Daily Times

If there’s one segment of our society we have really come down hard on, according to reports, it’s the Afghan refugees, those displaced people who have been in our midst for the past few decades. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has just reprimanded Pakistan for its treatment of the many Afghan refugees that, apparently, the country is forcing to return to their homeland, war-ravaged Afghanistan. It seems the authorities here are not even sparing registered refugees, and that is what has riled up HRW. We should not be repatriating these people even if they are unregistered according to HRW, as most of those returning seem to be doing so under duress. What is happening to the Afghan refugees is very clearly a case of them being scapegoated to suit the current national narrative of eliminating terrorism.

Pakistan needs to learn that it cannot have its cake and eat it too. There are upwards of 1.6 million Afghan refugees in the country, making Pakistan a host country with probably the largest number of refugees in the world. It is a good thing that we were gracious enough to open our doors to those who really needed our help. However, we had our own sinister motives. We trained and armed the Afghan warriors — the mujahideen — to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan during the Cold War. We played along and developed jihadi networks and infrastructure, bringing the Afghan jihadists into our fold, making them part and parcel of Pakistan. This was the beginning of our many woes, the beginning of the vicious cycle we find ourselves in. Now we simply cannot expect to right our wrongs by relocating people who have been here for decades, who are registered with us and consider this their home. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has recognised that many of those Afghans who have gone back home were not deported but were categorised as “spontaneous returns”. We all know what that means.

Yes, Pakistan is hurting, it is reeling from the attack on a school in Peshawar two months ago and it is demanding answers but this is not what we need to focus on. If we really want to deport some nasty characters, we should start with the Afghan Taliban who have been granted sanctuary for too long now in our tribal areas. We should tackle the Haqqani network and the Quetta Shura, deporting those who have made our neighbouring country into a killing field. *