US takes aim at Zuckerberg’s social media kingdom

By AFP
April 9, 2025


Mark Zuckerberg (C), seen here attending the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, is expected to take the stand as Meta goes to trial over antitrust claims - Copyright POOL/AFP Shawn THEW

Alex PIGMAN

Barring any eleventh-hour intervention, social media juggernaut Meta will stand trial next week facing serious US government allegations that it abused its market power to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp before they could become competitors.

By moving forward, the trial in a Washington federal court dashes any hopes from Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg that the return of Donald Trump to the White House would see the government let up on the enforcement of antitrust law against Big Tech.

The Meta case is being made by the Federal Trade Commission, the powerful US consumer protection agency, and could see the owner of Facebook forced to divest Instagram and WhatsApp, which have grown into global powerhouses since their buyout.

The case was originally made in December 2020, during the first Trump administration, and all eyes were on whether Trump would soften his stance against Big Tech during his second stint in the White House.

Zuckerberg, the world’s third-richest person, has made repeated visits to the White House as he tries to persuade the US leader to choose settlement instead of fighting the trial, a decision that would be extraordinary at this late stage.

FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson downplayed such possibilities, telling The Verge: “I think that the President recognizes that we’ve got to enforce the laws, so I’d be very surprised if anything like that ever happened.”

Zuckerberg’s lobbying efforts have included Trump inauguration fund contributions and overhauled content moderation policies favoring Republicans.

Even so, “I’m not sure Trump is persuaded that Zuckerberg is worthy of redemption,” said George Hay, an antitrust law professor at Cornell Law School.

While a White House intervention remains technically possible, it would require both presidential and FTC agreement that the case lacks merit, he added.

The Meta lawsuit represents just one of five major tech antitrust actions initiated by the US government recently. Google was found guilty of search market dominance abuse last August, while Apple and Amazon also face cases.

Zuckerberg, his former lieutenant Sheryl Sandberg, and a long line of executives from rival companies will be taking the stand over a trial that will last at least eight weeks and kicks off on Monday.



– ‘Really scary’ –



Central to the case is Facebook’s 2012 billion-dollar purchase of Instagram — then a small but promising photo-sharing startup designed for mobile phones that now boasts two billion active users.

An email from Zuckerberg cited by the FTC reveals the concerns: “The potential impact of Instagram is really scary and why we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this.”

The FTC argues Meta’s $19-billion WhatsApp acquisition in 2014 followed the same pattern, with Zuckerberg fearing the messaging app could either transform into a social network or be purchased by a competitor.

Meta’s defense will argue that substantial investments transformed these acquisitions into the blockbusters they are today, bearing little resemblance to their original versions.

They’ll also highlight that the FTC initially approved both transactions and shouldn’t be permitted a redo.

Recent court setbacks for the FTC — including failed challenges to Meta’s Within acquisition and Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard merger — may strengthen Big Tech’s position.

Judge James Boasberg, who will decide and preside over the case, has already cautioned that the FTC “faces hard questions about whether its claims can hold up in the crucible of trial.”

Author of explosive Meta memoir to star at US Senate hearing


By AFP
  April 9, 2025


Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has cozied up to US President Donald Trump since the Republican was elected 

- Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Samuel Corum

The former Facebook employee behind a scathing book about parent company Meta will testify Wednesday before US senators keen to establish whether the social networking giant ever collaborated with the Chinese government.

Former global policy director Sarah Wynn-Williams has alleged the company explored the possibility of breaking into the lucrative Chinese market by appeasing Beijing’s government censors.

Meta communications director Andy Stone told AFP the company “ultimately decided not to go through with the ideas we’d explored.”

The company’s family of apps is currently blocked in China.

Wynn-Williams’s testimony at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing will focus on Meta’s foreign relations moves and on what its executives have previously told Congress.

Of particular interest at Wednesday’s hearing, headed by Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, is whether Wynn-Williams contradicts what Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has stated under oath during past congressional hearings.

Wynn-Williams’s book, “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism,” was released on March 11 and became a hot seller despite Meta winning an arbitration court order barring the author from promoting the work or making derogatory statements about the company.

Her book recounts working at the tech titan from 2011 to 2017 and includes claims of sexual harassment by longtime company executive Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican and ally of President Donald Trump who took over as head of Meta’s global affairs team this year.

Meta took the matter to arbitration, contending the book violates a non-disparagement contract signed by Wynn-Williams when she worked with the company’s global affairs team.

Stone said Wynn-Williams was “fired for poor performance and toxic behavior,” having made a series of allegations that the company investigated and found to be unfounded.

“Careless People” ranks second on a New York Times bestseller list of nonfiction books, with another title highly critical of Meta close behind.

“The Anxious Generation,” which paints a dark picture of social media’s effect on children, is currently fourth on the Times bestseller list, a year after its release.

American Baseball Teams Should Stop Helping Big Oil Sportswash the Climate Crisis


More than half of all Major League Baseball teams are sponsored by companies that are exacerbating the climate emergency and the financial institutions that support them.


Josh Hader #71 and Victor Caratini #17 of the Houston Astros celebrate after defeating the Minnesota Twins at Target Field on Thursday, April 3, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Occidental Petroleum label is visible on their sleeves.
(Photo: Matt Krohn/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Elliott Negin
Apr 07, 2025

Common Dreams


Millions of Americans were buoyed by the return of Major League Baseball (MLB) this spring. For the 50% of adults who follow the sport, it can serve as a welcome distraction given the dire news coming out of Washington these days.

