Goodwill gone

The caretaker government is not budging from its position of sending back illegal immigrants by the end of this month despite human rights organizations – domestic and international – asking the government to formulate a process that gives enough warning to those whose entire lives have been spent in Pakistan and whose fault it is not that the government did not provide them with proper paperwork. Migrants without proper paperwork were given less than a month to pack up their lives and leave and are now being told they can only take Rs50,000 in their local currency while the rest of their money has to go through proper banking channels. While governments – any governments – are hardly known for their love for refugees and migrants, what’s worse is how some parts of our civil society have used ethnic politics to justify this recent forced exodus that has been mainly perpetuated against Afghans. In fact, despite the government’s reiteration that this policy will target all illegal immigrants, the repatriation process has mainly been the Afghans leaving for a land that a lot of them have not set foot in for decades or never seen.

Given the economic crisis in the country, a crackdown on smuggling on the Afghan border is understandable. But there is a way to go about it – and this is not it. There is no denying that criminals or terror suspects of whichever descent have to be dealt with an iron hand. However, making this into an excuse that all Afghans living in Pakistan are somehow illegal or involved in criminal activities smacks of problematic politics. Refugees and migrants all over the world are scapegoated by governments – homeless, shelterless people who have not only been displaced from their homelands but also stand persecuted in their adopted lands. No one leaves home unless they have to. No one becomes a refugee unless their own country becomes a place of danger for them.

At the moment, the regime in Afghanistan cannot provide for its own citizens and now that more than one million are facing evacuation from Pakistan, it is unimaginable how they will be provided for. Some of them have actually run away from the Taliban regime but are now being forced to return to a place that is without basic amenities and an unruly regime running the country. It would have been better had the government of Pakistan thought this through and had come up with a strategy and plan to repatriate those who really had to be sent back but not targeted an entire community due to the policies of the regime that is ruling their country. There is no guarantee that terrorism will end once they are sent back to Afghanistan. There is no guarantee that those who are involved in cross-border terrorism will stop their nefarious activities. The only guarantee is that we will be alienating a people we have graciously hosted for decades. That is a lot of goodwill that has been done away with just within a month.