Open Letter to Amnesty: Take the Refugees If You Care So Much, Pakistan Is Full

I read the open letter addressed to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif from Amnesty International this week, and honestly, I had to put it down halfway through to steady my temper. The letter, undoubtedly drafted in the air conditioned quiet of a London or Washington office, expresses “grave concerns” regarding Pakistan’s detention and deportation of Afghan refugees. It lectures us on “international frameworks.” It demands we halt the process. It uses words like “harassment.”

But as I finished reading, one question screamed in my head louder than any other: Where is your grave concern for the 90,000 Pakistanis buried in our graveyards dear so called human rights champions?

It is incredibly easy to preach about human rights from a distance. It is much harder to run a country where “refugee camps” have effectively mutated into safe houses for terrorists. Amnesty talks about the rights of the guests. Fine. But what about the rights of the host? The host who has been bleeding, literally and financially, for forty years to clean up a mess we didn’t create?

Let’s rip the bandage off and speak the truth that polite diplomatic circles try to avoid. We are not just dealing with innocent families fleeing war anymore. We are dealing with a national security emergency. Our intelligence agencies have proven, time and time again, that the TTP and other terror networks are using the undocumented Afghan population as camouflage. They hide in the crowd. They weaponize our hospitality to transport explosives into our cities and plan attacks on our soldiers.

Amnesty demands we stop the deportations. I ask: Why? Why should we stop when the killing of Pakistanis continues? We have credible intel that the current regime next door is turning a blind eye or worse, facilitating militants crossing into Pakistan disguised as refugees. Does a “right to asylum” trumpet the “right to life” of a Pakistani police constable standing guard in Peshawar? Does it matter more than the safety of my children going to school? We need an answer dear champions of huamn rights.

Frankly, the double standard is breathtaking. It is rich for the West because let’s be honest, Amnesty is the voice of Western morality to fingerwag at Pakistan while ignoring the catastrophic mess they made here. Who armed the warlords in the 80s? You did. Who abandoned Afghanistan to chaos in the 90s? You did. Dear so called human rights champions Who invaded, spent 20 years and trillions of dollars achieving zero results, only to hand the country back to the Taliban and leave? You did.

You broke it. But you expect Pakistan to keep picking up the sharp pieces with our bare hands.

No country has paid a higher price for the Afghan conflict than Pakistan. We opened our borders when everyone else closed theirs. We saw our economy crumble under the weight. We watched the fabric of our society tear as Kalashnikov culture and drugs spilled over. We lost nearly 90,000 lives to terrorism blowback. And after all of that blood and bankruptcy, we are still handed a report card by an NGO telling us we aren’t being nice enough?

No. That era is over.

To the human rights champions listen, Pakistan has the sovereign right just like the US, the UK, or France to decide who lives within its borders. When Europe feels threatened by migration, they pay dictators in Africa to hold people back or build walls. When the US feels threatened, they enact bans. But when Pakistan tries to secure its soil against an existential terror threat, we are labeled villains.

Moving forward, Pakistan must take every step and it is already taking necessary to protect its own people. This isn’t about hate; it is about survival. If the TTP utilizes the refugee stream to poison our society, then we must dry up the stream. Our security agencies aren’t acting out of malice; they are doing their job to dismantle the terror gangs disguised as victims.

So, here is my counterproposal to Amnesty International and the Western capitals nodding along with this letter: If your heart bleeds so much for these Afghan refugees, please, open your doors. Send the jumbo jets. Issue the visas. Take them to New York, Paris, or Berlin. Settle them in your neighborhoods.

If you aren’t willing to do that, then save the lecture. Pakistan is done paying the rent for your geopolitical failures. Our back is broken, our economy is strained, and our patience is finished. We will not give even one inch of our land to those who wish us harm, nor to those whose presence acts as a shield for our enemies. That is final. Our first duty is to keep our own house safe.