Human and Drug Smuggling to Friendly Countries

It is disgraceful for a country if its nationals abroad are watched by the host country and punished if found erring with worldwide publicity. Illegal Mexicans migrated to the United States have earned bad name especially when employed in private homes as domestic help. But they do not come with any militant ideology and hatred for the hosts. That separates Pakistanis from other migrants who come to the US only for job and money.
 
Pakistanis, not only in Christian but in Muslim countries too, are of suspect. Two big reasons for fear of Pakistanis are  their twisted interpretation of Islam which presents this religion of peace as a cult of terrorism which is best served by the blood of innocent persons-Muslim or non-Muslim and for smuggling of drugs or other contrabands. More often than not the two categories are combined. In the 1970-80s, careful watch was kept on Pakistanis who tried to smuggle out equipment used for making a nuclear bomb. Pakistan at that time was clandestinely busy manufacturing a nuclear bomb at Kohata while swearing it was not. The denial sounded so convincing that even the President of the United States was taken in and he very gullibility signed a certificate every year to certify that Pakistan was not making a nuclear bomb.

It won’t be out of place here to mention that as President and Army Chief of Pakistan, Gen Zia ul Haq reportedly tried to smuggle heroin to New York where he was going to address the United Nations General Assembly in 1981 as “the leader of the Muslim World”. Pakistani political party Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)’s mouthpiece in London, Urdu daily Mussawat, wrote the General tries to carry with him onyx lamps with hollow bottoms which hid drugs.

But some smart Pakistanis thought smuggling of humans to different countries was more paying and less risky than smuggling drugs. Thus during the 1970-80s, offices of travel agents sprouted all over Pakistan. They promised their clients that they would take them to any country they (clients) wanted. Newspapers later reported how their agents duped their clients of all their money and dumped them at some god-forsaken island. But the craze of quitting the country was so pressing that dishonest agents did not lose their business although their country got a bad name.    

The mode and route used by human smugglers has also evolved with time. During past few decades, the route from Pakistan via Turkey to Greece got well established. According to a study published by the European Migration network in 2016, majority of illegal migrants from Pakistan with a final destination in Europe primarily travel via the Eastern Mediterranean route.
 
Last month the US imposed sanctions on a Pakistan-based organization run by a Pakistani, named Abid Ali Khan for smuggling migrants to the US which could cause threat to its national security. The US Treasury Department said it had blacklisted Pakistani national Abid Ali Khan and his transnational criminal organization which it described as a “Prolific Human Rights Organisation”.
 
Also, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia indicted Abid Ali Khan for smuggling undocumented people from Pakistan and Afghanistan into the US. The US Treasury Department said Abid Ali Khan and his organization charged $20,000 per head from the people who wanted smuggled into the US. It said the travel route begins either from Pakistan or Afghanistan and reaches the United States via several South and Central American countries. Often organization gives its clients fake passports.
 
Saudi Arabia is sometimes over indulgent to fellow Muslim Pakistanis. But, Pakistanis often take undue advantage forgetting that this indulgence; notwithstanding, the Saudis don’t bend their rules. Thus, in the 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s, Pakistan topped the list of all criminals that were beheaded in Saudi Arabia every Friday morning. Their crimes included drug smuggling, traffic in women, boot legging, murder and human smuggling.
 
What disgrace the Pakistani human and drug smugglers brought to their fellow countrymen in Saudi Arabia was brought out in the letters to Pakistani Urdu newspapers from Pakistanis working in the Kingdom. A letter to Urdu daily Jung said if a small Saudi policeman found a South Asian on the road, he would ask “Hindi or Paki”?. If he said “Hindi”, he would be allowed to go. But, if he said “Paki”, he would straight be thrown into jail without any questions. The Pakistani embassy dared not intervene.

Urdu newspapers gave one full page to such letters every week after Gen Zia ul Haq, on return from his first visit to the Kingdom after his military coup of July 1977, said he was shocked to learn in Saudi Arabia that whenever they needed a sweeper, they sent for a “Paki”.