The blowback

Notwithstanding consequences of Paris attacks, Pakistanis have been deported from over 40 countries in last two years

Few will have read The Management of Savagery by Abu Bakr Naji, first published in 2004. But the Islamic State (IS) has, and those who carried out the attacks in Paris on November 13 almost certainly will have. It is one of the playbooks of the jihad movement, a blueprint that outlines “the need to create and manage religious resentment and violence in order to create long-term propaganda opportunities for jihadist groups”. (Extracted from Wikipedia.) Interior Minister Chaudhury Nisar Ali Khan has probably not read it either, but perhaps he should in the light of his remarks about a possible deterioration in the working and living conditions for Pakistan nationals living abroad. Far right groups, particularly in Germany, are already stirring xenophobic and anti-Muslim sentiment, and the influx of refugees to European Union (EU) states, especially from Syria — but also Pakistan — and other predominantly Muslim countries has created a debate about the wisdom of having open borders within the EU.



The interior minister is right when he says there is a need to develop a policy to handle any future difficulties experienced by Pakistan nationals living and working abroad — a task of immense complexity, and considering the failure of the government when it came to constructing a counter-terrorism narrative, one has to wonder at the capacity of the state to achieve this goal.

Notwithstanding the consequences of the Paris attacks, Pakistanis have been deported from more than 40 countries in the last two years, as many as 97,000 of them, and adding the antipathies that are the likely concomitant of the Paris attacks, our citizens are increasingly unwelcome wherever they turn. Pakistanis overseas are a very considerable national asset, providing a monthly cushion of remittances that reaches into the billions of dollars annually. With the IS claiming the massacres in Paris, the management of savagery is revealed as being far from ‘mindless’ as terrorists are so often and wrongly described. For them, a primary goal is being achieved and built on day-on-day. Fear, mistrust and a sense of terror all had a layer added, and the demonisation of Islam proceeds apace. The government is rightly concerned but in all probability powerless.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2015.

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