What’s Unsaid | Migrants and refugees are easy political targets

Ali Latifi:

Today on What’s Unsaid: Migrants and refugees are easy political targets.

 

I'm here at the Inzargai refugee registration centre in Kandahar province of Afghanistan, where every day hundreds of returnees from neighbouring Pakistan are coming, either due to fear of being sent home by Pakistani authorities, or were actually forced to leave after a mass expulsion drive that began in November of last year, and that has begun its second round around the 15th of April. We're here, where hundreds of families come in every day on giant colourful Pakistani trucks with all of their belongings, looking for a way to get back to the provinces they come from. And it will cost them tens of thousands of Afghanis, at least a couple $100, to return to places where many of them haven't been in decades.

 

I spoke to Fatema. Her family’s originally from Helmand, but she was born and raised in Pakistan. She’s lived there for 40 years. 

 

Fatema [VO]:

I don't have anything here in Helmand. I swear if they even give me a tent and help me, it will mean so much, because I don’t have anything left for me, either here or in Pakistan.

 

Latifi:

Fatema was planning to leave after Pakistani officials put warnings around the community, but then the rains came.

 

Fatema [VO]:

My home was destroyed due to the flooding, and nothing was left. But even before that happened, we were planning to return, so that we could live peacefully, because Pakistan was never our homeland.

 

Latifi:

This is What’s Unsaid. A bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. My name is Ali Latifi, staff editor at The New Humanitarian. 

 

On today’s episode: Migrants and refugees are easy political targets.

 

Every day now, hundreds of families arrive in Afghanistan as part of a policy of mass deportation by the Pakistani government. Spending time with these returnees at Inzargai camp, I couldn’t help but think about how governments use - and act upon - anti-refugee and anti-immigrant rhetoric, not just here, but all around the world. Look at the rise in far-right parties in Europe. Look at Brexit. Look at the parties and leaders - from Turkey, to Hungary, to Argentina, and the US - who all continue to stir up xenophobia. 

 

To put this in context, is Professor Muhammad Zaman, Director of the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University. Dr. Zaman, thanks for joining us. 

Muhamad Zaman: 

I'm honoured to be here. Thank you.

Latifi: 

Let's begin in Pakistan, which recently started a second wave of deportations of Afghans, and is currently actually planning for a third wave. These repatriations got some attention when they first started in October, we covered it. But, you've said yourself that it’s not getting the attention that the previous round got. And that actually surprised me. Why do you think that is?

Zaman: 

There's several reasons. One, the element of shock, the element of surprise in the first one. I think the bureaucracy is more prepared. I think they are less public than they were last time. I think fewer members of the government of Pakistan are talking about it. And, of course, the first round created a desensitisation of a sort. It is not as - I think - prominent in the news in general, because people thought that well, it is now going to continue. 

Latifi:

One of the talking points that came out of Islamabad in the lead up to the November expulsions was that this would make the country safer, it would increase the security. Is there any evidence that in the six, seven months since then, the security or economic situation in Pakistan has all improved as a result of the expulsions?

Zaman:

My personal answer, not very much. The economic argument was, I think, difficult for many people, myself included, to really buy that, because the evidence presented was just not there. The security one is an old argument. So, I've grown up with it, that local security issues to national security issues are largely because of Afghan refugees. Again, the evidence for that is often very scant and very cherry picked. Has it changed? Probably not. But I think nobody's really asking for it to change anyway. Because the government can say, Oh, it will take a long time for this to manifest and you just have to wait. And the people are perfectly fine with that. Because there is unfortunately, broad public support for these forced deportations. Many people who would even consider themselves progressive in Pakistan would take the position that Afghan refugees are a source of social, political, and security ills in the country. So, nobody is going to ask the question, Look, it's been six months since you started in November, are you better off? And a sign of that is that during the elections in February, the issue of Afghan refugee forced deportation didn't even come up. This was not an issue, all parties were pretty much on the same page. So, that tells you that there is no public appetite for really addressing this issue in a way that it needs to be addressed. 

