Afghan refugees arrested for murder in Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 4 2014 (IPS)

Blaming Afghan refugees for a surge in crime, Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has placed restrictions on the movement of those who do not possess legal documents to stay in the country.

“We are facing a rising incidence of crime, not only in Peshawar but in all the 25 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa due to the presence of Afghan refugees. We have to restrict their movement to apply a brake on murders, thefts and kidnappings for ransom,” Superintendent of Police Najib Ullah tells IPS.

The restrictions mean Afghan refugees without legal documents cannot go to marketplaces.About 50,000 people who are said to use less frequented routes everyday are not checked.

Najib says the provincial administration had also written to the federal government to check the entry of Afghans through the neighbouring Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) located on the border with Afghanistan.

“Pakistan has requested the Afghan government to tighten security near border areas to stem the tide of crime in Peshawar,” he says.

About five million Afghans migrated to Pakistan after Russia invaded their country in 1979. Initially, they lived in camps set up by the government, but gradually they melted into the local populace.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, Pakistan is still home to 1.6 million Afghans, but police say about an equal number live in the country illegally.

“Those who have Proof of Registration Cards are traceable but many of those living illegally have criminal records. They are the ones who commit murders and flee to Afghanistan,” he says.

Najib says Afghan involvement has been proven in 45 percent of the crimes in Peshawar.

Pakistan has time and again allowed Afghan refugees to extend their stay despite local businessmen, politicians, law enforcers and intelligence outfits demanding that they be expelled.

Police say Afghan criminals are particularly active in Peshawar and Quetta.

“Last year, 614 people were killed in the province but investigations could not make much headway as in most cases the assailants slipped away to Afghanistan,” Ajab Khan, an official of th Special Branch police tells IPS.

Pakistan and Afghanistan share a 2,400 km border.

The government checks only eight formal routes. About 50,000 people who are said to use less frequented routes everyday are not checked, according to Special Branch police.

Muhammad Ikram, station house officer at Nasirbagh police station tells IPS that the area under his jurisdiction primarily has Afghan refugees, many of whom live illegally.

“In April 2013, three local residents were killed by an Afghan who fled to nearby Jalalabad (in Afghanistan) and was later arrested. Forensic evidence proved him to be the killer.”

Early in 2014, the Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court Justice Dost Muhammad Khan banned illegal mobile phone SIM cards originating in Afghanistan, as these were used in 90 percent of crimes committed in Peshawar.

Afghan SIM cards are freely available in Pakistan.

Dr Muhammad Irfan, who was kidnapped from Hayatabad area in Peshawar Jan. 14 and released after the paying of a ransom, told police that he had been receiving calls from an Afghanistan number before he was abducted.

“I was kept in Hayatabad itself. On the day of my release, I called home from my kidnapper’s mobile phone to ask them to fetch me,” he told police.

His wife, who thought her husband was somewhere in Afghanistan, was taken aback when he reached home 10 minutes after the call. Afghan SIM cards had been used from within Pakistan.

The government has failed to hammer out a modus operandi in relation to a Solution Strategy for Afghan Refugees (SSAR) which seeks to facilitate the repatriation of Afghan refugees by December 2015.

Police chief of the northern Pakistani province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Nasir Durrani, tells IPS that they had made it mandatory for all Afghans to register with police stations in their areas. “All landlords have been directed to inform police about their Afghan tenants,” he says.

The government has also decided to register and tax all businesses run by Afghans, including restaurants, shops and vendors. Exit and entry points are to be set up on the premises of refugee camps to check their movement.

More than 50,000 Afghan students are enrolled in Pakistani seminaries, and the government has very little information about them, officials say. There is also no data about businesses being run by Afghan refugees in Peshawar or other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, they say.

In December 2013, a regional committee which includes Pakistan, Afghanistan and the UN called for the closure of all illegal Afghan markets and also empowered police to conduct random checks for Proof of Registration Cards in cities.

Traders claim that government rules strictly prohibit the entry of refugees into the city, the owning or hiring of houses and the use of mobile phones, but say that the administration is not interested in implementing the law.

Peshawar Division Commissioner Munir Azam says Afghans have been involved in the killing of religious scholars of different sects, kidnapping and extortion.

“We are taking measures to increase coordination among the administration and law enforcement agencies in Peshawar in order to plug incidents of extortion and kidnapping,” he tells IPS.

Afghan refugees say it is not fair to give the entire community a bad name.

“The main reason for our stay in Pakistan is lawlessness back home. We are poor people. Pakistan is our second home and we abide by its laws,” Jamal Zada, a teacher at a school for Afghan refugees in Peshawar tells IPS.

“There may be criminals among the refugees, but we are ready to help the government to bring them to justice,” he says.

