{"id":11521,"date":"2022-08-08T14:28:09","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T14:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/2022\/08\/pak-2\/"},"modified":"2024-11-20T22:12:17","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T19:12:17","slug":"major-security-challenges-and-opportunities-to-pakistan-farhan-siddiqi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/2022\/08\/major-security-challenges-and-opportunities-to-pakistan-farhan-siddiqi\/","title":{"rendered":"Major Security Challenges and Opportunities to Pakistan- Farhan Siddiqi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Pakistan is home to 1.4\nmillion registered refugees, mostly Afghans, making it the fourth highest\nrefugee-recipient country in the world after Turkey, Colombia and Uganda. This\ndoes not include unregistered\nrefugees<\/a> which have the impact of shoring Pakistan\u2019s refugees figures close\nto three million in total. Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee\nConvention or the 1967 Protocol but it has respected the protocols of\ninternational refugee protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pakistan\u2019s approach\ntowards refugees reveals a mix of humanitarian and security impulses. One of\nthe key problems relates to the refugees\u2019 statelessness condition which renders\nthem incapable of receiving socio-economic benefits from the host state. This\ncompounds the dilemma for refugees as worsening security conditions forces them\nto flee their home state to which they cannot return while domestic conditions\nin the host state, including the latter\u2019s socio-economic vulnerabilities, adds\nto the refugees\u2019 anxieties. Best practices emanating from the United Nations\nHigh Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) give substantive importance to the\nnaturalisation of refugees as citizens of the host state. Citizenship is seen\nas a route towards the social, political and economic integration of refugees\ninto the host society. In this regard, the ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan soon\nafter assuming power in 2018 announced<\/a>\nthat, \u201cAfghans whose\nchildren have been raised and born in Pakistan will be granted citizenship,\ninshallah (God willing) because this is the established practice in countries\naround the world.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Statistics reveal<\/a>\nthat \u2018more than half (52 percent) of the registered refugee population\nare children, including 197,428 (15 percent) being four years of age or under.\nOnly 4 percent of those registered are 60 years of age or older. Women,\nchildren and older represent 76 percent of the population.\u2019 These statistics\nare important because they indicate an increasingly younger generation of\nAfghan refugees who were born and raised in Pakistan. Most crucially, for this\nrefugee population group, the home country, Afghanistan represents an alien\nsociety, one which they have not lived in, nor visited, nor do they feel an\nemotional attachment to live and work there. In short, the host society now\nenamours their existence as individuals, however they remain handicapped as a\nconsequence of legal and administrative formalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nhumanitarian impulse entails attending to the basic needs of refugees including\nfood, clothes, shelter and other socio-economic needs for which a targeted\naction is warranted. This targeted action was undertaken between April and\nDecember 2021, officially known as the Documentation Renewal and Information\nVerification Exercise (DRIVE), a joint effort conducted by the Ministry of\nStates and Frontier Regions (SAFRON), the Chief Commissionerate Commissioner\nfor Afghan Refugees (CCAR), and UNHCR with the technical assistance of the\nNational Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).The purpose of the\nexercise was to update and verify the data of Afghans holding a Proof of\nRegistration (PoR) card. This was the first large-scale effort to verify the\nstatus of refugees in the last 10 years. The documentation was a much needed\neffort to elicit true numbers and also posit Pakistan\u2019s commitment to attending\nto the rehabilitation of refugees. Under the new registration drive, Afghan\nrefugees were provided smart identity cards, which legitimised their status,\nenabling them faster and safer access to health and education facilities as\nwell as financial services. In 2019, the UNHCR in collaboration with a local\nNGO initiated the Artisans\u2019 Skills Development Projects for Refugees in\nKarachi. The initiative included supporting and training the Afghan refugee\nwomen for small and micro enterprises across the country in the fields of\nembroidery, tailoring and jewellery. The purpose of the initiative was to make\nAfghan refugee women financially self-reliant. Civil society organisations\nremain key actors in attending to the plights and woes of Afghan refugees. A\nkey element of such activities is they breed much needed social cohesion and\nwell-being of the refugee population. Not only refugees but such measures also sensitise\nthe local people to the basic human needs of the refugee population that is\nliving at the fringes of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afghan refugees and security concerns<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Security reasons are also imperative in\nPakistan\u2019s attitude towards refugees specially with fears of negative spillover\nincluding crime, terrorism and infiltration of rogue actors. The securitisation of\nAfghan refugees as criminal, terrorist and deviant actors, a claim also\nrepeated sparingly by the political elite, bolstered the government\u2019s drive to\nconstruct a fence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. In 2014, the Khyber\nPakhtunkhwa police incriminated the Afghan refugees for a high incidence of crime\nnot only in Peshawar but in all the 25 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The\npolice argued that the solution entails a restriction in the movement of Afghan\nrefugees in order to apply a brake on murders, thefts and kidnappings for\nransom. The predicament of Afghan refugees and their securitisation became\nincreasingly worrisome