The Missing Context in Amnesty’s Claims on Pakistan

Amnesty International’s open letter to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif paints Pakistan’s current policy on Afghan refugees as if it began yesterday, as if it sprang from cruelty, and as if Pakistan is pushing people into danger for sport. That framing is too neat, and it skips the one fact that should sit at the center of this debate: for more than forty years, Pakistan carried a burden that few states would accept for even four. Millions of Afghans crossed into Pakistan during the war, foreign occupation, and the collapse of state authority. Pakistan opened its borders when the region was on fire, and it absorbed the social, economic, and security shock with little meaningful burden sharing from the world.

That history matters because it explains the scale and the strain. Hosting millions over decades is not a one-time gesture. It reshapes cities, schools, clinics, labour markets, and policing. Pakistan did this while fighting terrorism at home, while living through economic turbulence, and while responding to repeated humanitarian crises, including large-scale displacement inside its own borders. It is hard to find another example of a country sustaining this level of hospitality for this long, with this little external support.

When critics speak as if Pakistan owes an indefinite, open-ended commitment, they ignore the basic reality that compassion does not cancel capacity

The legal context also gets blurred on purpose. Proof of Registration cards and Afghan Citizen Cards have expired. Pakistan has no permanent refugee framework, and it is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention. That does not mean Pakistan can treat people as disposable, but it does mean the long stay of many Afghans was not anchored in a standing legal entitlement. It rested on policy choices and administrative extensions, often renewed on humanitarian grounds. Those extensions were acts of goodwill, not a blank cheque written forever. A state can be generous without signing away its right to enforce immigration control.

It is also false to claim Pakistan acted abruptly or with no warning. The record is one of repeated extensions, multiple deadlines, and public notice. When a government gives years of extra time beyond the formal validity of documents, it is hard to call that harsh. It looks more like a state trying to balance compassion with order, especially when the number of undocumented people is measured in the millions. No country, rich or poor, can be expected to host that many undocumented foreign nationals indefinitely.

Another uncomfortable point is that the fundamental circumstances that originally drove mass migration have changed. Afghan displacement began in an era of constant war, foreign military operations, and shattered governance. Today, a single regime exercises control over most of Afghanistan. Many people have serious political and normative concerns about that regime, and those concerns are not trivial. But the objective reality is that Afghanistan is not an active war zone in the conventional sense that triggered the exodus decades ago.

That shift does not erase individual risk, yet it does change the baseline argument for mass, open-ended refuge across generations

That is why repatriation should be understood for what it is: return to one’s own country, not the forcible removal from a place of permanent asylum. Pakistan was never meant to be a permanent substitute homeland for millions, especially without an agreed legal framework and without fair international support. Voluntary return, carried out humanely and in phases, is a reasonable expectation once the primary cause of flight has eased. It is lawful in principle, and it can be morally sound when it respects dignity and avoids harm.

Still, none of this gives anyone a licence for abuse. Amnesty’s allegations about unlawful detention, harassment, and coercive deportation deserve serious scrutiny. Pakistan can defend its sovereign right to regulate immigration while also insisting on due process. If the policy is orderly and humane, then the practice must match the words on paper. That means clear procedures, access to information, time to arrange travel, safeguards for families, and a credible screening channel for those with real international protection needs.

It also means accountability for officials who extort, threaten, or mistreat vulnerable people. A state does not lose authority by enforcing standards; it gains legitimacy

Responsibility also needs to be assigned honestly. Pakistan is right to say that the Afghan authorities should accept and reintegrate their own citizens rather than lecturing the host country that carried them for decades. If reintegration is hard, and it will be, that is precisely where the international community and major humanitarian actors should focus their energy. Support should flow into Afghanistan through development aid, livelihoods, housing, and reintegration assistance. The answer cannot be to pressure one neighbour to keep absorbing the problem forever while others offer statements and small grants.

Pakistan’s position, at its core, is not that human rights do not matter. It is that hospitality cannot become a permanent replacement for Afghan state responsibility, and generosity cannot be miscast as an obligation. The sustainable path is clear: voluntary return with dignity, serious help inside Afghanistan, and fair burden sharing that reflects what Pakistan has already done. If Amnesty wants to improve lives, it should push for protections during return and real investment where returnees will live, rather than pretending that the only moral option is to keep millions in limbo on Pakistani soil for another forty years.