A trader in Mandera Town, North Eastern Province, Kenya. After the attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi by the Somali Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab, suspicions towards the Somali community in North Eastern Province are growing. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Oct 8 2013 (IPS)

Somali militia groups are beginning to operate in Kenya’s remote and arid North Eastern Province, an area that borders southern Somalia – a former stronghold of the extremist group Al-Shabaab.

“There is a growing number of Kenyan Somalis who are sympathisers of Al-Shabaab and they are setting up their own small militia groups to send a message to the [Kenyan] national government,” Elwak Abdi, an expert on peace and security from Liboi, a border town in Kenya’s North Eastern Province some 18 km from the Somali border, told IPS.

He added that “a significant number of the Somali community is armed.”

“In areas such as Wajir, Isiolo and Mandera [counties in North Eastern Province] there is constant armed conflict. This is forcing residents to move from one place to another due to the fear of the unknown. Even worse is the [fact that] small militia groups have to be paid to provide protection,” Abdi said.

There has been an ongoing dispute between the two East African nations over their border since 2011 when the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) waged a military offence against Al-Shabaab in southern Somalia. The KDF took control of certain southern Somali regions as well as some Kenyan regions including Ijara, Garissa and Liboi.

In 2012, tensions between the neighbours escalated as gas and oil deposits were discovered offshore. Both countries claim ownership of waters where the deposits have been discovered.

As Kenya recovers from the Sep. 21 attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi by the Somali Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab, suspicions towards the Somali community in North Eastern Province are growing. Many were afraid to speak to IPS for fear that the Kenyan government is illegally tapping their mobile phones.

Ibrahim Ahmed, executive director of the Kenya Somali Consortium that seeks to address conflict arising from the disputed border, said that all was not well in the expansive arid North Eastern Province. He said that the Kenyan government had done little to “make people aware that not all Somalis are terrorists. This may compromise the fight against terror.”

Because of the largely porous 700-km Kenya-Somali border, the number of Somalis entering into Kenya is growing by the day. Government statistics show that at least 630,000 Somalis live in Kenya. The increased migration has also brought with it an apparent increase in arms smuggling.

Residents in the North Eastern Province claim that some groups of Somalis are bringing arms easily into the country. Kenya’s ministry of internal security estimates that up to 680,000 illegal firearms are in the hands of civilians nationwide. However, there are no exact figures about arms smuggled across the Kenya-Somali border.

The easy availability of small arms has increased inter-clan tensions and violent conflict among the Kenyan Somalis in North Eastern Province and compromised national security. Abdi said “even the World Food Programme is unable to travel to places such as Wajir [in North Eastern Province] to offer humanitarian assistance for fear of abduction and death.”

“Somalis in North Eastern Province identify with their counterparts in Somalia. Although Kenya has been stable for five decades, North Eastern Province is still a hardship area, and since the government has done little to pacify the residents, they seem determined to make the region ungovernable, just like the Somalis have done in Somalia,” Ahmed told IPS.

However, he added that the “increase of small arms and light weapons across the country should not be attributed to the porous Kenya-Somalia border alone, and not just Somalis are involved.

“I am involved in disarmament in northern Kenya and am aware that most weapon smugglers are foreigners, particularly Russians and Ukrainians. Ships dock in Somalia with arms where they are also stored to be transported across East Africa.

“Why is it that no one is talking about the border issues along Kenya and Ethiopia, Sudan and even Uganda, which are also conduits for dangerous weapons coming all the way from abroad through Somalia?” Ahmed asked.

Since the attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall there have been calls to send Somali refugees back to Somalia. But Hussein Ali, a resident of Garissa town, told IPS that this “is enlarging the rift between Kenyan Somalis and the government.”

“How can the government tell Kenyan Somalis that we are one, and solicit their help to fight Al-Shabaab when they still haven’t provided them with the same privileges that other Kenyans enjoy?” said Ali, referring to the Somalis living in the disputed border area in Kenya’s North Eastern Province and the lack of investment in the region.

According to Ahmed, North Eastern Province is without proper infrastructure and there is poor health care, no access to running water, and pupils mostly study under trees because of a lack of proper infrastructure.

“Kenyan Somalis will always identify themselves more with their Somalia counterparts and ought to be given the autonomy that the Somalis in Ethiopia enjoy,” Ahmed said.

The lights of El Paso, Texas, seen from Ciudad Juárez. Credit: Daniela Pastrana/IPS

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Mar 1 2013 (IPS)

A group of business executives, civil society leaders, policy experts and former government officials from Mexico and the United States are recommending that the two countries expand cooperative law-enforcement efforts along the border.

They also assert that both countries need to develop a joint plan to address the negative effects that the current immigration system is having on individuals, families and communities.

