The Peshawar bomb blast and Afghan refugees
The deadliest attack on police personnel in the history of Pakistan on January 30, in which more than 100 people, mostly police officials, were martyred and the involvement of refugees and use of Afghan soil in the attack once again indicate the threat Pakistan is facing from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and more importantly, millions of refugees living in Pakistan, particularly Peshawar.
The suicide attack, which was conducted in the high security police line area’s mosque, speaks volumes about the ruthlessness and distorted religious beliefs of the perpetrators. Although Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General Police (IGP) Moazzam Jah Ansari admitted that the suicide bomber was able to enter the police lines in the garb of a policeman and thus it was a security lapse, he personally took responsibility for the lapse. But the most sordid and important aspect of the bomb attack is that in the initial investigation yet again Afghan refugees and Afghan soil were involved. Peshawar has been under terrorist attacks since the 1970s, firstly from native Pashtun separatist elements housed and nurtured by the Sardar Daud Khan regime in Kabul and later in the 1980s from Afghan communist regimes and since early century by communist-era anti-Pakistan Afghan officials manning important positions in the Afghan security network, National Directorate of Intelligence (NDS).
A question arises: why has Peshawar been the key target? There are many reasons for it. The foremost is that it is the most accessible and largest Pakistani city located near the Afghan capital, Kabul. Secondly, Peshawar is the heartland of Pakistani Pashtuns. Therefore, striking Peshawar has always been aimed at by anti-Pakistan Afghan officials to drive a wedge between the residents of the KP capital in particular and Pashtuns in general and the Pakistani state. Thirdly, Peshawar is a city where millions of Afghan refugees have been living since the 1980s and it has been quite easy to get facilitators for anti-Pakistan Afghan officials to carry out terrorist attacks inside the country. Thus, Afghan refugees have been a grave threat to the security of Peshawar and Pakistan and, therefore, it is now already too late to stress that these millions of Afghan refugees need to be sent back to Afghanistan without delay. According to sources, after the attack decision-makers at the highest level have taken a decision to deal with the issue of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. It is ironic that Afghan refugees have every freedom to move around freely in Pakistan, particularly Peshawar. There has been no check whatsoever on their movement and business in Peshawar and the rest of KP. There is undeniable proof that many Afghan refugees have been involved in anti-Pakistan activities ranging from terrorist activities to conducting anti-Pakistan propaganda to shifting billions of dollars from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Despite that there has never been a decisive action against Afghan refugees. In recent months Pakistan has faced rapid depletion of its foreign exchange reserves and one key factor responsible for it has been the smuggling of a large number of greenbacks from Pakistan, particularly Peshawar to Afghanistan. Obviously, Pakistani officials are also involved in the smuggling but the state has to take decisive action.
This is despite the fact that after decades there is growing realization in the power corridors, especially the parliament, about problems and threats associated with the continued presence of millions of Afghan refugees on Pakistani soil but there has been little practical action on part of authorities to address the issue.
On September 21, 2022, the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly directed the government to deport unregistered Afghan refugees while shifting registered people to refugee camps. The committee, which had met under the chairmanship of Noor Alam Khan, also directed the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions to take up the issue of Afghan refugees with the United Nations.
Noor Alam remarked that Afghan refugees had been living in Pakistan for years and doing business but they didn’t pay taxes. Further, he took exception to reports that Afghans were found defaming Pakistan across the world. Moreover, the committee directed officials concerned to trace 1.4 million Afghan refugees within a month and then report it back to the committee. Unfortunately, the directions were never heeded and the result is incidents like the Peshawar attack.
Still all the three directions from the parliamentary committee are indeed very sound and must be complied with immediately. Unregistered Afghan refugees are in millions and many of them have even obtained Pakistan national documents, like Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs) and passports while others have purchased properties in Pakistan. However, the issue is whether law enforcement agencies of Pakistan have the capacity and will to trace all registered and unregistered Afghan refugees and deal with them according to the law. The answer is that neither Pakistani LEAs have the will nor the capacity to locate all Afghan refugees and deal with them lawfully. There may be the capacity of Pakistani LEAs to a certain extent to deal with the problem in the country but there has always been a lack of a political and administrative will to take it by the horn. The reason is that Pakistan had been seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan for decades and for that matter was appeasing Afghans. However, the policy backfired and instead of getting strategic depth in Afghanistan, the latter became a strategic quagmire for Pakistan. Consequently, Pakistan officially renounced the policy of strategic depth in the last PML-N government from 2013-2018, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz said that it was no longer a policy.
Afterwards, the Pakistani security forces with huge losses and financial costs set up barbed wires on most of the 2,640km border with Afghanistan. Obviously, Pakistan took the action to protect itself from the outpouring of interminable conflict and crisis in Afghanistan. However, with a large number of Afghans living in Pakistan, whose number runs into millions, would the fence be of any great consequence? The answer is “no.” Therefore, Pakistani LEAs have to realize the grave security threat of millions of foreigners as many of them have been involved in anti-Pakistan activities.
In 2021, two very important developments took place about the Afghan refugees, which had great bearing for national security. If pursued and implemented in letter and spirit, they would have gone a long way in ensuring security in the country. The two related developments included the moving of court by a notable of the Mohmand tribal district for the cancellation of thousands of Pakistani CNICs and domicile certificates, obtained fraudulently by citizens of Afghanistan residing in the district. The second development was the announcement by the then Federal Interior Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, of blocking around 200,000 CNICs obtained through fraud by Afghanistan nationals living in Pakistan.
The two incidents were closely related as the government moved to block the CNICs of 200,000 Afghan citizens, days after the filing of the petition. A large number of Afghan nationals living in Pakistan are involved in crime and a range of illegal activities. The crimes and activities include gun-running, drug-smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, the provision of mercenary services for local animosities between and among tribes and families, prostitution and others. However, the most dangerous activity in which a large number of Afghans are involved over decades is terrorism.
Thus, Afghan refugees living in Pakistan have become a grave strategic security threat to Pakistan. Although there has been some realization in Pakistani decision-makers or to say pockets of strategists but nothing concrete could be done to repatriate them to their country.