Building walls and expelling refugees

Side-effect

The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.

The more progress humanity makes in terms of realising fundamental rights and liberties, and towards creating a more just and harmonious global society, the more forceful reaction is observed from a belligerent right-wing active across different countries and cultures.

As diverse and dissimilar from each other as Donald Trump in the US and Sarfaraz Bugti in Pakistan, there is a wide range of world politicians and political opinion makers who would openly make obnoxious remarks against communities of people, nations and faiths. They not only get away with that but become even more popular among their constituencies.

So we have Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, and Pope Francis, the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholics, on the one hand and Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate in the US, and Norbert Hofer, the Austrian right-winger who had almost become the president after winning the first round of elections earlier this year, on the other. Merkel will go down into the annals of history as a compassionate politician who helped the people of Syria and Levant get refuge in Europe when their lives and freedoms were threatened by a war imposed upon them. Pope Francis is truly a people’s pope who empathises with the poor and dispossessed of all faiths and regions.

Then, in the same West, there are people who want to build walls along their territorial boundaries, fence the lines virtually drawn on sand or even come up with the idea of laying down land mines and IEDs along their international borders.

Of course not all but a large number of those belonging to the Pakistani affluent, educated middle class – whether living within the country or part of the diaspora – are shockingly confused, ignorant and prejudiced when it comes to such matters. When it is about Syrian or other refugees leaving their homelands for Europe, Pakistanis will want their Muslim brethren, as it were, to be accepted by Western countries with an open heart like they themselves were, though most Pakistanis were economic migrants and not refugees who had to run for their lives. These people will seldom ask themselves why their cherished lands in the Middle East did almost nothing for these refugees.

This kind of Pakistanis do not like Donald Trump either – particularly those living in the US as our diaspora, but generally all Pakistanis anywhere. They think his ideas of building a wall with gates along the Mexican border or placing a temporary ban on immigration of Muslims to the US are not only ridiculous but downright racist. Here, they are absolutely right. From Donald Trump’s brand of American conservative thinking to the UK Independence Party to the Austrian Freedom Party to the National Front in France, there is narrow nationalism at work everywhere.

If this stream of thought gains enough political popularity and financial strength, nationalism mutates into pure racism in no time. There is always a constituency of hate among the human populace. If that constituency is encouraged to grow either out of political expediency or due to some bigoted ideology, there are riots, loot, plunder, murder, rape and destruction. Over millennia, the world has seen such wide scale brutality and cruelty so many times which humanity has imposed upon itself through genocides and wars.

But then why are those Pakistanis who stand for inclusion, liberalism, humanism and compassion when it comes to Western societies where they either live or where some of them want to migrate to, become exclusionary, conservative, biased and insensitive when it comes to their own country and society. I don’t understand this contradiction among these people ever. One can try and perhaps succeed to an extent when it comes to understanding how states, their military and security institutions and external affairs policies work. The states and their established institutions would universally take a conservative line unless the state is led by a stateswoman/man, people like Angela Merkel or Nelson Mandela.

But when it comes to educated people, civil society, progressive academia and liberal elements within the media, one would expect a different response. However, in Pakistan, such people in the middle classes are a minority who would want the same principles applied to their own country and society which they would want applied in other countries and societies for treating them or people like them.

These Pakistanis don’t want Donald Trump to build a wall with gates but they want to fence or mine our border with Afghanistan and install gates. There is no doubt that border management is the responsibility of the state, and that we must ensure the safety and security of our citizens. But it is the terrorists who should be stopped, not a poor old man who has to bring his wife for treatment in Peshawar.

And like I tell the Indian diplomats that hardening the visa regime can only affect poet Kishwar Naheed’s travel to India since Ajmal Kasab never applied to their high commission in Islamabad for a visa, it is important to remind Pakistani policymakers that terrorists entering into Pakistan from Afghanistan will not cross through the installed gates with legal papers and accompanied by their families. It is common people who suffer due to such actions – people like patients, labourers, goods transporters and small traders.

Mining the border or fencing it with electrified barbed wire is not only an expensive proposition but simply an administrative solution to a deep-seated political problem. What Pakistan and Afghanistan need to realise is that their geographic locations will never change. A permanent political solution and complete harmony in managing mutual affairs must be sought on an urgent basis.

If someone thinks that an unstable Afghanistan will ever serve our purpose, they are grossly mistaken. Likewise, Indians will have to live with Pakistan and work with us on getting longstanding issues sorted out. Otherwise, international powers will continue to dictate their terms in our region. Neither would an unstable Pakistan favour India nor an unstable Afghanistan favour Pakistan.

When it comes to Afghan refugees, some Pakistani politicians and journalists have suddenly started clamouring for their return on an urgent basis. Their biggest support comes from the same section of affluent, educated Pakistani middle class that I have mentioned. This is the same class that wants millions of Pakistanis and other immigrants to continue to live and prosper in North America, Europe and Australia, including millions of those who had illegally migrated, but this same class wants Afghans to leave Pakistan immediately. There is a major problem here, both in terms of insensitivity and lack of knowledge of recent history.

Afghan refugees cannot return to an unstable country that is continuously at war, and where we are still involved. As families and communities, they did not migrate to Pakistan over the last 37 years of their own free will. But the Pakistani leadership in 1978-79 under the martial rule of Gen Ziaul Haq and then in 2001 under the martial rule of Gen Pervez Musharraf decided to join the American coalition on its own – first to fight the Soviet Red Army and the Soviet-backed Afghan government and then to fight the Afghan Taliban. The Americans and Afghans, though, think that Pakistan never severed its support to different Taliban splinter groups.

Also, we continuously hear that Afghan refugees have created a demographic imbalance and are involved in criminal activities. Okay. Use your highly sophisticated Nadra and Nara databases and don’t let them vote; those who have CNICs are citizens anyway. And apprehend the criminals among them and do what you do to your own criminals. As far as terrorist attacks are concerned, there is no evidence shared yet that refugees are involved. If they are, they must be charged and tried.

All families cannot be forcibly sent back. The same human standards must be applied here that we ask for ourselves.

Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com