cash, and forbade evictees from taking along their livestock. Who could be more heartless? Zionists?
The story of loss and displacement doesn’t end here. After enduring extortion by Pakistani border guards, they will enter a country run by a primitive, murderous and misogynist militia that hates all forms of modernity except its guns. No girl may go to school, no woman may work, music and art are forbidden, limb-chopping and stoning to death are back in vogue.
In 1996, Pakistan was the first of three countries to recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan’s lawful government. They committed hideous crimes but Pakistan’s high-placed duffers — as the inimitable Asma Jahangir famously called them — carefully explained away their savagery. For decades Pakistan remained the Taliban’s chief champion and loudspeaker to the world.
Failure of Pakistan’s strategic depth doctrine is why Afghan refugees are being victimised.
When the Ashraf Ghani government fell in 2021, there was glee all around. Then-ISI chief Gen Faiz Hameed preened before television cameras in Kabul as though celebrating his personal victory, while then-PM Imran Khan famously proclaimed Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery”.
Things have changed dramatically since then and we know exactly why. After a victory, the force of fanaticism does not diminish — it grows. Backed by the government in Kabul, TTP now savagely attacks Pakistan’s army and police almost daily.
Worried Pakistani rulers tried persuading Afghanistan’s rulers to denounce these terrorist acts but met a brick wall. Why expect otherwise? Both the TTP and Afghan Taliban carry the same mindset and have the same goals.
Although many Afghans fled to Pakistan after the 2021 Taliban victory, they are now being falsely accused of providing TTP terrorists a base. In fact the TTP was born in Swat under the nose of our security forces. Had there been a will, Maulana Fazlullah — aka Mullah Radio — could have been instantly neutralised in 2006-2007.
To cover up the establishment’s past incompetence and complicity, hapless refugees are now being scapegoated. They are victims of Pakistan’s bungled foreign policy and its delusionary pursuit of strategic depth. The days of dollar-fuelled ‘jihad’ being over, these penniless people are no longer useful as cannon fodder. Rich Afghans, of course, may stay.
Had Pakistan ever been serious about wanting to destroy TTP’s ideologically charged terrorism, it would have looked for places where the call to ‘jihad’ is loud and strident.
All across the Muslim world the mullah has been tamed by the state. Yet there’s little chance that Pakistani madressahs preaching violence will be investigated. Maulana Abdul Aziz, leader of the Lal Masjid insurrection that killed well over 200, supports the TTP but struts around Islamabad with armed escort.
Those who ordered the sudden deportations claim to defend Pakistan’s ideological frontiers. But unknowingly they are hollowing out the Islamic premise upon which Pakistan was founded.
To understand this, let’s wind back to the mid 1940s when the secular Indian National Congress was in power in NWFP and Dr Khan Sahib, brother of Bacha Khan, was chief minister. The All-India Muslim League was rising but still on the back foot.
To woo the Pakhtuns and counter the Khan brothers’ popularity, Mr Jinnah insisted that Islamic unity must trump ethnicity. As recorded in the Jinnah Papers, on June 29, 1947, he declared, “I want the Muslims of the Frontier to understand that they are Muslims first and Pathans afterwards”.
With closely knitted Pakhtun families living on either side of the Durand Line — a British construct designed to demarcate British from Russian spheres of influence — Jinnah never suggested Pakhtuns would ever be prevented from freely crossing over.
How could a Muslim from Uttar Pradesh become a Pakistani but not another Muslim living right across an arbitrarily drawn line? It made no sense. Jinnah thus won over the Pakhtuns.
The Afghan refugee issue starkly exposes the inherent contradictions within a state created on the basis of religious identity. Still, in my opinion, Pakistan cannot and should not allow every Muslim from anywhere to migrate to the country. While the mass deportation ordered by the government is wrong and has been widely condemned, the wishes of the majority must be kept in mind.
We know, for example, that tensions exist in interior Sindh between the indigenous Sindhi population and the newly arrived Afghans, the latter tending to be socially conservative but also ready to work harder. Such tensions bring to mind Pakistani migrants in Europe who bring along with them their conservative culture plus a host of other problems, particularly crime.