But political reality can intrude even on the national pastime. It turns out that at least 17 of the 30 MLB teams are sponsored by companies that are exacerbating the climate crisis and the financial institutions that support them.

It’s called sportswashing, a riff on the term greenwashing. Companies sponsor leagues and teams to present themselves as good corporate citizens, increase visibility, and build public trust. According to a 2021 Nielsen study, 81% of fans completely or somewhat trust companies that underwrite sport teams, second only to the trust they have for friends and family. By sponsoring a team, companies increase the chance that fans will form the same bond with their brand that they have with the team.

Baseball club owners are much more concerned about their bottom line than their sponsors’ climate impacts.

Baseball teams are not alone in their pursuit of petrodollars. At least 35 U.S. pro basketball, football, hockey, and soccer teams have similar sponsorship deals that afford companies a range of promotional perks, from billboards and jersey logos to community outreach projects and facility naming rights, according to a survey conducted last fall by UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. U.S. sports leagues and teams also partner with banks and insurance companies that invest billions of dollars annually in coal, oil, and gas companies, all to the detriment of public health and the environment.

Most baseball aficionados are likely unaware that their favorite team is going to bat for the very companies and banks that are destroying the climate, but a growing number of fans in New York and Los Angeles are calling out the Mets and Dodgers, demanding that they sever their ties to the fossil fuel industry. And once they know, will fans in other MLB cities remain on the sidelines?
Shilling for the Biggest Polluters

Oil, gas, and coal are largely responsible for the carbon pollution driving up world temperatures and triggering more dangerous extreme weather events. Last year was yet another record hot year, and the last 10 years have been the hottest in nearly 200 years of recordkeeping, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Those warmer temperatures certainly played a role in producing the 27 weather and climate disasters in the United States last year that caused at least $1 billion in damages, one less than the record set in 2023. And just this week, violent storms and tornadoes ripped through a swath of the nation’s midsection in what The Associated Presssaid could be a “record-setting period of deadly weather and flooding.”

Regardless, baseball club owners are much more concerned about their bottom line than their sponsors’ climate impacts. But with today’s annual MBL payrolls averaging $157 million, it is not hard to understand why teams pursue corporate sponsorships.





The team with the highest payroll—the Los Angeles Dodgers at $321 million—has a longtime partnership with Phillips 66, owner of 76 gas stations, whose orange-and-blue logo hovers above both Dodger stadium scoreboards and is scattered throughout the facility. Phillips 66, which also sponsors the St. Louis Cardinals, is among the top 10 U.S. air and surface water polluters in total pounds, according to the 2024 edition of Political Economy Research Institute’s “Top 100 Polluter Indexes,” and the 14th-largest carbon polluter, emitting 30.2 million metric tons in 2022.

Arco, owned by Marathon Petroleum, also advertises in Dodger Stadium. The country’s largest oil refiner with more than 7,000 Marathon and Arco gas stations nationwide, Marathon Petroleum is among the top 20 air, surface water, and carbon polluters in the country, according to PERI’s 2024 report, and the company and its subsidiaries have been fined more than $900 million for federal environmental violations since 2014.

The Findlay, Ohio-based company has been one of the Cleveland Guardians’ major corporate sponsors since 2021, and the team has been wearing Marathon Petroleum’s logo on their sleeves since the summer of 2023. The logo also enjoys prime placement in the Guardians’ ballpark and, as part of the uniform patch agreement, it is featured on the souvenir jerseys given to fans on two game days every season through 2026.

The Guardians are not the only team that has inked an oil patch deal. The Houston Astros (Oxy), Kansas City Royals (QuikTrip gas stations), and Texas Rangers (Energy Transfer) also display oil industry logos on their sleeves.

Both Oxy—Occidental Petroleum’s nickname—and the Astros’ other oil industry sponsor, ConocoPhillips, are headquartered in Houston, home to more than 400 oil and petrochemical facilities and among the 10 worst places in the country for air pollution. Occidental is one of the top 30 U.S. air polluters, 40 surface water polluters, and 60 carbon emitters, releasing 10.5 million metric tons of heat-trapping gases in 2022, according to PERI’s 2024 report. ConocoPhillips, meanwhile, came in 88th in PERI’s top 100 carbon polluters list.

Fossil fuel-based utilities also partner with MLB teams. Detroit’s local electric utility DTE, for instance, sponsors the Tigers. More than 40% of DTE’s electricity comes from coal, another 26% comes from fossil gas, and only 12% comes from wind and solar. Although the company is committed to reducing its reliance on coal over the next decade, it plans to replace it with fossil gas, not renewables.
Shilling for Climate Crisis Financiers

Seven teams—and the league itself—have commercial tie-ins with financial institutions that have major fossil fuel industry investments.

The Milwaukee Brewers wear Northwestern Mutual patches on their sleeves. As of last year, the insurance company had $12.17 billion invested in 146 fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil, Marathon Petroleum, and Shell, according to a 2024 report by the German environmental nonprofit Urgewald. Meanwhile, the Toronto Blue Jays’ patch sponsor, TD Bank, had nearly twice that amount invested in fossil fuels last year. The Toronto-based bank sunk $21.37 billion in 201 fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, which, by the way, sponsors the Sacramento Athletics and San Francisco Giants.

The Washington Nationals partner with Geico, which underwrites a mascot race featuring U.S. presidents running around the outfield warning track every home game. Geico is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, a multinational conglomerate that, as of last year, had investments of a whopping $95.8 billion in Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, and six other fossil fuel companies.