Latifi:

You brought up the fact that even - and I've noticed this in my own experience, as well - that even people who would consider themselves liberal or progressive in Pakistan, a lot of times would, if not outright agree, you know, make statements that are a little bit questionable about this topic. Right, that…

Zaman:

Absolutely, I think you're being very polite, Ali. I think there are many progressives who would openly - not all, I'm not saying that all - there are plenty who really stood up and I admire them. But they're certainly people who would otherwise be for women's rights, or challenging the orthodoxy of the religious elite, would be perfectly fine, and consider Afghans to be, to view them with a sense that is rooted in xenophobia and racism. There's absolutely no question. People who otherwise would consider themselves progressive and the rights of the poor and all of that, when it comes to Afghan refugees, they are not taking a position. And then even on the right, there's actually a very interesting situation because historically, many on the right in Pakistan have taken a position of Muslim solidarity and fraternity of Muslims and sort of the rights of Muslim nation, as you would call it, a Muslim Ummah. When it comes to Afghan refugees, they are either silent or perfectly fine, with sort of making an exception. So, the exception is both on the right and the left, and nobody has been able to be consistent. 

Latifi:

Right. In January, it had been reported that half a million people had left or been kicked out from Pakistan, and they're being sent back to a country that has massive economic issues; that is at the heart of one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world; that has a government that isn't recognized by any other government, including Pakistan. So, what is the burden on a country like Afghanistan, when you're suddenly sending tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, within a several month span? 

Zaman:

Yeah. So, I'm glad you brought it up. This is my frustration with a lot of the rhetoric globally, that it has focused exclusively on Pakistan's forced deportation, and has not sort of said, well, what is happening to the people who are being sent? As if they are disappearing, and many of them are sort of falling through the cracks. But, we do not know what is happening. We do know a little bit from the stories in The New Humanitarian, and a few other things, that there were a few sort of camplike situations, but they are unstable, they are poorly resourced, and people are in a place that they don't recognize. They've never lived there. There are tremendous humanitarian issues in health, in shelter, in nutrition, in water, in food, and in security as well. It's absolutely terrifying that we're talking about half a million people here, who are just sort of deposited at the border with no information coming from them whatsoever. And that is absolutely, I think, a failure on the part of the international media, international aid agencies and others, that we don't know what's going on. And nobody's even asking what is going on.

Latifi: 

I was just in Kandahar province in the south of Afghanistan. And while I was there, I spoke to Mercy Corps’ Program Coordinator, Mohammed Ehsan Naziri. I went with them to Spin Boldak district of Kandahar. We also went to the so-called Zero Point, which is right on the Durand Line, separating Afghanistan from Pakistan. And after speaking to several returnees, I asked him whether the new arrivals knew the troubled state of the economy they were returning to. This is what he said. 

Mohammed Ehsan Naziri:

They do not have really good hope, and they really don’t know how to deal with the context here. They’re completely new people. They know that getting a job here in Afghanistan is not an easy job. But Pakistan’s government is not letting them stay in Pakistan. They don’t have any option, even though there are zero percent, there’s no income or employment opportunities for them. 

Latifi: 

And I also spoke to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here, and they said that they were given no forewarning back in October. They found out when the press found out. Given this kind of a situation, what can a country like Afghanistan do to better prepare for these mass arrivals? Is there anything they could do? 

Zaman:

In general, globally, it is very difficult to prepare for a large number of people who may arrive suddenly. And there are some approaches and methods and all of that, but they require international support, which there isn't for Afghanistan. They require local capacity, again, that is something that is lacking, and they require some kind of forecasting, again, that is lacking. So, it really creates a tremendous challenge. And again, I'm not here saying that the Afghan side cannot do better. But the problem is further complicated, because they’re hamstrung by their own lack of resources. These situations have to be built with a sense of temporary nature in mind. They have to be built in with this idea that, in a few weeks or months, they will be absorbed in the society, with jobs and housing and things like that. And I think that is lacking. So, people have to fend for themselves, as you noted in Kandahar.

