Soldiering on
We have all but forgotten the war continuing in our northern areas amidst all the political turmoil we have recently been facing. But this war of course is a crucial one, vital to the future of our country and all that it stands for. We should be watching developments within it at closer range. A recent ISPR statement gives us some idea of what is going on. The news is good. The statement says that more than 900 militants have been killed in action since operation Zarb-e-Azb began in June, most of them in North Waziristan. This agency is of course the centre of turmoil in the current war. In exchange for the large number of militants, 82 soldiers lost their lives. They deserve to be hailed as heroes for what they have done for us and for the generations yet to come. Although the militants are not ready to admit this, and groups within them have been speaking of only scores rather than hundreds of deaths, the reality appears to be they are suffering very big blows as the fighting continues.
At the same time, crucial development work is also being undertaken by the military, according to the ISPR release, with major roads put in place and towns connected to one another. The key need now is for the government to build on these successes. The military alone cannot be responsible for all that happens or for keeping militancy at bay in the future. Alongside the military operation, other measures have to be taken to win people away from militant hands and persuade them of the need to stand with State forces. This can best be done by undertaking development works in all areas afflicted by conflict and putting in place schemes to rehabilitate those who have been brainwashed over many years by the Taliban. We have seen such efforts at rehabilitation in Swat and other places. They must be backed by other initiatives to provide employment and opportunity to people in these most deprived parts of our country so that there can be no resurgence of militancy after the current operation is finally over.
Double the misery
A Sri Lankan court on september 1 ruled that the Sri Lankan authorities were right to seek the expulsion of a group of Pakistani asylum seekers, saying that they were a threat to the public health and security of the island state. The state in making its case to the court appealed against an earlier ruling that suspended the deportation, saying that there was evidence that the asylum seekers were bringing malaria into the country — patently nonsensical as malaria is not transmissible human-to-human only by the bite of an infected mosquito — and that they were ‘committing crimes’. Pakistani asylum seekers who end up in Sri Lanka have not had an easy time of it, and many of them are members of the Ahmadi community, which has been persecuted in Pakistan for decades and is discriminated against constitutionally. The Ahmadis are by nature peaceful and whilst it is not impossible that they are involved in crime in Sri Lanka, it seems unlikely to be anything on the scale of organised crime.
The asylum seekers are now open to deportation, back to the country which many of those of them who are Ahmadi had good cause to flee. The very fact that they have attracted attention to themselves by going to Sri Lanka is a virtual guarantee that they will be on the receiving end of some unwelcome attention when they arrive back in Pakistan — they will have been doubly cursed by virtue of their faith. The United Nations refugee agency reports that 88 Pakistani nationals have been deported since the first of August in what it claims is a breach of international law. There are another 75 awaiting deportation. The UN is adamant that those claiming asylum for reasons of religious persecution must have their cases particularly closely investigated. Unfortunately, for the asylum seekers Sri Lanka is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention — a fact most will be unaware of before they took flight. These people got no protection in Pakistan, and are being ejected from Sri Lanka on the thinnest of pretexts. Injustice knows no bounds.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 5th, 2014.