The other four teams—the Braves, Diamondbacks, Mets and Pirates—have lucrative, multiyear stadium-naming-rights agreements with oil-soaked banks.The Braves play in Truist Park just outside of Atlanta. Truist Financial, borne out of the 2019 merger between BB&T and Sun Trust banks, had $1.89 billion invested in Chevron, ExxonMobil, and 100 other fossil fuel companies as of last year. In 2017, Truist predecessor Sun Trust spent $250 million on a 25-year naming rights deal.
Chase Field in downtown Phoenix is the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. JPMorgan Chase’s predecessor Bank One spent $66.4 million for the naming rights for 30 years when the stadium opened in 1998, and when JPMorgan Chase bought Bank One in 2004, the facility’s name changed to Chase Field. The biggest financier of fossil fuels worldwide from 2016—when the Paris climate accord went into effect—through 2023, JPMorgan Chase had $89.33 billion invested in fossil fuel companies last year.
Citigroup paid $400 million for the honor of having the Mets call its then-new ballpark Citi Field for 20 years, from 2009 to 2029. The second-largest financier of fossil fuels between 2016 and 2023, Citigroup had investments totaling $4.37 billion in 150 fossil fuel companies last year.
The Pirates’ PNC Park is named after the PNC bank, which paid $30 million for the stadium to bear its name from 2001, when it opened, though 2021. The Pirates and the bank extended their agreement until 2031 for an undisclosed sum. Last year, PNC Financial Services had $3.69 billion invested in 147 fossil fuel companies.

Finally, official MLB sponsors include two insurance companies—the aforementioned Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary Geico and New York Life—that have sizeable fossil fuel portfolios. Last year, New York Life had investments of $11.76 billion in 234 companies, including Duke Energy and the Southern Company.
More Fans Are Crying Foul

Last June, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres castigated coal, oil, and gas companies—dubbing them the “godfathers of climate chaos” for spreading disinformation—and called for a worldwide ban on fossil fuel advertising. He also urged ad agencies to refuse fossil fuel clients and companies to stop taking their ads. So far, more than 1,000 advertising and public relations agencies worldwide have pledged to refuse working for fossil fuel companies, their trade associations, and their front groups.

Major League Baseball is behind the curve, but fans, environmentalists, and public officials in New York and Los Angeles are trying to bring their teams up to speed.

Two years ago, a coalition of groups joined New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams to urge Mets owner Steven Cohen to change the name of Citi Field. “Citi doesn’t represent the values of Mets fans or NYC,” Williams wrote in a tweet. “If they refuse to end their toxic relationship with fossil fuels, the Mets should end their partnership with Citi.”

Activists in New York and Los Angeles are hoping that more public officials—and more fans—will step up to the plate and pressure the teams to do the right thing.

Last summer, the groups that led the effort to persuade the Mets to drop Citigroup, including New York Communities for Change, Stop the Money Pipeline, and Climate Defenders, targeted Citigroup directly with their Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign calling on the company to stop financing fossil fuels altogether.

In Los Angeles, more than 80 public interest groups, scientists, and environmental advocates signed an open letter last August calling on the Dodgers to cut its ties with Phillips 66. “Using tactics such as associating a beloved, trusted brand like the Dodgers with enterprises like 76,” the letter states, “the fossil fuel industry has reinforced deceitful messages that ‘oil is our friend,’ and that ‘climate change isn’t so bad.’” Since then, more than 28,000 Dodger fans have signed the letter, and last week the Sierra Club’s Los Angeles chapter held a rally outside of Dodger Stadium on opening day demanding that owner Mark Walter end his team’s Phillips 66 sponsorship deal.

The campaign has received support from some local public officials. Lisa Kaas Boyle, a former deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County’s environmental crimes division, was quoted in a L.A. Sierra Club press release in January. “Booting Big Oil out of baseball is up to the fans, because team owners won’t take responsibility,” she said. “This isn’t abstract. Bad air quality from wildfires has forced MLB teams to move games, a hurricane ripped the roof off of [Tampa’s] Tropicana Field, and the Dodgers had to give out free water in 103°F heat last summer. It’s almost becoming too hot to watch at Chavez Ravine.”

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-33), a lifelong Dodger fan, also endorsed the campaign. “Continuing to associate these [fossil fuel] corporations with our beloved boys in blue is not in our community or the planet’s best interest,” she recently told the City News Service, a Southern California news agency. “Ending the sponsorship with Phillips 66 would send the message that it’s time to end our embrace of polluting fossil fuels and work together toward a cleaner, greener future.”

Such entreaties, thus far, have been ignored. Both the Mets and the Dodgers have balked at the idea of intentionally walking away from sponsorships worth millions. But activists in New York and Los Angeles are hoping that more public officials—and more fans—will step up to the plate and pressure the teams to do the right thing. As that baseball sage Yogi Berra astutely pointed out, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

This column was originally posted on Money Trail, a new Substack site co-founded by Elliott Negin.

They built a home, a family, a life. Now they must leave for a land they know nothing of

Pakistan has in recent days witnessed hundreds of Afghans dragging their belongings across the Torkham and Chaman borders as the govt began its second drive of deportations on March 31.

Muzhira Amin 

Published April 7, 2025

PRISM/DA

Under an unforgiving Karachi sun, Qari Zaeenuddin and his daughter patiently stand outside Ameen House — a hostel turned detention centre — in the Sultanabad locality. The duo is surrounded by nearly a dozen policemen and their vans guarding the building, where hundreds of Afghans from across the city have been brought of late.