after Pakistan faced one of its most dreaded terrorist\nattack at the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014. The attack which\nkilled over 130 students resulted in a crackdown on Afghan refugees across the\ncountry. The crackdown compelled many Afghan refugees to return to their home\ncountry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently,\nthe UN Secretary General applauded the efforts of Pakistan in attending to the\nplight of Afghan refugees in the last 40 years. Pakistan\u2019s\nhumanitarian-securitisation impulse on Afghan refugees is intimately connected\nwith the perennial instability that continues to plague Afghanistan. After the\nwithdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, hundreds and thousands of\nAfghan refugees made their way to Pakistan, from where Pakistan facilitated\ntheir onward travel to Western countries. Pakistan has taken the plea that the\ninternational community needs to undertake effective and constructive social\nand economic rehabilitation through multilateral aid in Afghanistan in the\npost-US withdrawal scenario, as Afghanistan remains a ravaged and war-torn society.\nThe nation- and state-building policies that the United States undertook in\nAfghanistan since 2001 remained ineffective due to local Afghan political\nelites who maintained a neopatrimonial political order leading to further\npolarisation of Afghan society. Thus, for Pakistan, an amicable solution to the\ncontinual influx of Afghan refugees requires political and socio-economic\nstability in Afghanistan. A key question in this regard is whether the Taliban\ngovernment and the international community can move their relationship forward\nthrough dialogue with the former attending to the fears of the latter, which\nrelate primarily to preventive mechanisms with respect to the outflow of\nterrorism from Afghanistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While\n90% of the border fencing with Afghanistan stands completed, the Pakistani\nstate, political parties and civil society would do well by striking a balance\nbetween the humanitarian and securitisation impulses realising that refugees\nare a vulnerable people at the bottom end of the socio-economic scale, desiring\nto live in peace and made homeless by extraneous wars not of their own making. The\nhumanitarian impulse allows Pakistan to work with international organisations such\nas the UNHCR and other local NGOs in order to attend to the basic needs of refugees.\nIn doing so, it also aids in the building of a soft image of Pakistan; one which\nis concerned not only about refugees in its own country but is also desirous of\npeace and security in neighbouring Afghanistan. Pakistan understands that the\nroot cause of increased refugees in its national space is intimately linked\nwith instability in Afghanistan. Peace and stability in Afghanistan also\nattends to Pakistan\u2019s geopolitical anxieties which emanate from a long, porous\nand perilous border, a historical legacy of British colonialism. Thus, domestic\nstability in Afghanistan also implies a stabilised geopolitics for Pakistan. Moreover,\nthe security element is not only interstate and transnational but also has\ndomestic implications. These relate to local-refugee interactions and how the\nrefugee issue becomes securitised as the Afghan \u2018other\u2019 is constructed through\na partisan discourse of \u2018crime\u2019, \u2018economic burden\u2019 and \u2018terrorism.\u2019 This othering\nof Afghan refugees has the dire impact of undoing humanitarian efforts. Going\ninto the future, Pakistan\u2019s key challenge exists in finding a durable solution\nto the status of refugees, a majority of whom were born in Pakistan and reclaim\nthe country as their own. If repatriated through forced measures or securitisation\ndiscourses, the Pakistani state stands to lose the moral high ground through\nwhich it rehabilitated hundreds of thousands of refugees into its fold, despite\nlimited resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Farhan Siddiqi<\/strong>, Quaid-I-Azam University<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farhan Hanif Siddiqi is Associate Professor and Director in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. In addition, he has also worked as Research Fellow at the Middle East Research Institute in Erbil, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. His research interests border on ethnicity, conflict resolution, theories of International Relations, foreign policy and strategic dynamics in South Asia. He is the author of, The Politics of Ethnicity in Pakistan: The Baloch, Sindhi and Mohajir Ethnic Movements<\/em> (Routledge, 2012). His forthcoming co-authored book is titled, Introducing International Relations: Concepts, Theories and Practices<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2022).<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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To cite this work :<\/strong> Farhan Siddiqi \u201cMajor Security Challenges and Opportunities to Pakistan\u201d, Panorama<\/em>, Online , 08 August 2022, https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/blog\/2022\/08\/08\/pak-2\/ <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Copyright@UIKPanorama. All on-line and print rights reserved. Opinions expressed in works published by the Panorama<\/em> belongs to the authors alone unless otherwise stated, and do not imply endorsement by the IRCT, Global Academy, or the Editors\/Editorial Board of Panorama. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pakistan is home to 1.4 million registered refugees, mostly Afghans, making it the fourth highest refugee-recipient country in the world after Turkey, Colombia and Uganda. This does not include unregistered refugees which have the impact of shoring Pakistan\u2019s refugees figures close to three million in total. Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170,"featured_media":9213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[506,486],"tags":[656,587,752,612],"class_list":["post-11521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mena","category-opinion","tag-english","tag-migration","tag-pakistan-en","tag-security-strategy-geopolitics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}