Established in 2009, the Pacific Council on International Policy and the Mexican Council on Foreign Affairs (COMEXI), a Mexico-based non-profit association, convened for the fourth time on Wednesday here in Washington in order to evaluate bilateral progress in managing the U.S.-Mexico border.There are drug demand issues on the U.S. side, but there are weapons demand issues on the Mexican side.

“The concerns of the report address issues related to both border security and immigration reform,” Rob Bonner, the task force co-chair and a former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Wednesday.

“Migration remains one of the most important features of the U.S.-Mexico relationship, but beyond political rhetoric it has played a smaller part of the policy agenda between our two countries. Now, both domestically and bilaterally, implementing comprehensive immigration reform is within our grasp.”

When it was created, the principle objective of the task force was to introduce a set of policy recommendations for both governments on how to strengthen border security and cooperation, focusing on public safety, migration, facilitation of legal transit and commerce, economic development and border institutions.

The COMEXI report, initially published in 2009, was widely welcomed by government officials in both countries.

“The task force outline posed a specific set of approaches in looking at border management,” Christopher Wilson, an associate at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center, a think tank here, told IPS.

“Many of them fell under the category of shared responsibility, looking at trans-national challenges, taking responsibility for them and then finding ways to work together for a common solution.”

Wilson says the new set-up replaced an older model of bilateral relationship in which one party would typically blame the other for challenges in dealing with the border.

“Look at the example of drugs and weapons smuggling,” Wilson says. “There are drug demand issues on the U.S. side, but there are weapons demand issues on the Mexican side, where there are also rule-of-law issues and violence. The task force sought ways to share responsibility and work together to confront these interconnected problems.”

Since that time, many of the recommendations have been implemented. For instance, the U.S. and Mexican federal governments have made large investments in staffing, infrastructure and technology and have refocused cooperation on security efforts.

Task force members say that several issues remain outstanding, however, including better law enforcement against illegal migration and weapons smuggling, as well as environmental issues like illicit dumpsites, pollution and the reintroduction of native trees.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the task force emphasised the current opportune timing for implementation of these remaining responsibilities, given new administrations in both capitals.

Dealing responsibly with the migration issue is particularly pressing, the task force says, noting that of the hundreds of thousands of people who cross the border illegally each year, the vast majority are economic migrants from Mexico seeking work.

They propose that Mexico and the United States establish a joint commission of economists, demographers, business and labour leaders to analyse the labour market effects of these long-term demographic trends and economic integration.

21st century border

Wilson says this process is about “changing the concept of the 21st century border”, a concept he notes was adopted by Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Barack Obama in 2010 and was largely envisioned by the task force report.

“The idea is that you can have security gains without sacrificing the efficiency of moving people and commerce and still have joint economic prosperity,” Wilson says.

“There is a new Mexico today, one that is in many ways different from the Mexico of 20 years ago. It’s a richer country, largely middle class, with fewer children per family – and thus fewer young people entering the labour force.”

These lower fertility rates have translated into a dramatic reduction in the pressure put on Mexicans to migrate, legally or illegally. Apprehensions at the border are currently at their lowest point in 40 years, for instance – a reflection of both the recent decline in the U.S. economy as well as changes on the Mexican side.

In line with these changes, the U.S. government has instituted a new programme that expedites travel for pre-approved travellers deemed “low risk”.

However, the task force says more needs to be done to fully realise the potential economic partnership. Its members suggest, for instance, that the two countries jointly develop a plan for better managing the relaxation of U.S. federally imposed restrictions on legitimate commerce between border communities.

“The border should be as thin as technologically and politically possible for those engaged in legitimate travel or commerce while remaining difficult to penetrate for those engaged in criminal activity or unauthorized transit,” Bonner said.

“There has been a lot of focus on security but relatively less focus on ports of entry. There is a lot that can be done to improve economic efficiency.”

With talks in Washington currently under way in a major push towards bipartisan immigration reform, the task force believes today’s realities make their recommendations particularly timely.

In January, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a set of principles for comprehensive immigration legislation that includes a “pathway to citizenship” for the 11 million immigrants already in the country illegally, contingent on first securing the country’s borders.

While the U.S. provides permanent residence to more than a million immigrants a year, critics argue that legal permanent residents often must endure years of separation before they can be united with spouses and children, and prospective immigrant workers with approved petitions also often have to wait years for green cards to become available.

Women walk past destroyed shops in Al-Qusayr in Syria. Credit: Sam Tarling/IPS.

By Walter García and Zak Brophy
MASHEREE AL-QA'A, Lebanon-Syria Border, Oct 14 2012 (IPS)

A group of six men listen as voices crackle through a walkie-talkie. They are sitting in a farmhouse in the north of Lebanon less than a kilometre from the Syrian border. The sound of gunfire and shelling in the distance sporadically punctuates the atmosphere. One of the group returns to the room after taking a telephone call. “Good news from the battle,” he exclaims with a smile.