The father, a petite man dressed in a shalwar kameez and white topi, clutches a file close to himself. The girl, whose face is hidden under a naqab, carries a bloated backpack, the weight of which bends her 18-year-old timid back. Both are sweating profusely, but wait silently for their turn. When the station house officer of the area makes an appearance, they rush to him. There is more waiting to do, they are told.

Zaeenuddin, an Afghan refugee, migrated to Pakistan in 1996 when he was just a boy. Initially based in the Hazara division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he later moved to Karachi, where he got married. Bibi Razia, who is accompanying him, too, was born and recently married in the port city. On the third day of Eid, however, her husband was arrested from a naan shop in Banaras, Orangi Town.

“He lost his POR (proof of residency) card, and so they took him,” he says. That day, Zaeenuddin made multiple visits to the area police station before he was told that Kamaluddin had been sent to Ameen House. “I have come here with all the documents,” he points to the file. Inside is Razia Bibi’s neatly stapled POR card, marriage certificate, birth certificate and vaccination cards.

“I have one request: either let him out or take my daughter in too so that they can both go to Afghanistan together … what will she do here alone?” the father cries. “I will wait all day if need be, but I won’t leave until I’m given a definitive answer.” And so Zaeenuddin continues to stand outside the hostel until one of the policemen gives him a seat.

Qari Zaeenuddin and his daughter wait outside Ameen House.


Pakistan has in recent days witnessed hundreds of Afghans dragging their belongings across the Torkham and Chaman borders as the government began its second drive of deportations on March 31, which targeted those holding Afghan Citizen Cards — an identity document jointly issued by the Pakistani and Afghan government in 2017.

The drive is part of a larger campaign that the government began in 2023 to repatriate all illegal foreigners. Under the first phase, all undocumented Afghans were deported, those who didn’t have identity proof.

In Karachi, over the last five days, at least 307 Afghan refugees, particularly those holding an Afghan Citizen Card or ACC, have been sent back to the country their families fled from years ago, according to a provisional police statement available with Dawn.com. Separately, 11,272 Afghans have been repatriated through the Torkham border crossing since April 1.

In 2017, Pakistan, in collaboration with the Afghan government, introduced the ACCs, which were to be issued to those who could not obtain the PoR cards for some reason. The estimated number of ACC holders is around 840,000.

Many of those who crossed the border left behind not only the property, homes and lives they built over the years, but also family members. On the other hand, the ones on this side of the border have found themselves in a constant state of panic and distress.
A tug of war

At an hour’s distance from Ameen House, fear is palpable on the streets of Afghan Basti — a four-decade-old settlement located on the outskirts of Karachi. The road leading up to the camp is almost deserted, the only exception being the honking of loaded trucks.

But deeper inside the safety of the narrow and uneven lanes, the first signs of life appear; young men gathered around a foosball table, children running barefoot, a newly constructed mosque, freshly baked kulchas and the aroma of seekh kebabs.

Kulchas spread out on a table at a naan shop in Karachi’s Afghan Basti.


“Here, we are safe,” says resident and tailor Ibadullah. “Most of us have not stepped outside for almost a week now for fear of being arrested.” A crackdown on the informal settlement a few days back has left him and his neighbours shaken. “Personnel of law enforcement agencies entered our homes and arrested people without even checking their IDs,” he recalls.

A similar incident also took place near the Al-Asif Square at Sohrab Goth on Thursday, a 23-minute drive from the settlement where most Afghan men come for work. Policemen conducted raids and arrests.

“They say we are living here illegally … we were born and raised here, how can we be illegal? These POR (proof of residency) cards were given to us by the government,” Ibadullah says, taking the card out of his pocket. “Why did they issue it to us if we are illegal?”

The POR cards were introduced in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and were issued to over 2.15 million Afghan refugees between 2006 and 2007. These cards were valid for two years, after which they would have to be renewed every two years. Under the programme, the refugees can avail benefits such as opening a bank account, getting jobs and acquiring education.

According to Advocate Moniza Kakar, the government’s deportation deadline for POR holders currently stands at June 30. Kakar is a lawyer and founder member of the Joint Action Committee for Refugees.

He claims that the arrests are money-making tactics. “If you give them (the police) money, they will spare you. If you don’t, they will pack you up and send you to the detention centre,” an angry Ibadullah alleges. “What other option do we have? It is a tug of war between hiding here and getting deported.”

For some, though, the battle is between life and death. Gul Alam, Ibadullah’s neighbour, stands subdued nearby. Lately, he finds it difficult to walk or stand for long. A kidney patient, he has to make weekly trips to the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital in the city centre for treatment, but it has been two weeks since he left his home.

Ibadullah and other residents of Afghan Basti gather on the streets.



“I have nine children, most of them daughters, what will they do if I am deported?” he frowns. Nearby, a young girl peeks from a stained and hastily sewn curtain draped on the main entrance of the house and brings out a tablet with water for her father. “She does not even know what or where Afghanistan is,” the 55-year-old says.

Most of the residents of the Afghan Basti hold POR cards, which means they aren’t being deported yet. But that does not ease their fear or anxiety. “When they come, they don’t ask for cards, they just use sticks and brute force.