Still, mass deportations of Pakistanis from Europe similar to what Pakistan is doing to Afghans would be wrong and immoral. Migration across borders is now a universal feature of humankind for which there are no absolutes and no clear answers. Open borders are still a distant dream for humanity. For now, sensitive, scientific management is needed. Europe is only halfway up the learning curve.
Afghans in Pakistan must be dealt with as per universal norms that respect human rights and dignity. At a very minimum, those born in Pakistan must be declared Pakistani citizens with rights equal to the rest.
For this, the documentation process must be simplified. Girls and women must not be forced back to suffer at the hands of misogynist rulers. Individuals at high risk must be given asylum, not deported. Nothing less is acceptable.
The author is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.
Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023
The other partition
Danyal Adam Khan
THE Partition lives strong in public imagination. It triggered mass migrations; millions died and even more were displaced. Generations of South Asian writers have since revisited its horrors, allowing us, in so many small ways, to grieve for what was lost. What there is far less recognition for is the other partition; the one that took place along the western border of our country exactly 130 years ago this week.
The formation of the Durand Line was not nearly as violent, but it did formalise a boundary, which permanently split a group of people into two in order to create a buffer zone between the British and Russians. Like most things irredeemably wrecked by imperial interference, the Durand Line was a colonial quagmire inherited by modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. And its anniversary could not have come at a more grievous time for relations between the two countries.
This kneejerk policy of expulsion has been adopted by a caretaker setup that lacks the mandate for decisions of such consequence. Afghan refugees have been asked to pack up entire lifetimes in a matter of days as the state resorts to seemingly deliberate obfuscation on who is to be expelled and who is deemed legal. A door-to-door witch hunt has ensued against all. Afghans are being rounded up like cattle, herded into holding centres and pushed across a border — the other side of which some of them have never even seen.
Public opinion, meanwhile, has been rife with hate. The levels of empathy and nuance extended to conflicts farther away disappear when the bigotry is closer to home. Some attribute it to security, others to the economy. ‘Pakistan is for Pakistanis,’ say the people most furious about Western countries exhibiting xenophobia. More gratitude is demanded of Afghans, with no thought given to why their country was rendered unlivable in the first place.
Sending them to an uncertain future with the Taliban does not reduce our economic burden.
We would like to think of our hospitality, not of discriminatory state policies or awkward truths such as the fact that the third generation of a family born in Pakistan is still foreign. For every Afghan who has prospered (and why should they not?), there are countless others living in squalid conditions as permanent residents of refugee camps. Sending them to an uncertain future with the Taliban does not reduce our economic burden, only our moral standing.
But what happens when Afghans are indistinguishable from us? It enables the state to, once again, extend xenophobia towards unprivileged Pakhtuns. They will be harassed, intimidated, and forced to carry documentation for fear of deportation — all with legal cover and carried out in our collective name. What happens when the state treats a certain segment of Pakhtuns as the ‘other’, but does not appreciate expressions of solidarity with their Afghan counterparts over the mutual devastation they have endured for decades? For the past few years, we have been too sensitive about expressions of unity; they are often seen as something more, something treasonous. Any cross-border display of familiarity or critique of our own policies seems to trigger a deep-rooted insecurity. This is precisely why questions of language and identity cut to the heart of state formation. Can the Pakistani state only exist in negation of all other identities? Or is it possible for Pakhtuns to share a nationality with other Pakistanis and an ethnicity with other Afghans? Is there a mutually exclusive hierarchy of identities?
The 130th anniversary of the Durand Line is an apt moment to introspect on all these questions. The answers may very well be the missing pieces in Pakistan’s existential puzzle. Acknowledging this country’s reality of being a state comprising a few nations sets us at ease. It reminds us that the imposition of a homogenous identity on one of the most diverse populations in the world has already cost us half the country.
Expressions of empathy and shared culture and heritage between people on both sides of the border bring us closer. But blanket denial of the existence of these sentiments with threats of sedition charges only makes them resurface with a vengeance. Targeting the most vulnerable segments of society deepens wounds, whereas recognition of the impacts of this other partition will pave the way for a healing process necessary to establish lasting peace.