The men are all in, or related to members of, the opposition’s Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is fighting fierce battles for control of a number of villages and the surrounding countryside on the other side of the border. “A military leader for Hezbollah has been killed in Zara’aat along with the head of Syrian intelligence from al-Qusayr,” he continues to tell the group. Earlier in the day the men also received news that at least 13 Hezbollah fighters had been captured and detained inside Syria.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia militia-cum-political party that is the predominant force in Lebanon and it has remained a staunch ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad throughout the uprising. The Syrian opposition and its supporters in Lebanon have long suggested that Hezbollah is actively helping Assad quash the rebel forces, but the party has always denied any direct involvement.

However, the ambiguity surrounding the deaths of a number of Hezbollah fighters, including some highly ranked commanders in recent weeks has aroused accusations to the contrary. With the death of two senior military commanders in August and September the party stated that they had been killed performing their “Jihadi duty”, but did not say where.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah finally made a televised appearance on Thursday evening in which he categorically denied that the commanders had fallen in Syria, while also denying the capture of the 13 Hezbollah fighters.

“The Syrian Army is weak along the border now and Hezbollah is scared that the FSA will take control of all of it,” says Abu Ahmad, a combatant for the FSA on the Lebanese side of the border. He was fighting less than five kilometres from the Lebanese border in Zara’at the day before in a battle that is primarily about securing supply lines.

The FSA needs to maintain routes for the flow of refugees and injured fighters out of Syria while medicine, fuel and weapons move in the opposite direction. The routes from northern Lebanon to the Syrian town of Qusayr, via villages such as Zara’at and Jousi, are particularly important as the rebels in the war-ravaged city of Homs largely rely on them for ammunition and weapons.

Similarly, the army’s ability to hold territory is dependent on its supply lines from the heart of the country. “We have managed to cut their most important routes,” says Abu Ahmad. “They desperately need food and munitions and that is why there is such a tough battle for the villages across the border.”

Refugees and FSA fighters within Lebanon claim that Hezbollah has been using Housh as-Sayed Ali, a district on the border under their control just north of the town Hermel, to provide supplies to the Syrian army and send in fighters to buttress its debilitated forces. They say that the party’s fighters are firing across the border from Lebanon into Syria so as to pincer the FSA between the Syrian Army’s artillery fire from the mountains in the east and to cut their escape routes back into Lebanon.

In his televised speech Sayyed Nasrallah denied Hezbollah had sent fighters into Syria but conceded that members of the party have been fighting there on their own volition in order to protect their homes and families. The border area is essentially undefined, with many Lebanese citizens’ homes and farms falling within Syrian territory. Nasrallah claims Hezbollah supporters living there were attacked, harassed and some even killed by the FSA. While many have fled, others stayed to fight.

The justification is technically plausible but does not bode well for stability at the border. That Hezbollah members are fighting inside Syria with the support, if not the command, of the party hints at how Syria’s trauma is increasingly threatening to Lebanon’s vulnerable security.

Masheree’a al Qa’a, a strip of farmsteads along the border to the east of Housh as-Sayed Ali, is all but devoid of its native inhabitants. “Over the past six to seven months as the conflict has moved onto and over the border the families have all fled,” says Abu Mohammad, a philosophy teacher from Zera’aa living in one of the farm houses with his family.

He made the journey to Lebanon once the army started its aerial bombardment of his hometown and he now lives with his extended family in one of the farmhouses approximately one kilometre from the border. Of his two sons fighting in the FSA, one has been detained by the Syrian Army, and the other smuggles supplies to the FSA.

While standing on Abu Mohammad’s rooftop in Masheree’a al-Qa’a a house on the border can be seen burning. There had been a fierce battle between the FSA and the Syrian Army in the area earlier in the day, so the army set fire to the building once night had fallen.

“We moved to the relative safety here, but it is all relative. The first house on the border we moved to was shelled and I was injured and now we have moved here, but there is often cross border fire and you can see where we were recently hit,” he says pointing to where fist sized chunks of concrete have been ripped from the building. A local resident joins the conversation saying at least ten Lebanese civilians have been killed in cross-border attacks in the area over the past year.

The houses closest to the border have almost all been shelled or burnt to the ground and smugglers and fighters only make the journey to the frontier under the cover of night for fear of sniper fire. “The Syrian regime’s forces destroy the houses along the border so the FSA fighters can’t take refuge there or use them for their snipers,” says Ahmad Fliti, municipality official from the Lebanese border town Arsal.

The FSA’s use of the Lebanese border areas to offer refuge to its fighters and run smuggling operations destabilises the region and traps the Lebanese Army in an implacable bind. However, if Hezbollah is being drawn into the affray across the frontier, the repercussions threaten to be far more disruptive.