“This has forced so many families to leave the basti and go into hiding,” Alam adds.
From bad to ‘worse’

The raids and crackdowns that Afghan refugees narrate follow a pattern similar to that of 2023, when the deportation campaign first commenced. But Saeed Husain, an anthropologist whose work focuses on Pashtun migration in Karachi, highlights that they have become aggressively worse.

“They are raiding houses and plazas past midnight, and picking up people just based on the suspicion of looking like an Afghan,” he tells Dawn.com. “And once arrested, these people aren’t taken to the magistrate as per due process; instead, they are directly taken to Ameen House and the border from there.”

The entrance of Ameen House in Sultanabad, where Afghans are kept before deportation.

Ameen House was officially designated as an Afghan detention centre in 2023. But Saeed calls it a “black hole” because neither lawyers nor activists are allowed inside. “We don’t know how many Afghans are there, what conditions they are in or how they are treated.

“We also don’t know if the people arrested hold ACC permits or POR cards,” he adds. The Afghans whose family members were taken to the hostel also expressed similar sentiments.

“My nephew is at the detention centre and sent us videos,” an aged resident of Afghan Basti, who wished not to be named, shares. “Around 50-70 people are clamped in a single room, it is extremely hot, and they are being given food only once a day. Hundreds of people are being forced to share a single washroom.”

Dawn.com also visited the tightly guarded Ameen House but was also not allowed inside. The hostel sits next to the Ranger headquarters near Haji Camp. There are hardly any signs that tell it is a detention centre, which Saeed says were there before but have been taken down lately. Only the flurry of activity, most of which takes place at night, signifies that something is happening inside.

According to Deputy Inspector General-South Asad Raza, the hostel is a “bare minimum shelter home that provides lodging and food”. Teams of the National Database and Registration Authority and the Federal Investigation Agency are present at the centre for verification.

“So if in case an Afghan with a POR card is brought, they will be handed back to the respective police station if the Nadra database confirms the same.”

Shops at the Afghan Basti, Sohrab Goth.



DIG Raza further adds that the police did not have any instructions from the government regarding showing high-handedness towards the refugees. Rather, they were given the “task of detaining and deporting those who weren’t leaving voluntarily”.

In case of an arrest, “if any illegal Afghan is arrested, he/she may be presented before the court after being charged under the illegal foreigner act and then sent from jail to the Chaman border for deportation”, he explains.

However, the DIG admits that there were some “handling issues” where Afghan refugees holding POR cards were also detained, leading to scuffles. “But by design, our duty is to repatriate them in a respectful and dignified way.”
To Chaman and beyond

Meanwhile, at the Ameen House, the refugees undergo verification and biometric scans that are conducted by teams of Nadra and FIA. These are used in preparing lists or a “manifest document”, Raza explains. It includes the refugees’ names, IDs, picture, age, gender and the border through which they are set to enter Afghanistan.

Once the document is prepared, the refugees are all filled in buses and taken to the Chaman border via Jacobabad. In the wee hours of Sunday, a convoy of six buses, each with a security in charge on board, departed from Ameen House and headed to the Malir Expressway onto the Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway.

An old man sits outside a shop at Afghan Basti.



Escorted by eight police mobiles, these buses make a stop at a similar detention centre in Jacobabad, from where they head to Chaman, which is at a distance of six hours.

At the border, the “manifest document” is shared with officials from the UNHCR and the Afghan government. For the refugees, those moments are their last in Pakistan, before they enter a country they or their parents were forced to escape.

According to Saeed, who is also a member of the Joint Action Committee for Refugees, once the border is crossed, it is very difficult to maintain contact with those back at home. “Because these people are now looked at with suspicion from authorities on both sides of the border.”

The Taliban government, he continues, has even said that they can’t take in all the refugees. “Where does that leave these people then? You have forced them out of one country and sent them to a place that doesn’t want them.”

Boys play foosball at the Afghan Basti.



UNHCR spokesperson Qaiser Khan also expresses similar concerns in a chat with Dawn.com. “It is imperative that the return of Afghan refugees is voluntary and dignified so that their reintegration in Afghanistan is sustainable,” he says, highlighting that the body is urging Pakistan to look at their situation through a humanitarian lens and calling for engagement between Islamabad and Kabul.

He adds that the agency is also in talks with the government regarding the arrests of Afghan refugees, and lawyers are working on the release of those seeking asylum and POR holders.
Fight till the end

Hundreds of miles from the Chaman border, the residents of Afghan Basti hide their fears, apprehensions, anger and disdain under a veneer of hope. One of them is Ziaul Haq, who runs a general store in the area, atop which the flag of Pakistan is hoisted. The walls of his shop are painted with ‘welcome’ in Urdu.

“My father came to Karachi during the 1980s and he named me after the military dictator at the time,” he gleams with pride. “I named my son Ejazul Haq to continue the tradition.”

He recalls how his father set up the business here at the Afghan Basti and passed away after living a long life. “I was born and raised here … my kids were born and raised here … my parents and grandparents are buried here … my country is Pakistan and none else,” Haq says.

A Pakistan flag hoisted atop a general store at Afghan Basti.



“Jaan jaan Pakistan, dil dil Pakistan,” he chants. “We hope and pray that the government will see our love for this country and give us an identity here.” Soon after, he reaches out to an activist standing nearby and asks: “Sab theek hojayega naa? (Will everything be fine?)”

Haq hasn’t been able to go to the market to restock his supplies since Eid. The reason? Fear, again. “What if they arrest me or demand a bribe?”

