Deportation dilemmas

In a press talk on Wednesday, Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar laid out a charge-sheet of sorts regarding the Afghan refugees – also known as ‘illegal migrants’ in Pakistan’s official speak – being deported from the country. From the rise in terror attacks since the Afghan Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021 to the Afghan Taliban’s apparent reluctance to move against TTP havens in Afghanistan, everything seems to have been laid at the door of the Afghan refugees/immigrants/’illegals’. Kakar has said that there was hope in Pakistan after the Taliban takeover in Kabul that there would be long-term peace in Afghanistan and action would be taken against groups like the TTP – but that didn’t happen. The caretaker PM also laid out numbers and statistics regarding the rise in terror attacks by the TTP – a 60 per cent increase in terror incidents and 500 per cent in suicide attacks.

First of all, the caretaker PM is correct when he says that there has been a rise in terror incidents in Pakistan ever since the Afghan Taliban took power in Kabul. Ironically, this is something security analysts and activists had said back in 2021 when the then government in Pakistan had welcomed the Taliban takeover. PM Kakar too has hinted that there was some misguided notion that a Taliban regime would be somehow more empathetic to our terror problems. One is not sure why it has been such a shocking revelation that the Afghan Taliban are not really that interested in curbing the TTP’s terror. That said, it requires a suspension of disbelief to think that Afghans who are running for their lives when coming here would indulge in terrorism sanctioned by the very regime they are trying to run away from. If Pakistan has had any information of terror cells that include Afghans, by all means it should not just deport them but take action against them first. But we have only seen vague references to a bogeyman that is being used to turn away a people we have hosted – with grace and hospitality – for decades. The 1980s had seen scores of Afghans migrate to Pakistan, while more recently the American invasion as well as the 2021 Taliban takeover both precipitated an Afghan influx into Pakistan. The more recent refugees/migrants ask how they are supposed to go back to a country they were fleeing in the first place.

A more complex issue is that of Afghan-origin children who were born in Pakistan. Is Pakistan planning to emulate Trump-like conditions over refugees and migrants that seek sanctuary here? Activists have asked why there wasn’t a Dreamers Act-like initiative announced months before Pakistan decided to just get up and start evicting thousands of what it says are aliens living in the country. Surely, there must be a way to sift a terrorist from a refugee? If there isn’t, then are we saying that the European states that see all Muslim refugees as terrorists are right? The answers may not be as easy as any side would like to think but we do need to keep in mind the fact that lashing out at refugees or migrants will not make the Afghan Taliban behave responsibly. Had they wanted to do that, they would have months back. It is also instructive to see the Taliban’s track record in their country: they can hardly be asked to keep human rights and human life at the forefront when making decisions. Which is why the Afghan Taliban’s self-righteous rebuke to the Pakistan government comes across as rather hypocritical. All else aside, the harrowing optics of Afghan children crying as they are literally forced to leave Pakistan are haunting, self-defeating, and a cruel reminder that the plight of the refugee is not even understood by states whose citizens regularly face racism and xenophobia in Western nations.