Outside Democracy
Sitting here in Houston, Texas watching all the local networks get riled up over the impending Arizona immigration law with the latest calls for an ‘economic boycott’ by San Francisco’s City Attorney, I am reminded yet again, of how far Pakistan is from democracy.
Last year in Lahore after the coordinated Manawan, FIA and Elite Police HQ attacks the police started hounding young Afghan refugees demanding their paperwork, the same deal followed in Karachi and Peshawar soon after.
I don’t recall anyone raising a voice for the thousands of young Afghans sans documents who were rounded up, stuffed into cramped cells and eventually released after being harassed and interrogated.
I don’t even recall debating crass racial profiling, when I was working in what is considered one of Pakistan’s more liberal newsrooms DawnNews, in Karachi while thousands of Afghan-looking people were being singled out by police in crackdowns.
It simply wasn’t an issue for us. Why?
Thousands were arrested because they were not carrying their paperwork. For many of them, this was the greatest injustice.
The crime of an average 18-year-old in the group was probably only that he had escaped a life of handouts and poverty in an Afghan refugee camp on the outskirts of Peshawar, to make an honest living in a bustling Pakistani city.
The arrested teenager had probably never set foot in Afghanistan; he was most likely born on Pakistani soil in a refugee camp. Pakistan is probably more home to him than Afghanistan has ever been.
Yet, the Pakistani police stop him because he looked ‘Afghan’. For the Pakistani government he will always be an illegal Afghan.
A report prepared for the US Congress in 2007, entitled “Afghan Refugees: Current Status and Future Prospects”, says
“ a very substantial number of the Afghans remaining in Pakistan were in fact born in Pakistan — not Afghanistan. Encouraging Afghans who have been living for two and a half decades outside their country — some of whom, in fact, may never have even set foot in Afghanistan — to repatriate may be a distinct challenge in the coming months and years.”
So apparently the issue was being debated, it was just happening somewhere outside Islamabad.
According to UNHCR, Pakistan continues to host some 1.7 million registered refugees, one of the largest populations of its kind in the world. Most of them are Afghan.
Under the Registration Information Project for Afghan Citizens (RIPAC), the UNHCR plans to issue birth certificates to an expected 1 million registered Afghans under the age of 18.
That means of the remaining 1.7 million registered refugees, at least a million were born in Pakistan. What about the unregistered ones, how many are they? And how many were born in Pakistan?
Up until the US invasion of Afghanistan, we had no clue of the actual number of Afghans in Pakistan.
In a survey conducted in March 2002, the UNHCR and government of Pakistan put the number of registered and unregistered Afghans at 3 million. Since then more than 3.5 million registered Afghans have been repatriated through the UNHCR. So clearly, the survey underestimated the actual number in Pakistan.
Soon after the survey, the government of Pakistan and UNHCR joined hands in one of the world’s largest repatriation scheme. Pakistan’s Afghan refugees were issued Proof of Registration (PORs), carrying an expiration date of December 31, 2009. The process was supposed to be complete by last year, but things didn’t go according to plan.
Technically even registered Afghans were illegal in Pakistan till March of this year, when the government of Pakistan finally decided to renew the status of the 1.7 million remaining Afghans for another three years.
Most of the remaining refugees have nothing to go back to in Afghanistan. Their families, their villages, their past lives are lost to years of war.
But I’m hoping that something changes for them in Pakistan.
I’m hoping that the media realizes that racially profiled crackdowns are undemocratic and wrong.
I’m hoping that some Pakistani politician decides to speak up for the more than a million Afghans born on Pakistani soil, and demand their birthright. In more than 40 countries around the world, immigrants have voting rights, why can’t Pakistan give rights to someone born on its very own soil?
I’m hoping for change inside Islamabad.
WATCH: Trump tells Larry King he is for the Arizona immigration law
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READ: Repatriation to Afghanistan: durable solution or responsibility shifting?
Tags: Afghan Refugees, Arizona Immigration, Democracy, Pakistan
Thanks for your points Ali.
I agree the repatriation scheme has been and is a mess. The situations that a lot of the repatriated Afghans are now in—sporadic abduction, thefts, and lootings–as you mentioned, is completely under-reported in the mainstream media.
The examples you mentioned chose to repatriate under the UN scheme, but I was more concerned with the one million Afghan refugees born on Pakistani soil who don’t even have the right to choose to stay in Pakistan. To me that is the greatest injustice. Identity doesn’t just come from your ethnic background, it also comes from your environment. These Afghans grew up in Pakistan. For more details, I added a report entitled “Repatriation to Afghanistan: durable solution or responsibility shifting?” to the post.
To make matters worse, although the repatriation scheme was initially voluntary, Pakistan soon put up a deadline. Many Afghans had to choose between living an illegal life in Pakistan or going back to war ravaged Afghanistan. They were essentially forced to repatriate.
Ok here’s more on the plight of those who went back to Afghanistan. Well I just met two different people who went to the southern part of Afghanistan and so the findings may or may not be taken as a general state of affairs.
Now, these guys, lured by the money and land giveaways, were the first to go back and avail the ‘opportunities’ in their native land. They had established themselves in Pakistan and were living a decent life. They disposed their assets and took their other belongings with them.
Spending eight months in Afghanistan they migrated back to Pakistan and now looked a decade older. They appearance depicted the hardships they had suffered while striving in their native land. Though they were given the ‘Promised Land’ and cash but the law and order situation was such that they could not leave their homes for work. They had made arrangements and accordingly some of the armed men folk remained at home while others went to plough the land. Sporadic abduction, thefts, and lootings were part of life. After spending eight tough months there they were back in Pakistan, ashamed, confused, but still eager to rebuild their lives here.
I would suggest that the UN should design and implement its repatriation scheme in a little more realistic manner and should stop experimenting with people’s lives. Everyone wants to go back to his native land it gives them a sense of belonging and identity.
great informative article, hope all is well. in Houston Texas???!!??