Cutting News

Bribing officials.  Relaying and returning migrants to poor countries without adequate scrutiny or screening. Closing borders. Setting up camps with appalling conditions.  Barbed wire and armed guards.  Europe now faces the most profound test on the refugee crisis so far: to persist in processing arrivals within its borders, or return them with indifference into unsafe territories.
This is the Australian model of border control writ large. It enlists and politicises defence forces and border protection behind a veil of military grade secrey.  It shifts the burden of processing asylum seekers and refugees from wealthier states to poorer ones.  It effectively suspends the application of the Refugee Convention and does a good bit of demonising of refugees along the way.
In October last year, before an audience attending the Margaret Thatcher gala dinner,  the sniping and aggressive former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott warned European leaders that embracing his own “turn back the boats” policy was essential for continental stability and the protection of European civilisation.  “The only way to stop people by trying to gain entry is firmly and unambiguously to deny it.”[1]
Critics laughed it off as irrelevant, a political product of a paranoid island continent and a clownish ex-leader.  Landlocked countries, in particular, could hardly impose a return policy en masse given the sprawling trails of humanity coming in. It would entail massive border closures and expulsions, not of boats with dozens of human occupants but convoys of tens of thousands.
Turning back refugees, and cutting off the lines through the Balkans, is exactly what is happening in the pursuit of a rather venal plan of mass deportation with Turkey.  The outlines of it were made at a summit on March 7, where European leaders met the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlou.
The Turkish proposal involves accepting the return of all migrants and refugees who cross the Aegean to Greece in return of a resettlement of asylum seekers in EU countries from Turkey itself.  This effectively constitutes a mass removal of individuals, a plan of questionable legality.  Under international refugee law, Turkey would have to be designated a safe haven for asylum seekers.
The summit has invariably spurred countries to close the Balkan route. Macedonia has closed the border with Greece, resulting in the stranding of 15,000 individuals.  Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia have tightened controls, putting on the brakes with heavy feet. Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, has expressed confidence in this new “collective” response to the refugee crisis, claiming that “irregular flows of migrants along western Balkans route have come to an end”.[2]
Some of the press analysis on this sees the European-Turkish deal as “messy but necessary”. The Economist editorial on this subject is even more chilling in admitting what Turkey has become in this entire farce of human misery.  “Throughout the Cold War, Turkey was one of Europe’s bastions against Soviet armies.  Now it is being turned into Europe’s barrier against the huddled masses of the Middle East.”
This was geographic reality — Turkey being the bridging country between two landmasses.  But, argued The Economist, order had to return, with borders opened, to a certain extent; “the only alternative to chaos is a fair and orderly migration system”. Human flesh has become a measure of grand political bargaining.
The consequence of this haggling has been a trafficking and bartering over human matter in favour of new political realities Turkey wishes to change.  There is the issue of visa liberalisation, which Ankara has been pursuing with some vigour.
The largest matter, one that never goes away, is that of Turkish accession to the EU.  Most striking of all is the refusal on the part of the EU to raise the issue of Ankara’s latest, and very aggressive, assault on press freedoms. President Recep Erdoğan has every reason to be pleased, crushing dissent and scrutiny at hope while pretending to be Europe’s broom of order.
Despite any reservations on the part of the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, his government still signed a readmission agreement for migrants crossing the Aegean to be returned.[4]  This further builds in a regime that promises to be more cruel than fair.
The strong message from Davutoğlou in discussions with Tsipras indicated the determination to shut out third countries and transit points for those using the route through Turkey and effectively the Balkans, to get to EU countries.  The agreements, he argued, sent “a clear message to migrants coming from third countries, rather than countries at war… that there is neither the political will [to allow their passage] nor the ability to cross to Europe.”
Supposedly, that aspect of the deal will cover those migrants who are not deemed to fall within the international regime of protection.  This re-admission into Turkey is problematic on several levels, assuming an orderly and expeditious processing of individual claims. “I am deeply worried,” expressed a concerned UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, “about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee safeguards under international law.”[5]
Such fairness is evidently missing to those who are huddled before the closed borders.  Refugees chant German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s name in desperation and hope.  Merkel in turn had regarded the Balkan closure as an “unsustainable” travesty, an outcome of a failed approach to the issue of dealing with refugees.  But she is wrong to assume that Europe is not acting collectively on this.  A dis-unified position is rapidly forming into a hardened, brutal stance of vicious unity.