To achieve such a reconciliation, we must seek comfort in our discomfort. When a country contains multitudes, it is impossible to segregate the populace into black and white.
Such a move is entirely antagonistic to its own parts. Therefore, when things don’t fall into neatly packaged categories, all rage against the grey is futile.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2023
Danyal Adam Khan
THE Partition lives strong in public imagination. It triggered mass migrations; millions died and even more were displaced. Generations of South Asian writers have since revisited its horrors, allowing us, in so many small ways, to grieve for what was lost. What there is far less recognition for is the other partition; the one that took place along the western border of our country exactly 130 years ago this week.
The formation of the Durand Line was not nearly as violent, but it did formalise a boundary, which permanently split a group of people into two in order to create a buffer zone between the British and Russians. Like most things irredeemably wrecked by imperial interference, the Durand Line was a colonial quagmire inherited by modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. And its anniversary could not have come at a more grievous time for relations between the two countries.
This kneejerk policy of expulsion has been adopted by a caretaker setup that lacks the mandate for decisions of such consequence. Afghan refugees have been asked to pack up entire lifetimes in a matter of days as the state resorts to seemingly deliberate obfuscation on who is to be expelled and who is deemed legal. A door-to-door witch hunt has ensued against all. Afghans are being rounded up like cattle, herded into holding centres and pushed across a border — the other side of which some of them have never even seen.
Public opinion, meanwhile, has been rife with hate. The levels of empathy and nuance extended to conflicts farther away disappear when the bigotry is closer to home. Some attribute it to security, others to the economy. ‘Pakistan is for Pakistanis,’ say the people most furious about Western countries exhibiting xenophobia. More gratitude is demanded of Afghans, with no thought given to why their country was rendered unlivable in the first place.
Sending them to an uncertain future with the Taliban does not reduce our economic burden.
We would like to think of our hospitality, not of discriminatory state policies or awkward truths such as the fact that the third generation of a family born in Pakistan is still foreign. For every Afghan who has prospered (and why should they not?), there are countless others living in squalid conditions as permanent residents of refugee camps. Sending them to an uncertain future with the Taliban does not reduce our economic burden, only our moral standing.
But what happens when Afghans are indistinguishable from us? It enables the state to, once again, extend xenophobia towards unprivileged Pakhtuns. They will be harassed, intimidated, and forced to carry documentation for fear of deportation — all with legal cover and carried out in our collective name. What happens when the state treats a certain segment of Pakhtuns as the ‘other’, but does not appreciate expressions of solidarity with their Afghan counterparts over the mutual devastation they have endured for decades? For the past few years, we have been too sensitive about expressions of unity; they are often seen as something more, something treasonous. Any cross-border display of familiarity or critique of our own policies seems to trigger a deep-rooted insecurity. This is precisely why questions of language and identity cut to the heart of state formation. Can the Pakistani state only exist in negation of all other identities? Or is it possible for Pakhtuns to share a nationality with other Pakistanis and an ethnicity with other Afghans? Is there a mutually exclusive hierarchy of identities?
The 130th anniversary of the Durand Line is an apt moment to introspect on all these questions. The answers may very well be the missing pieces in Pakistan’s existential puzzle. Acknowledging this country’s reality of being a state comprising a few nations sets us at ease. It reminds us that the imposition of a homogenous identity on one of the most diverse populations in the world has already cost us half the country.
Expressions of empathy and shared culture and heritage between people on both sides of the border bring us closer. But blanket denial of the existence of these sentiments with threats of sedition charges only makes them resurface with a vengeance. Targeting the most vulnerable segments of society deepens wounds, whereas recognition of the impacts of this other partition will pave the way for a healing process necessary to establish lasting peace.
To achieve such a reconciliation, we must seek comfort in our discomfort. When a country contains multitudes, it is impossible to segregate the populace into black and white.
Such a move is entirely antagonistic to its own parts. Therefore, when things don’t fall into neatly packaged categories, all rage against the grey is futile.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2023
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