Morality is a fun game of Russian roulette for Pakistanis.
Whether it’s mainstream media or the dominant narrative, definitions of what is honor and patriotic and treason and humanity and servitude can change within a few years of the news beat.
Back in the day, Pakistani women could wear a sleeveless sari and not have a care in the world about being called sluts and whores. Nowadays, we have universities that insist that women wear dupattas at all times. As political scions go, once a happy aide to the military establishment and to the far-right Islamist, current Pakistani PM, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif posed beguilingly on posters with Zia ul Haq and wanted to be the next Amir ul Momineen. Spin a few years of military rule and exile to Saudi Arabia he came back reformed (?) - and wanted a democratic/liberal Pakistan. We are also a nation of strange contradictions. Malala Yousafzai, awarded by the world, lauded by the world is a traitor and witch and liberal scum to some of the educated lot here in our country. It’s really quite bizarre. The same people who hated Qandeel Baloch for doing what she did and made fun of her while she was alive - showed shock and horror when her brother killed her for bringing the family ‘dishonor’.
The current display of hypocrisy by our patriotic self-righteous brethren stems from the Afghan refugee crises. Many insist that the Afghan refugees are a burden on the economy. That thousands of them have been mooching off the Pakistani people and have brought crime and drugs and have usurped jobs from the locals. Many support Pakistan government’s steps to uproot all the refugees (some who have been born here in Pakistan) and send them back to a war-torn Afghanistan.
Some analysts argue that these deportations are purely political. That Pakistani officials want to use this as a pressure point to negotiate more aid and more talking space at the big boys’ table for peace in the region. Despite Kabul’s insistence that it cannot bear the influx of returning refugees, Islamabad threatens to send them back. Islamabad says it just receives $5.02 per refugee per year in international aid and that it is not enough. It wants the world to do more. More money to be precise. Or else, off they go back to the other side of the Durand Line.
The refugees have a different story. They have roots here, they say. They are given PORs (proof of registration) which does not turn into a citizenship immediately, as per rules. They are allowed to work and access public and private healthcare - however, most organizations require citizenship and thus occupational possibilities are limited for the Afghan refugees. The Minister of State and Frontier Regions claimed that there are no plans to change the policy where the refugees can find a way to be citizens. The living conditions continue to be horrifying. Children pick garbage and they cannot go to school because their families depend on their money for survival. Some of them lug donkey carts around the city. Some of them beg. Some of them have picked up drug habits.
Yet a lot of us find it in our stride to blame them for the ills the policy makers have caused. In a thread written by Quetta based lawyer, Barkhurdar Khan, the flaws of the then-brothers, now-enemy “Muhajireen” policy are vividly illustrated. We were taught to fall in love with the brothers in arms, we were told we would help them fight, help them win the war against the evil empire. But when the war was over, when bin Laden became the enemy and the evil empire became a shadow of the past, Pakistan had time to become more whole than Afghanistan. Afghanistan, falling to Taliban and the war on terror, became one of the worst battle grounds in the recent past. Over thirty thousand Afghan civilians have died between 2001 to 2016 in Afghanistan. Nearly 1 million Afghans are now internally displaced. The deadly attack on the MSF Hospital in Kunduz displayed just how mad and scary the war in Afghanistan really is.
Where the big men sit in big offices and comfortable patriots sit in their rooms nodding with their cups of tea, little children with basic needs and old men with broken backs sit waiting for something as trivial as garbage to help them live through another day. When fancy generals and important looking policy makers decide whose life is important and whose isn’t, when they shelter terrorists and threaten to deport innocent hardworking families, when the racism and elitism becomes the predominant and the comfortable narrative for the intelligentsia … we can all wait for another turn in the political narrative to change allegiances, brotherhoods and of course, our effervescent hypocrisy of who deserves to be in Pakistan and who doesn’t.
