Daily Times

It is incredibly easy to sit outside the stadium and dabble in a running commentary on the affairs of a struggling country.

Not many in the international community bothered to acknowledge Pakistan’s dire constraints or the fact that it had been shouldering the baggage of Western pledges for the last four decades or how it was within its rights to react to a stream of sinister plots brewing across the western border in the previous year before painting its administration as a boogeman trying to push away the largest refugee population in the world.

So what if it had given ultimatum upon ultimatum to the interim government in Kabul to put its house in order so that it could take ownership of its problems? So what if on several occasions, it had requested the Afghans living inside its boundaries to register themselves with the national database?

It is an established finding by the UN refugee agency that Pakistan is still home to at least 1.3 million registered Afghans and another 800,000 with Afghan citizenship cards. Today, when the federal cabinet has announced an extension in the repatriation deadline for registered refugees, out of respect for the humanitarian pleas and in consideration of the fact that these people, as recognised individuals, have contributed to the societal structure for far too long, our critics would have a hard time coming up with a zillionth-and-one attack.

Most of such arguments hold the rulers in Islamabad for having caused all of their security and economic shortcomings while failing to realise that Pakistan, as a sovereign country, has the right to act and preserve its stability, that too, in light of international law. While the need to prioritise the respect and fundamental freedoms of those who know little of life outside cannot be stressed enough, it would be an entirely unfair practice to expect generosity alone to clean up the institutional mess left behind by the torchbearers of a progressive world.

PM Sharif may have hit the bull’s eye when he called for “collective responsibility” to support the refugees, but he might be in for a big surprise. Moral obligations are easier said than done. *