The same is the case with several other shopkeepers in the area, who are keeping a trip outside Afghan Basti the last on their list, despite depleting stocks.

But while the men fear, it is 65-year-old Ziabah, who is prepared for everything. She was just 25 when she came to Karachi with her husband and a breast-fed son. “I have spent 40 years of my life here, how can I leave now? And where will I go?” she says, seated cross-legged in her one-room house.

Across from her is a crib where her grandchild coos, an embroidered blanket draped over him. “I don’t remember the name of my village or the people I lived with there … who is waiting for me there?” Ziabah laughs. “Even my language is different now.”

Ziabah, a 65-year-old Afghan woman, sits in a room at her small house.

She is soon joined by her son, Muhammad Rasool, who drives for a livelihood. “I recently visited Afghanistan,” he tells Dawn.com. “Do you know they have a left-hand drive, how will I work there? Even if I lose my job here, I know I will find another. But I don’t know anyone there.”

He takes out his POR card. “This is my identity card, no matter what anyone says,” Rasool asserts. Ziabah, on the other hand, is adamant. “I won’t leave until they forcefully put me in a bus or something,” she says.

Outside her house, children continue to play, almost oblivious to the tense environment around them. One of them wears a green and white cap, adorned with a star.

Header image: Two young Afghan boys walk at the Afghan Basti near Karachi’s Sohrab Goth as a deportation drive is underway in the city. — All photos by 

Afghan return

Editorial 

Published April 7, 2025

DAWN

AS expected, the government of Pakistan is moving ahead with its plan to forcibly repatriate Afghan Citizenship Card holders still residing in the country. It may be recalled that it had earlier announced March 31 as the deadline for ‘voluntary repatriation’, after which stragglers would be deported. By making good on that warning, Islamabad has chosen to ignore repeated calls from humanitarian organisations — including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, whose representative in Pakistan spoke on Eid to advocate a more compassionate approach and to give refugees more time to return. This decision is the state’s prerogative, and clearly, there’s little anyone else can do about it. As the Foreign Office keenly reminded critics of Islamabad’s Afghan policy around two weeks earlier, Pakistan is not bound by the Refugee Convention, and everything it has done for Afghan refugees has been done ‘out of the goodness of its heart’. Therefore, views like UNHCR Representative Philippa Candler’s, who observed that “Over time, Afghan refugees have become woven into the fabric of Pakistan’s society,” find no currency in Islamabad, where policy hawks have chosen to see Afghans as outsiders and an existential threat.

Now that it has chosen this path, the least the government can do is ensure that all Afghans who are subject to deportation orders are treated humanely and respectfully on their journey back. There is a very strong possibility they will not be, and given their vulnerable status, there are bound to be predators, both state officials and civilians, looking to exploit their situation. The authorities must go out of their way to ensure that deportees’ lives, property and dignity are protected and that they are given ample opportunity to set their affairs in order. Many Afghans came to this country empty-handed. During the time they spent here, some of them have managed to scrape a little of their lives back together. The Pakistani state’s decision to return them to where they fled must not come across as their punishment for being Afghan. If they are being returned ‘home’, as the Pakistani authorities like to frame their decision to deport them, then they must be given reason to feel so. The state can be as firm as it needs to be in order to implement its policy, but it must strive not to do anything cruel. That would help no one.

Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2025

The Italian Gardener’s Stories

R.P. Migra

 April 4, 2025
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Bottomlands Barn, Quincy, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St Clair.

I am Jarvis. I am the Italian gardener. My parents were immigrants who come to this country in 1939, escaping the war everyone know was coming. Or should have. At least my parents figured it out. I am happy they did. Others were not so lucky. My grandmother feared Hitler would move on Italy. Others thought Mussolini would ally with the Nazis and blitz France from the southeast, sucking the country into a nightmarish conflict. Some welcomed it. Most thought it wouldn’t effect them even if it happened.

Those in position to profit from the arming, the rebuilding, the restocking and everything else that comes with war were certainly for it. Publicly for it. Vocally for it. Aggressively for it. They kind of let the cat out of the bag. Anyone paying attention was forewarned. Sadly, too few. At least that’s the story the sisters told me.

I never know my parents. My mother pregnant, they leave Italy as soon as they can get money and credentials. The credentials were easy as long as you had the money. Most of it was borrowed from well-wishing relatives and friends. The home they were leaving was Campo di Fiori, on the Fiume River. That’s a neighborhood in Rome. There was much wealth around them, but they were not wealthy. They knew their place and they were cunning. They recognized the significance of being frightened by strangers with guns. They come to the neighborhood asking questions everywhere, making lists. A year earlier grandfather ordered my parents to never talk about politics or religion with anyone, even their best friends. He could see the signs. At least that’s how the story goes.

Now, you may ask how the son of Italian immigrants got the name Jarvis. Ask the nuns. My parents died from intestinal parasites when I was an infant. I have been asked to never reveal the name of the city where they drank the public well-water that contained their microscopic killers. The city claimed it was my parents fault for not seeing a doctor. Less than ten died, after all. My parents couldn’t afford a doctor. The nuns told me I would follow Christ because I was born penniless and alone. I didn’t see how one followed the other, but I thank them for their advice. I try.

I will respect the wishes of those who think they could be harmed by the knowledge of the location of the poison spring. Believe me, Jarvis knows how to keep a secret. I know I am lucky to be alive and I am grateful every day. I was still drinking mother’s milk when she died. A janitor came to turn off the water and found me huddled under a blanket against my dead mother. The nuns switched me to formula. I never got sick from drinking latte materna. But that’s more than you need to know. I will not tell you how I come to Cleveland. Just know that I was seven when I arrived.