Latifi:

Let's move on a little bit and expand this to a wider lens, because this is not just a Pakistan, Afghanistan issue, this is a global issue. And recently, TNH did a story about how Peru and other Latin American countries, they're using security as a reason to keep out Venezuelan undocumented immigrants. And this comes after almost ten years of more progressive immigration laws in the region. They're using rising crime and the expansion of gang violence as a way to fuel a xenophobic narrative across Latin America, and some governments are therefore adopting very hardline measures under the argument of security for political gain - sounds similar to Pakistan. So, what role do things like gang violence and fears of potential unrest play in expanding deportations? And can anything be done to stop it? 

Zaman:

People get sucked into, let's say, poverty traps, because they find all the doors of national inclusion or finding employment completely closed to them. And people are frustrated, and they are vulnerable, and groups would sort of capitalise on this. This is what we've seen in Pakistan as well, that young men would often be conscripted or recruited by militant organisations, because they're angry, and they're upset at how poorly they're being treated. So, they're very emotionally vulnerable. And people somehow are only looking at the final manifestation of that, that is recruitment in gangs, and not why somebody becomes an ideal target for recruitment. These communities are just being used as fodder by the gangs. The gangs are not there, because the Venezuelans came. The gangs predate that. Venezuelans become a mechanism by which the gangs operate. And if the Venezuelans were to be deported, the gang violence is not going to go away unfortunately. There are deeper structural problems. I would argue the same thing in Pakistan. The frustration that many people have, that is not driven by simply the presence of Afghans. So, what needs to be done is a much more comprehensive, sort of a social structure that needs to change. I'm not saying that there is no Venezuelan in any gang; that there is no Afghan involved in a security issue; not at all. But if you look at the overall statistics, you really have to think of a much more development approach, and countries are unwilling to do that, particularly in election cycles, right? So we've seen that in the United States where…

Latifi: 

I was just gonna ask about that. 

Zaman:

It's the Mexican who's a rapist. 

Latifi: 

The bad hombres. 

Zaman: 

Absolutely. I mean, you use the term crisis. So, if you look at the Ukrainian refugees versus the Syrian refugees in Europe, the Ukrainians are in very large numbers, but nobody is using the term crisis for that. When the Syrians were coming, it was used as a great migration crisis, or the great Syrian crisis, and all that.

Latifi: 

And also, you had people in the media openly saying these aren't like the Syrians. These aren't like the Afghans. They have blond hair, blue eyes. They come from Europe. 

Zaman: 

That’s right. The Ukrainians were viewed as somebody who was your own flesh and blood and just happened to be in a hard time. Poland absorbed 80 or 90 percent of them without raising global alarm bells that our country's going to collapse, right. So, these kinds of things are often cyclic with election cycles, but also the view on who is viewed as a problem and who is viewed as somebody who is a fellow human being in distress. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, I'm 46 years old. I've grown up all my life, learning that it's the outsider who's to blame for narcotics and crime and all of that. That, unfortunately, is a human tendency, a flawed one, a deeply evil one. But it's not at all unsurprising. I mean, there's a rapid rise of xenophobia in South Africa against people from Zimbabwe, in particular, but also Nigeria and elsewhere. We saw this in Tunisia in more recent years, where Africans were blamed for all kinds of problems, and many of them had been living there for a long time. The political leadership was using statements which were blatantly racist and xenophobic to the point that neighbouring African countries, Black African countries had to sort of say that, look, this is unacceptable. We see this over and over and over again. And some of it is racial. Some of it is actually ethnic. It would be a hard sell to argue that the Venezuelans and Peruvians are entirely different races. 

Latifi: 

Well, this is something because when I brought up the Ukrainian example. You said something interesting, you said that the Europeans saw them as flesh and blood, similar to them. 

Zaman:

Yeah, absolutely. 

Latifi:

And yet, think about Afghanistan and Pakistan. Think about Afghanistan and Iran, how long they've had back and forth connections with each other, or Turkey and Syria. I mean, Latin America is very similar. And yet, for whatever reason, that argument doesn't seem to apply in those places.

Zaman:

Absolutely. 

Latifi:

And I wonder if you have any thoughts on that. 

