Not that the world can expect Pakistan, of all countries, to be humanitarian in its treatment of humans. But for a people who had no remorse about snatching India’s land in order to form an Islamic state, it does make one wonder why Pakistan is kicking out its own brethren now.
A mass exodus of Afghan refugees from Pakistan was reported on 1st November after Pakistan gave the refugees a deadline on 26th October ordering them to leave the country or face detention. Pakistan has been cracking down on an estimated 1.7 million Afghans residing in the country without legal status owing to the dire situation in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, and had ordered them to leave the country by 1 November.
Schools teaching Afghan children in Pakistan are being closed down leaving no scope for Afghan girls to pursue education. These girls and their families had sought shelter in Pakistan for the very education they were denied from pursuing by the Taliban in Afghanistan and now Pakistan is mirroring the terrorists.
The terror-backing nation has reportedly set up deportation centres for Afghan migrants who, it claims, entered Pakistan illegally. Those who fail to leave are to be sent to the deportation centres. According to the Times of India, more than one lakh Afghans have left Pakistan since October.
Similarly, in June this year, Pakistan deported some 531 Afghan refugees including women and children. Reports from January this year brought to light the ordeal of Afghan migrants who were jailed in Pakistani prisons as their cases were stuck in courts on various pretexts.
Pakistan is facing flak worldwide for the forced expulsion of Afghan refugees. Videos on social media are going viral showing the Pakistani establishment bulldozing camps and houses of refugees, women and children sleeping under trucks that are transporting them to the border like cattle. Many of these refugees have lived in Pakistan for decades.
Another video shows Afghan refugees being robbed of thousands of rupees by Pakistani security officials at the border before they are allowed to cross into Afghanistan.
pak border patrol are charging pkr 50k per head to #AfghanRefugees, who are getting forced out of pak, to pass. This is worse than killing someone – stripping them off their livelihood, safety and their lifetime savings overnight!pic.twitter.com/NKniWT17oF
— Akshat Deora (@tigerAkD) November 1, 2023
It is ironic that anti-Israel Pakistan – an economy in tatters with exploding gas and fuel prices – is supporting Hamas in the name of supporting Palestinians but is deporting Afghan refugees who stand to lose everything, including their life, under the Taliban. Palestinians are Muslims, Afghan refugees are Muslims, and Pakistan is a Muslim state and yet its treatment of the two nationalities is hypocritical, to say the least.
The terror-sponsoring state can validate its existence only at the behest of its religious identity, which it needs to keep its masters in the Muslim Brotherhood assured of. This explains Pakistan’s infamous role in birthing and nurturing terrorists and abetting terrorism. The existence and growth of the terror-backing group Jamaat-e-Islami, considered to be Pakistan’s own Muslim Brotherhood, is a fine example.
Moreover, Pakistan has used Afghan refugees blaming them for terrorist attacks in the country. While the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has perpetrated several attacks on Pakistani soil, the credit for the existence of the Taliban primarily goes to Pakistan itself. Pakistan was one of the three countries to recognise the Taliban government when it took over Afghanistan in 1996. It is sending Afghan civilians back to the land ruled by the radical terrorist group which Pakistan created.
The TTP is considered to be an anti-Pakistan terrorist group which is dedicated to restoring a complete Sharia law in Pakistan based on the tenets of fundamental Islam. In other words, terror-nurturing Pakistan is not terrorist enough in the TTP’s view. And yet, while Pakistan pretends to play victim at the hands of the Afghan Taliban backed-TTP, the ISI for one does not have a single anti-terror operation to its credit. So much for a self-declared “victim” who is able to send herds of terrorists into Kashmir, does not combat TTP, and instead is blaming Afghan refugees for the madhouse that Pakistan is.
And yet, an eerie silence prevails in Islamabad over the alleged genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China, which is currently feeding Pakistan quite literally. Bathing in the pleasures and luxuries bestowed upon them by China, Pakistan is oblivious to its own realities. It has no history before 1947. It was formed purely as an Islamic state. But by failing its own people, its Muslim neighbours across the border in Afghanistan, supplying terrorists into Indian territory, and openly calling upon the global “ummah” to back Hamas, Pakistan is exclusively a terrorist nation.