Profiling gone wrong

Displacement is a fact of life in northern Pakistan now. In addition to repeated movements of people fleeing fighting in Fata, the area is home to many of the 1.6 million Afghan refugees in the country. With a heightened state of security, IDPs, particularly Afghans, have been going through a very tough time in the country. Needless to say, such heavy-handed techniques have proved inadequate to stem the tide of terrorism.
The sad part is that security personnel are equating the ethnic Pakhtun community that has been displaced from Fata with Afghan refugees. For example, recently the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police banned the entry of IDPs from Waziristan into some areas of Peshawar during Muharram. These people encounter similar problems in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. No crime should go unpunished but holding a whole community responsible for the crimes of a few is a flawed strategy. There is an urgent need to improve profiling through local community monitoring update, data collection mechanisms and conduct house-to-house surveys.
Rafiuddin Mehsud
South Waziristan Agency