Hello, everybody. This is Jenny from the Block, a song that was once very dear to me because I used to be Jenny for my friends. And so this is my song, used to be my song. I swear. It was probably about high school. And I have a friend, Charles Avario, if you're listening, that still calls me like that. It's like, hey, Jenny from the block, what's up? What's going on? Jenny from the block. Anyways, welcome to another episode of Mosaico where we put pieces together about stories that are often overlooked by the mainstream media. I'm your host Ginevra and today I want to talk to you about the mass deportation of potentially almost 2 million Afghan refugees from Pakistan. The inspiration for this episode came from Federico Rampini, who's a journalist for the Corriere de la Sera, a newspaper very famous in Italy and used to be a foreign correspondent for La Repubblica, another newspaper in Italy from the United States. Actually, Federico Rampini is not realized American and he lives in New York and so he mostly reports about issues that are about the United States. He wrote a very interesting article that immediately caught my attention, even if I don't necessarily agree with what he says. So what I will do is I'll talk to you about the article and I would like to know your thoughts about it. So feel free to comment in the comments below or send me a message and I would be really glad to hear what you think. I may or may not publish a follow up with where I tell you why I don't agree with Rampini's article. But for now I just want to spread the news and talk to you about the situation in Pakistan. Last month, in October, it was announced that Pakistan would expel over a million undocumented refugees, mostly Afghani. More than a million, actually 1.7 million, are at risk of being deported in a very short time. Already more than 3,000 Afghanis have left Pakistan since October 1. But Pakistan is insisting that documented refugees are exempt from this exodus. But the UN High Commission for Refugees said that even those with the right documents were being targeted. And also that is a problem anyways because the majority of Afghani refugees in Pakistan is undocumented. Obviously this is a migration and a humanitarian tragedy because these people first left their country country to escape persecution by the Taliban regime and the economic disaster caused by the government in Kabul. And now having taken refuge in Pakistan, they are under pressure to leave and go back to Afghanistan immediately. This decision doesn't only impact Afghani people, but also other Muslim minorities who came to Pakistan because they were persecuted in their countries, including the Uyghurs fleeing China and the Rohingya who fled Myanmar. And many of these are not recent migrations because these people without resident permits include a lot of people that have lived in Pakistan for a really long time and some minors that were even born there. Now, unfortunately, the 1951 Refugee Convention that should protect refugees cannot be applied because Pakistan is not a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Also, Pakistan has not enacted any national law for the protection of refugees and it has not established any procedures to determine if there are grounds for refugee status or if there are grounds to identify people who are seeking international protection within its territory. These categories of people in Pakistan fall under the provisions of the Foreigners Act 1946. Obviously, in Afghanistan, on top of the persecution fear, the Afghani authorities are not prepared at all to receive such massive numbers probably returning as Afghanistan is in the middle of one of the world's largest humanitarian crisis, not only because of the severity of the regime, but also there were devastating earthquakes in the region, economic challenges, and also sanctions targeting the Taliban regime. Now, I'm really grateful to Federico Rampini for having written this article, otherwise I would have never came to know about this issue at all. Honestly, because it's not in the news, at least in Italy and in the uk I didn't see anything talking about this. However, there are points about this article that I really don't agree with. The problematic points that Rampini makes are first of all, Rampini tries to investigate why the Pakistani government decided for the repatriation of these people. And he writes that the Pakistani government is convinced that together with the refugees, the Taliban have infiltrated terrorists in the territory. And actually, according to the Pakistani police and security security services, 14 out of 24 armed attacks since the beginning of the year were committed by Afghani people. And that is not completely unfounded. It's really likely that there could be terrorists among the Afghani in Pakistan who are actually guilty of the attacks. This section becomes problematic when Rampini draws a parallel between the Afghani terrorists in Pakistan and Hamas in Palestine. He says that in Palestine there are also terrorists among the civilians, civilian people that are affiliated with Hamas or Hezbollah. And however, when Israel tries to strike terrorists, innocent civilians also pay the price. Almost as is happening in Pakistan, the Afghanis are paying the price for a few terrorists. But I don't believe that the parallel is actually very appropriate even just because these are two completely different situation with completely different routes. The second point that Rampini makes it's interesting, but nonetheless problematic, according to me, as he claims that the Arab world gets infuriated and the people take the squares only when they're convinced that it is Israel or the west that is persecuting them. And then he goes on saying that Afghanistan only attracted some solidarity when it came to denouncing the betrayal of the Americans. But the world literally overlooked what the Taliban subsequently inflicted on its own population after the US withdrawal. And as the Arab world is only concerned with Palestine and other situations that are provoked by the West, Muslim Pakistan in turn, can rage against Muslim migrants at home with impunity. I agree with just one thing and that it's true that the international community has basically abandoned Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, but it's not only the Arab countries that are tolerating the violation, the consistent violation of international human rights principles by the Taliban regime, but it's the entire world also. I disagree. It's not that the current situation in Afghanistan has nothing to do with the west. It has actually a lot to do with the west, namely the United States and its allies. It's not very often spoken about, but the US rule in Afghanistan was very brutal and a lot of the population suffered. And so I'm afraid that if we had to shift the focus on Afghanistan, then we would have to talk about U.S. atrocities much more. And that could be problematic. And that's why people don't talk about it much. And if there is a parallel to be drawn with Israel, perhaps it should be that the United States was an occupying power in Afghanistan in a similar fashion as to Israel, who is an occupying power in Palestine. However, the matter is much more complicated than this. That's why I thought of doing a little follow up to this episode, maybe because the geopolitics of the area of Pakistan and Afghanistan are very, very complex. So I believe it's inappropriate and a little too simple to state that the Arab countries won't take sides and won't speak up just because it's an Islamic regime carrying on the deportations. And I believe it's too easy to assume that they would do anything if it was a Western country to carry on the deportations. However, I really appreciated this article, as I just mentioned, because we should talk about Afghanistan much more. But when writing these sort of articles, I think the stress should be on the huge humanitarian crisis that the repatriation plan poses to both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Also, because we must not forget that transferring all these people must be a logistical nightmare for Pakistan too. However, I believe that international actors, international states should devote more attention to this crisis and they should try to stop the repatriations. And also while Pakistan is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, it is indeed a party to the UN Convention against Torture and in any case should apply its principles as a matter of and good practice. Third and last problematic point Darampini makes is that instability in this area is not convenient because Pakistan is a nuclear power and the conflict here could provide the spark to a larger scale international conflict. That's right, but I'm just not sure it is appropriate to say about a migration crisis. I think if I were to write an article of this kind I would say stay with the issues in this region. I would not draw a comparison with Palestine at all and I would try to examine the complexities of this silent exodus, examining the geopolitics of the region and also try to perhaps introduce some human stories behind the numbers. Anyways, that's all I have for today. Stay with Mo cycle if you want to continue putting pieces together. Ciao.