Once I asked a nun in my new group home on St. Clair Ave. about my name:

“What kind of name is Jarvis?” I said to my newest substitute parent.

“It’s your name,” she answered.

“Did my parents name me Jarvis?” was my next question.

“Of course. Who else would name you?”

I’m not sure I trusted her on that one. But that’s the past. I have chosen to not share any more. I am unsure of my past. I don’t know what was real and what was stories. So I no go there. Instead, I share my love for the garden. It keeps me in the moment. Like Jesus, I imagine.

Today, as I do every spring, I transplanted seedlings from their sprouting medium to peat pots. I gave new homes to more than a hundred baby plants. Just like the sisters gave me new homes. Only a few hundred more to go.

Most of the plants, the tomatoes, peppers, beans, zucchini, eggplant and herbs, are going into the community garden here in the village. The garlic, onions, shallots, asparagus and peas are already in the ground, as are beds of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and a few apple, cherry, peach and plum trees. The cherry trees aren’t looking as good as they should, but they will recover and do fine. It’s been a very dry spring. I water them with de-chlorinated water, but trees need rain. God will make it rain soon.

The community give me a nice garden plot: 800 square feet, 20-by-40, in the southwest corner of a one-and-a-half acre farm. It’s more than enough. Some of the residents, the active ones, enjoy working in the garden, growing their own clean food. I prepare the soil, sprout the plants, and let them take it from there. Many are too infirm to do anything as physical as gardening, so I grow their fruits and vegetables for them. I push their wheelchairs through the gardens on nice days so they can watch their plants grow. I like it when they give their extra fruits and vegetables to the church.

I no mention the marijuana plants. They’re for the landlord and his kids. I love them all. The plants, that is. One of the sons is kind of mean. Jesus wants me to love him anyway, but sometimes it’s not easy.

Today I watch red heirloom tomatoes struggle after I place them in their new lodging. The starter sponges were too wet and the weak leaves drooped at the shock of being mildly uprooted and placed in peat pots. An hour later I check. They bask under their full-spectrum lights, in nutritious, well-drained soil. They were happy. Thriving.

“Nice going,” I tell them. I talk to the plants all the time. Birds and squirrels, too. And the dogs that visit the residents. And my pet cat, Elvira.

I am 84 years old. I live in old equipment shed that has been remodeled into a lovely studio apartment. I get free rent and a little stipend in exchange for my work in the gardens. I live in the All Saints Retirement Village in Parma Heights. The residents come from a wide range of backgrounds. Catholicism, whether Italian, Polish or something else, is the common thread. There are non-Catholics, too, but not many. I was raised Catholic, but was never that interested in mass or all the rituals that went with it. I went because it pleased the sisters. The nuns who raised me like mothers after I was orphaned. They get all my gratitude. I wanted to make them happy because I was happy.

I have everything I want. Most of the residents have cell phones, but i never get. I couldn’t afford one and even if I could I probably wouldn’t be able to see the screen. I see enough though, and I can do some gardening by feel, by tocco, like planting baby plants. I have reading glasses if I need them. I watch TV in the lounge.

Sometimes I go to church twice a week, mostly because I enjoy talking to the parishioners and the sisters. It’s about a 10-minute walk from the village. I could get there in five walking alone, but I like to stay with all the transplant recipients, arthritis sufferers, wheelchair-bound, all the victims of age, disease and injury spending their final years together in the village. Sometimes as many as 20 or 25 residents walk and roll to 10 o’clock mass. Mostly I give them gardening advice. Everyone knows I am the Italian gardener.

I get many requests to grow things. Once Valentina say, “Hey Jarvis, can you grow me some avocados?” I love her. She almost 80 and still beautiful. Dark and sultry. I think she Puerto Rican. She lays out in a bikini and drinks rum on ice with lime and sugar when it’s hot. I got a little ubriaco with her more than once. I told her I could probably grow some indoors but I would need expensive lights. She’s very persuasive. She got the center’s board of directors to pay for lights and potted trees and electric space heaters and humidifiers and gave me an un-leased apartment to grow avocados for the tenants. And weed for the landlord and his sons.

My earliest happy memories were the experiences that made me fall in love with the garden. It was in the courtyard between the church, rectory and school in the city I can not name. Without giving away too much, I will say that Father Hugo pointed me towards my life with plants. 

Father Hugo hid a spectacular vegetable, fruit and perennial garden in the southwest corner of the church yard, a place not visible from the parking lot or sidewalk, or through the church’s stained glass windows. The courtyard behind the vegetable gardens was the most peaceful place in the world. Full sun flowed through a transition to dappled, then shade. Perennial flower-and-shrub beds blended into gardens of hosta, ivy, periwinkle, rhododendron, azalea and ferns mixed in and around large rocks, iconic statues and fountains. He showed me how to care for all of it. 

May is my busiest month. I love sprouting and seeding and planting. I love pruning and watering. Weeding, however, I curse. Sometimes it can’t be helped if I neglect an area for a few weeks. When I see them, they make me angry. Arrabbiato. Some weeds are okay if they have a nice flower and don’t get so aggressive that they start killing the other plants. I love Dandelions because they make nice bittersweet salads and stews, some for myself, mostly for the residents. The lawn service has agreed not to spray the weeds in my garden beds. Young dandelion greens are an especially choice meal. They’ probably my biggest crop, because I can pick them from May to November, and they grow everywhere you let them. It is a sin to poison them. I use a special knifelike tool to pop the tops off the roots. This is how Father Hugo taught me do do it. He gave me the wood-handled weeding tool I still use to this day.

