Pakistan: '' Say ‘no’ to Australian refuge ''

EDITORIAL: THE FRONTIER POST

First Secretary Australian High Commission Sherief Andrawos on Wednesday said the Jim O’Callaghan, assistant secretary of the humanitarian branch of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Australia, had held a meeting with UNHCR officials last week and informed the UNHCR that Australia was willing to accommodate 2,500 families or 7,000 individuals of the Hazara community, keeping in view attacks on them in Quetta. Maya Ameratunga, deputy representative of United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Pakistan has also confirmed the report saying “Yes! we have started work on facilitating members of Shia minority and other people prone to sectarian violence for giving them refuge in Australia. The Australian government wants our assistance in this regard.” The resettlement process would be taken up after the return of UNHCR’s Country Representative Neil Wright to Pakistan from Geneva. “The resettlement process is a complicated issue as we have to identify the most vulnerable and affected families of Hazara Shia community in Balochistan,” Ms Ameratunga said, adding that they would soon give a list of 2,500 families to the Australian government. Indeed, it is a welcome report that gives some consolation to ailing souls of Hazaras in Pakistan. The Pakistanis must be very grateful for the sympathetic assistance the Australian Government is planning to offer to alleviate the sufferings of the 7000 Pakistani individuals. Resourceful Australians can afford to spend some money on ‘compassionate’ ground but the big question mark is if the immigration of the 7000 Hazaras will end the plight, agony and sufferings perpetuated by the extremists, militants, terrorists and on the top of it the drone attacks hitting millions of Pakistani people living in the areas bordering Afghanistan where the USA-led western allies including Australia have unleashed a war on terror in the pursuit of Al-Qaeda chief. He is no more but the spillover of terrorism in Pakistan has virtually brought country on the brink of collapse; terrorists have turned their guns and explosives to the Pakistan government for being the frontline state in the USA-led war on terror. Ferocious revenge of the militants has brought the industrial wheels to a grinding halt; top businessmen have either left the country or planning to desert their homeland along with their businesses and capital. The energy crisis has forced the people to spend hot and humid summer without power and winter without heating facility in chilly nights. In fact the country is pushed back to the Dark Age. Even the worst is scenario in the entire FATA where once well-established families are facing starvation in so-called relief camps yet Pakistan is footing the bill for the war on terror imposed on it. The government and the international donors too have turned their face off, on one pretext or the other. Hundreds of the minors, elderly women of the IDPs, members of once the most respectable families of the areas, have resorted to begging in the streets. Ironically the western allies are unmoved. Under these circumstances, the Australian government’s asylum offer to over 2,500 Hazara families of Balochistan may bring back some hope on the faces of the people in need. Will it put an end to source that brought all these miseries? No way is the answer. Had sufferings of the people been confined to just one Hazara tribe, the offer was more than welcome. Otherwise, the Australian offer is not the solution to the situation. The best advice, one would expect, is to help quell the source of trouble that is behind the unrest and repeated genocides in the country. If at all, the west including Australia wish to alleviate or share the sufferings of the people in Pakistan, the best discourse is to persuade the forces—including foreign militants or alleged Blackwater agents active in the region to serve their own interests -- to stay off and leave Pakistan alone to deal with the disgruntled elements. Too much foreign interference, for one reason or the other, in the internal affairs of Pakistan has made the matter extremely complicated. Pakistan needs realistic diplomatic help to whip off involvement of foreign hands in the country rather than offering minor gains here or there. The Pakistani rulers must also raise themselves to the occasion to rebuild the nation rather accepting such publicity-stunts being offered to them. Pakistan has done it before and can do the same now.