Citizenship for sale

Nadra has allegedly issued more than 40,000 CNICs to unregistered Afghan refugees in the last 10 years

There was a time when the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) was held up as an institution that Pakistan could be proud of, an example of probity and rectitude. Not any more. Investigations have revealed that NADRA has gone the way of all other state institutions and seems to be as corrupt as everything else around it. It has allegedly — though reliably reportedly — issued more than 40,000 computerised national identity cards (CNIC) to unregistered Afghan refugees in the last 10 years. It is impossible to calculate the level of threat and exposure this brings to the fabric of national security in the widest sense, but at the very least, risk levels are elevated as a result of this serious breach in standards. The rot inside NADRA is widespread up and down the system as well as geographically, with officers in Quetta, Sargodha, Peshawar, Sukkur and Lahore all involved in corrupt practices.

More than 372 officials have issued tens of thousands of CNICs primarily to Afghans, though they have been issued to other nationalities as well but in nothing like the same number. The team running the investigation has already blocked 22,349 CNICs issued since 2005 and there are another 50,110 on their watch list in every province. They are investigating 42,006 CNICs in Balochistan alone. The NADRA officers issuing the cards were accepting bribes to do so, and the practice is at least a decade old. There is naturally concern in the intelligence agencies at this fundamental breakdown in a baseline security requirement. There are long-standing proven linkages between the communities of Afghan refugees and extremist and terrorist groups. Not all Afghan refugees are terrorists or extremists but some are, and a failure of the primary filter — NADRA — for no other reason than monetary gain by individuals requires the sternest of action. Those known to have been bribed must lose their posts — and pensions and any other perks they might otherwise be entitled to — and an example made of them. A slap on the wrist and an anodyne admonishment is not the solution, but surgery is. Cut out the cancers.

Published in The Express Tribune, March  2^nd, 2015.

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