Exploiting hope: The ‘agents’ smuggling people from Pakistan

ISTANBUL:

Malik Shiraz is frantically searching for his brothers in Kalamata, a small town on the southern Greek coast engulfed in a frenzy since last week’s deadly migrant shipwreck.

“It was such a small boat. Why did the agents put so many people on it?” he pleaded, desperation palpable in his voice.

By “agents,” he meant the human smugglers who arrange the perilous journeys – mostly with fake documents and through illegal channels – for people seeking a better life abroad, with Europe being a particularly preferred destination.

Shiraz’s brothers, Qaiser and Tahir, were among the estimated 700 people who were on a boat heading from Libya to Italy when it sank in the Mediterranean near Greece’s coast on June 14.

All but 104 survivors were killed in the disaster, the deadliest such incident in years.

Hundreds of them were from Pakistan, but the final figure is yet to be established. In its latest update on Friday, the Pakistani government said approximately 350 of its nationals were on the boat and the bodies of 82 have been recovered.

Shiraz is all too familiar with how human smugglers operate in Pakistan. He is one of the thousands of desperate Pakistanis who have paid exorbitant sums to these individuals over the years to reach Europe.

He arrived in Europe on a boat from Greece in 2015, without any documents, after paying 150,000 Pakistani rupees ($525). He was in Germany for a while, before eventually settling in Italy.

He came to Greece from Italy this week to seek answers and hopefully find his brothers, whom he had strictly warned against following his path to Europe.

“I told them this was a dangerous route. I told them to come legally, but they trusted the agents,” Shiraz, who hails from Gujrat in northeastern Pakistan, told Anadolu in a phone call.

Social media ‘game’

For something so illegal, human smugglers in Pakistan are operating quite openly, especially on social media.

Read more: Death toll from migrant boat sinking off southwestern Greece climbs to 79

There are entire Facebook groups dedicated to the illicit business.

They are also active on TikTok, giving desperate people the hope of reaching European shores – but only if they can cough up thousands of dollars.

These groups are full of jargon such as “dunky,” a word derived from dinghy and used to refer to an illegal boat crossing.

Another commonly used word is “game,” used to refer to any journey, from “road game” to “ship game” and “taxi game.”

Reaching out to the smugglers is as simple as messaging anyone on Facebook.

Using an anonymous account, Anadolu contacted a person who had posted an advertisement on one of the groups.

Within minutes, the person replied with an offer to arrange a trip from Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, to Italy via Greece and Serbia, all for $12,000.

Others offer the route that was taken by the migrants who perished last week: a flight from Karachi to Dubai, followed by a layover of four to five hours before a flight to Egypt, and then on to Libya and Italy.

Despite being the more expensive option, this route has been gaining popularity as countries tighten border controls.

‘Big money’

“Human smuggling is a lucrative business and makes big money,” said Asad Iqbal Butt, a prominent activist who is the co-chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

These agents “can collaborate with local enforcement authorities, officials at borders, and can have their people in the airlines or the travel agency business as well,” he explained.

They also work with people in other countries, known as “sub-agents,” he added.

Agents reportedly collected between 2.3 million rupees ($8,000) and 3.5 million rupees ($12,200) from Pakistanis who were on the ill-fated trawler that sank last week.

In some cases, the smugglers allow people to pay after the journey, a sort of tactic to build trust.

Abid Rajorvi, who has lost two cousins in the Greece disaster, shared the story of another cousin who made it to Italy without having to pay anything upfront.

“They told my cousin to bring $2,000 to $2,500 with him. They paid for his flight tickets (Karachi to Dubai to Egypt) themselves,” he told Anadolu in a phone call.

“Once my cousin was about to get on the boat from Libya for Italy, they told his family in Pakistan to make the complete payment to an agent here.”

Rajorvi is from Bandli, a village in Pakistan-administered Kashmir that he said has lost 28 men in the Greece shipwreck.

He shed light on the staggering financial burden that families take on to pay agents, saying many people sell off properties, jewellery and essentially use up their life savings.

‘Worldwide phenomenon’

In Pakistan, the main law enforcement authority on the matter is the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

Since the June 14 disaster, the agency has launched an extensive crackdown, arresting at least 27 traffickers and registering 70 cases, a spokesperson said on Friday.

However, the FIA has faced criticism for its inability to stamp out the networks of traffickers, with accusations against it ranging from negligence to complicity.

“If anyone in the FIA is responsible for or involved in human smuggling, they should be held accountable,” said Bashir Memon, a former head of the agency.

However, he asserted that migrant smuggling and trafficking is a “worldwide phenomenon and not just limited to Pakistan.”

One of the difficulties in tracking down these smugglers is that any person could be an agent in Pakistan, Memon explained.

“It could be anyone; a mason, a restaurant worker, or an actual travel agent. Also, they don’t work alone, they have strong networks,” he added.

According to Memon, there has been a spike in the number of people trying to exit Pakistan through illegal means, particularly due to the worsening economic situation.

“Smugglers are targeting people mostly living in Gujrat and Gujranwala,” he told Anadolu, referring to two cities in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province.

Butt, the HRCP official, said another visible change is the socioeconomic status of the people trying to leave Pakistan illegally.

“This used to be more prevalent among lower income groups, but now we’re seeing a rise among middle-class families,” he added.

On the action now being taken against traffickers, Butt was fearful that the victims’ families would back out and not press charges, saying that has been a problem in the past.

“Families could take back the cases because the agents will offer to repay them, or to send someone else from their family to Europe for free,” he said.

In an ironic twist of fate, one of the families mourning a loss in the latest tragedy is that of an alleged trafficker.

“There was an agent who sent his own son this time. He is now behind bars and his son is dead,” said Rajorvi, the man in Bandli.

“So, what the agents do to others can also happen to them.”