Zaman:

So, this is actually something that complicates it further, but it's important to recognize that it's not sort of just simple race. In some cases, it is, but oftentimes, it's the fear of the other, fear of the outsider. But it's also the manifestation of, I would say, anxieties that come from economic exclusion, some of this you cannot dismiss. The fact is that many Pakistanis feel frustrated by the fact that they are locked into this economic place where the walls are sort of closing in on them. And the safety valve, becomes an outsider to blame everything on them. But some of the frustrations are absolutely real. I mean, people are struggling more than they were ten or twenty years [ago]. There are real challenges. Afghans become the easy scapegoat for that. So, you really have to understand, the real issue is there, but the manifestation of that on the outsider is an easy and convenient way to let some of that steam out, without really solving the problems.

Latifi:

But, it's interesting because these are real humanitarian issues. These are real conflicts. These are real economic limitations, real constraints, that people are trying to get away from. Do you think that people understand that, you know, these Afghans, these Syrians, these Venezuelans, they're coming because of real humanitarian issues? Or is it that there's just so much upset at their own situation that that sort of gets washed away? 

Zaman: 

It is, but if you were to take the Afghan issue out and talk in abstraction and show the data, they would be convinced. But when it comes to sort of something that they have chosen not to believe, they are unwilling to stand up, and in fact, could get angry and upset that somehow we are defending the people who are causing all these problems. And I think it's true in the United States. I mean, I would be very surprised that people honestly, genuinely believe that the country's economic crisis or the country's unemployment is because there are too many people coming from Guatemala, Honduras, or Mexico. I mean, that is just bizarre and silly, and as if the problem just started yesterday. There is a collective failure of people, people who know better, people who can analyse things better, and I hope that more people would write about it. But I also want to say here, Ali, that it is easier for me to say that. I'm sitting here in the United States, I'm not living in Pakistan. When people feel that there is public pressure, also, there is a certain kind of state narrative that is allowed and, and challenging that narrative is hard. I want to be sympathetic to the people who may face real consequences for standing up against a state narrative that is very powerful, and challenging that has real consequences, so the counter voices are few. And that makes it easier for xenophobic policies to stay in place and continue unchecked. And the courts are unwilling to really act. So, there is a legal failure as well, in addition to a political and civil society failure, and that is very dangerous, that there are no guardrails. So, civil society is not speaking up. The academics are silent or complicit, and there is no legal recourse. That's quite disturbing and very scary, if I was being honest, Ali.

Latifi

Do you have any sense of what the effect of this kind of rhetoric is on the people who are forced to move, or who deal with xenophobic and racist comments and attitudes in their host countries? 

Zaman: 

Yeah, of course. I mean, you see people who are distrustful of the system, because their parents have been treated so poorly. I mean, you see this in Pakistan. I mean, the ethnic Bengalis in Pakistan were born - anybody who was born after 1971 was basically born in what is now modern Pakistan. They are so scared…

Latifi: 

Because there was a war, and Bangladesh became a separate country. 

Zaman: 

Absolutely. This is when East Pakistan became Bangladesh, West Pakistan just became Pakistan. Anybody who is living in Karachi, under the age of 53 years old, was basically born in what is now Pakistan, and they are entitled to Pakistani citizenship, full rights of citizenship, all of that. But they are so scared to do things because they're worried that the police would come and say..

Latifi: 

You’re Bengali,

Zaman: 

…show us your documentation, or ID, and many of them have stopped speaking Bangla, their language, a rich language of tremendous cultural heritage, because they don't want to be seen as outsiders. So people are giving up their identity, their intergenerational identity, just because they're worried that if they were seen as Bangla-speaking, they would face tremendous hostility and harassment. And if you're a young girl in a police station, you should expect the worst. 

Latifi: 

Why is it so hard for governments to develop effective integration policies that could essentially prevent this kind of rhetoric, and that could use migration as an economic opportunity for these countries? Is there a lack of willingness? A lack of knowledge? Of resources? Because again, you know, as well as I do, in Pakistan and Iran, there are Afghans who have been there their entire lives, but are still somehow seen as foreign. In the United States you have people from Central and South America, who have also been there their entire lives, but always live in fear of essentially ICE. Why aren't there more efforts at integration? 

Zaman: 

I think the integration argument has not been, so, so I think…

Latifi: 

…or acceptance, maybe not integration, acceptance?