The latest success of the Rangers in breaking a gang in Karachi who were about to launch a very large raid is, indeed, impressive. However, the information coming from the captured criminals is significant. The network includes members of political parties including the MQM. 

The distinction is that the MQM supported themselves and not any other parties. The PPP, and the other parties did a lot of intra party funding to other political parties, and used their armed wings for elimination when required. The testimony of Uzair Baloch has already indicated this. What is required urgently is to ascertain the links between the criminal actions of the political parties, especially when the lines of crime and terror coalesce. 

At this point the threat multiples manifold, and spreads to engulf the state itself. In today's world, the US and the Russians have created a maelstrom focused around Syria. A new power is emerging and has called itself IS. 

This new entrant is attracting huge financial support, and personnel are flocking to join even from Europe. Young girls and boys, some only sixteen, are running away to join the war. This new danger threatens to engulf the world. 

We should consider the situation of Pakistan, which is surrounded by enemies such as India and Afghanistan which has already collapsed as a country. 

The state controls only the airport, with the rest of Afghanistan in the control of various warlords, who offer safe haven to anyone passing through, at a price. Always negotiable, but never cheap. 

The animosity against Pakistan is endemic. Too deeply ingrained in the Afghans, abetted by the Indians, for a rapprochement. In every discussion lip service is dutifully paid, stressing Muslim brotherhood, and good neighbourly ties. But before the ink is dry the knife is put in. Pakistan is now giving shelter to three million Afghan refugees, living in Pakistan partaking of our meagre resources. Living as poorly as their Pakistani brethren. There is no animosity between the two nationals, a fact that should be acknowledged by other countries. However the Afghan government, with the active support of the Indians, will grasp any opportunity to create discomfort for Pakistan. 

This is a rapidly changing scenario, with the various players jockeying for a foothold, and the others throwing money into the mix egging on their proxies. For Pakistan it is a matter of survival. Faced by these complex and changing rules, when most of the adversaries are being funded from outside the region, with oil money, and well established lines of funds donated by Muslims all over the world thinking they are supporting a holy war being waged against the infidels. 

This was the plan drawn up by the CIA to fight the Russians in Afghanistan and they succeeded only too well. However, this is now the local sport, and the AK47, replacing football as the weapon of choice. Children from the age of ten are playing at war. Too young to know better, and old enough to become addicted to adrenaline and the thirst for blood. 

Pakistan has had the misfortune to have had a series of rulers who have become addicted to robbing their governments, and the politician has chosen to enter politics as a way of making money. All the leaders have almost destroyed the country. Industry is closing down; there is a shortage of power, shortage of water; the Railways and PIA are both on their last legs. Both these institutions instead of being put right, the politicians are trying to get their commissions while the patient lies in the ICU, as it were. 

Sadly, the leadership instead of reading the danger facing the country, it continues as half ostrich, half Moghul emperor, not realising that hard work, and commitment to the country are vital. The visits to Sri Lanka, Davos, London, are visible symptoms of a dysfunctional brain. 

The leaders ignore threats from Da’esh while the Taliban are locked in a struggle to the death with our brave soldiers. We are lucky that Zardari and General Kayani have been removed, but Zardari is doing his best to protect his corrupt cronies, and is trying to cling to his loot. His erstwhile cohort, Hussain Haqqani is making his own way through his academic contacts, to damage Pakistan as best he can. 

However, the criminals that have been arrested are divulging all their crimes, and not, unsurprisingly, the links have been established between the PPP, and some PML-N politicians, where huge financial scams are surfacing. With the admission of one man ordering 400 murders, his team is being eyed to assist the Daesh, and would be a very productive recruit. Even the MQM would prefer the Daesh as an ally, rather than a foe. 

It is for the West to realise that Zardari and the MQM have exposed their venomous traits. Any person who cannot be true to his own country, can certainly not be trusted by anyone else. With the establishment of the links between the terrorist gangs and the political parties, and the money trail link inking them, the army should move against them to break the chain and declare the terror links as reason enough to declare the party indulging in these acts be declared illegal. It is time that the support from the US and UK for both these parties is withdrawn.

With the spread of terror in the Syrian area, it will not be long before the fire will be at our gates. The Saudis and the Yemenis may not get to finish off their skirmish. Even the US realises they cannot fight in the desert for too long.