Chameleon plant is my nemesis. It is virtually impossible to get rid of and can take over a garden in a short time. It is an ugly plant. Brutto. No matter what you do, underground rhizomes shoot out to start new plants. Their variegated leaves look rusty, like they would be right at home in a junkyard. But I will not use herbicides. I get my revenge, my vendetta, by having the patience to pull them out whenever and wherever they mount an attack. They stink when I pull them, tormenting me even as they die. But I have the last laugh. At least until they return.

I don’t use herbicides anywhere. You can’t wash off toxins that have penetrated the fruit, and they will hurt you. At least that’s what the environmentalists say. I’m not sure what to believe a lot of times. I graduated Catholic middle school. Sometimes I couldn’t recognize the dividing line between knowledge and stories. Most of my useful knowledge came from my years with the plants. They tell me things. Usually I can help them when they ask. Sometimes I can’t. I grieve all the dead plants, other than the vegetables that are meant to die after they have given of their fruit.

When I’m not gardening, I spend a lot of time in the lounge. I usually stop in during my lunch break and have some bread, pickled vegetables, fruit and free coffee. Sometimes some cheese. Today I needed to warm up. A gray, damp and chilly day, not uncommon for early May. God rarely gives us perfect days. Too hot or too cold, we complain. He’s saving most of the good stuff for the afterlife, I tell people. Sometimes he gives us a little taste. A little gusto. Just follow Him and your reward will be all good days. 

If there’s no one to talk with in the lounge, I like to read The Plain Dealers. Those are newspapers. There’s two or three copies delivered four days a week. Sometimes they are scattered from table to couch to floor. But every section is there somewhere if you look for it. I’ve found sections in the refrigerator.

The nuns told me it was important to keep up with current events so I would be a good citizen. I still try to please the sisters. I study the news of the world in discarded papers. I don’t know how reliable it is, but I like to believe it. Newspapers have proven accurato with things like fish fry dates and church events and sports. I like the baseball mostly. I watch football in the lounge too, but it is so violent. I’m glad they are being paid welI as they bash their skulls and break their limbs. I’m also glad that there is usually some baked delicacy left on the kitchen table by one of the residents or caregivers, next to the coffee makers.

In the lounge, people are talking a lot about the new president and what he has been doing. I try to stay out of those conversations. I don’t have much conviction either way. Poor people suffer whoever is running things. Rich people get richer. But something happened recently that made me pay attention. Here’s what happened:

I was mulching the shrub and perennial bed in front of the south building when Thomas stormed from the parking lot. You could feel his anger as soon as he got out of the pickup truck. He is 6-foot-5 and well over 300 pounds. That was a lot of anger. It wasn’t so much that he stormed as hobbled at a more painful speed on his cane, a fiery-red aura trailing him, as red as his MAGA cap.

“Are you OK, Thomas?” I asked, as he neared me on the sidewalk approaching the main entrance. 

“No fuckin’ way,” he whimpered. It was odd, hearing such a weak and frightened sound coming from such an imposing man. “They took Doris. They’re deporting her to El Salvador. They said she’s illegal and she doesn’t have a Green Card.”

“That can’t be,” I said. “She’s been here longer than I have.”

She had. Doris told me she had been at All Saints since the 1980s, more than 10 years before I arrived. Her parents sent her alone to this country, seeking asylum from the horrors of civil war in Guatemala. She headed straight to Cleveland, following her parents orders, looking for family. It was preferable to waiting for a judge to hear your case. She never found her family, but was taken in by the village after being referred by a Catholic social worker. She became a home health-aid and unlicensed physical therapist and never left. The residents loved her. She did everything for them. She sometimes worked 24-hour days, staying over with women who found themselves alone, or to care for the ill or dying. She entered on a three-month visitation visa, obtained by bribe, and never left.

One woman, Jill, ask to be discharged from a hospice center because she preferred dying with Doris. They wouldn’t let Doris visit because she wasn’t family. That was the story they gave her. Doris thought it seemed more like because she was brown and illegal and spoke English with an accent. Here’s some of the other things Doris did for the residents: mended clothes by hand with needle-and-thread, made trips to stores for specialty items, mostly cheap wine, helped with pill schedules and gave free massages. Those were just a few of the residents’ perks, courtesy of Santa Dei Doni, the gift giver.

Thomas had every reason to be upset. Doris helped with his cleaning, his cooking and led him through physical therapy to ease the suffering from his everywhere arthritis. She gave him full-body massages, other than his privates, which were covered by underwear and a towel. Doris flirted when Thomas made lewd remarks about the erezione he could not get. She also yelled at him when she found him stuffing himself with  pizza and guzzling beer brought by friends. 

“I’m going back to pills if they take her,” Thomas said. This time he was near tears. 

I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted to say this: “Donald Trump told you he was going to deport all the illegals. The clandestini. Why did you vote for him?”

But I didn’t. Everyone has their own stories. I don’t know where he got his. I got mine mostly from the paper and from people at church or in the lounge. And from the sisters. I trust the sisters. He might not have believed my stories anyway. To make him feel better I will tell him stories from the garden. I will bring him peas, which will be ripe soon.

R.P. Migra is a writer living in Ohio.