Zaman: 

Ali, to be honest, a good case, a good political case for acceptance and integration has not been made. It is viewed in some cases from an economic lens. But that economic lens is incomplete. That means that you can take somebody who's in his mid-20s, or 30s, a young man who can contribute, but somebody who's an elderly, or somebody who is disabled would be at the back of the queue. So, I find the whole integration case to be incomplete when it is made only from the economic lens, you know, you have to use a much broader case that includes economics, but also includes sort of long term stability of society, the fact that pointing to history of where people have come from, and also challenging the notions of our bad impulses of racism and xenophobia. And that comprehensive case, at least from the political, and some academics have made it but it is so, let's say, filled with jargon, that nobody pays attention. I think there's a failure on the part of many people to make that case, and demonstrate that that is the right thing, both from a human rights lens, but also from a structural and stable society. You know, migration is part of the human experience from the very beginning of time. I am in this country, because my father's side migrated from India to Pakistan, I came from Pakistan to here, and then everybody around me has a migration story. We somehow use these arbitrary lines of saying migration up until that point was fine, and now it's not, and all of those kinds of things. We just have not made a good case. And also, you have to remember that people are migrating because of real reasons. And in some cases, those reasons are because of bad policies. People in Afghanistan are suffering because of a series of bad policies in the Soviet Union, the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere. People from Central America move because of long standing problems that were created by the United States. So, you cannot sort of say the 50s and 60s were something else. And we had all these coups, and we had all these issues of corrupt leaders. And now it's fine, because it's a different era, and our doors are closed, and there's a migration crisis at the border. I think that case, a little bit of it is uncomfortable, looking at your own history, and a little bit of it is built on human dignity. I think we have failed to really make that case that is compelling to everybody that challenges their own sense of fear and discomfort, but sort of creates a different world. I mean, if anybody today was to defend slavery in any form, we would find that to be absolutely evil and abhorrent. Well, we are not seeing the same when it comes to racism and xenophobia. And I think that case just has to be made in a much more richer and cleaner way than it has been.

Latifi: 

Do you think this conversation could be had in Urdu one day on a podcast or on YouTube? Or on Geo TV or something? 

Zaman: 

Oh, I would love to. I would…Well, I don't know about Geo TV, you have to understand, the people on the other side interviewing on Geo TV are also under tremendous pressure to conform to a certain kind of a state narrative. So, I think that is a lot harder. And I don't want to sort of minimise the challenges people face. One of the things that I find very troubling in the United States right now is that conservative viewpoints are not acceptable, not presented, because they're viewed as non serious. And I think there's a problem with that. I think we hope that we can have all viewpoints so that we can learn from each other. Because if we dismiss all of the counterpoint, then what ends up happening is what happened with the election of Donald Trump, is that people are angry, and they demonstrate that through voting, even though everybody says that, ‘Oh, everybody I talked to was against Trump.’ Clearly not. So, I think if you really want to understand, we have to invite people who bring alternative perspectives and learn in a way that allows for an engagement. If we simply dismiss them, then I think the opportunity to make an impact would be very, very, very, very small. So, I do have hope from the next generation of people who are in their late teens or early twenties as they're engaging with sort of Global Affairs in a very different way than their parents did.

Latifi: 

Well, you are teaching the next generation. So, hopefully that has some kind of an impact.

 Zaman: 

I hope so. We will see in due course, we will see.

Latifi: 

Professor Zaman, thank you so much for joining us. 

Zaman:

Pleasure. Thank you so much.

Latifi: 

Professor Muhammad Zaman is the Director of the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University. 

 

Please visit TheNewHumanitarian.org for ongoing reporting on humanitarian issues in crisis zones across the world. 

 

And what are people afraid to talk about in today’s crises? What needs to be discussed openly? Let us know by sending an email to [email protected]. Subscribe to The New Humanitarian on your podcast app for more episodes of What’s Unsaid – our new podcast about open secrets and uncomfortable truths. Hosted by Obi Anyadike, and me. 

 

This episode is produced and edited by Freddie Boswell, sound engineering by Mark Nieto, with original music by Whitney Patterson, and hosted by me – Ali Latifi. Thanks for listening!