 The 250,000 Pakistanis stranded in 66 camps in Bangladesh have been described as the ‘most forgotten people of the world.' These are the people for whom the future seems to have frozen. Having their identity denied after the fall of Dhaka in 1971, a whole new generation has grown up in the most squalid living conditions - and there is still no hope on the horizon.
They were left behind when the Pakistan army and civilians evacuated East Pakistan. Ever since, they have found themselves unwelcome in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Pakistan feared their mass influx could destabilize a fragile and culturally mixed population which shared no similarity with these people who were originally from Bihar. The Pakistan government also believed that since Bangladesh was the successor state of East Pakistan, it had to fulfill its duty in absorbing these refugees just as Pakistan did with the many millions of refugees (including Bengalis) who fled to West Pakistan.
In July 1972, as per the Simla Tripartite Accord, which included Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, 180,000 were repatriated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto - the largest number of stranded Pakistanis brought back to the country so far. However, some 170,000 were still left behind in the camps.
In July 1988, the Rabita Trust for the repatriation and rehabilitation of stranded Pakistanis was established with the consent of President Zia ul Haq with an initial fund of $15 million.
A major step was taken by Nawaz Sharif when he was prime minister. He entered an agreement with Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, activating a process of repatriation of about 3000 stranded families. The first batch of 55 families arrived in the country in 1993 with their air travel financed by Saudi Arabia. However, soon the Sharif government too put a hold to the process.
When Nawaz Sharif came back to power, he convened a board meeting of the Rabita Trust and it was decided to call for financial assistance from member countries - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar. However, the effort was again left in the doldrums and no concrete results were achieved.
New hope for the stranded Pakistanis came in the shape of a self-finance scheme proposed by the Pakistan Repatriation Council (PRC) in 1998. The scheme was based on the principle of employment as a means for the settlement of the stranded Pakistanis but it too has gone the way of earlier efforts owing to the half-hearted approach of the parties concerned.
Under the scheme, Pakistan was to request King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to grant 37,000 visas to the male members of the stranded Pakistanis while the Pakistani High Commissioner in Dhaka was to issue them Pakistani passports and the Saudi Embassy in the Bangladeshi capital would issue them work visas for employment in Saudi Arabia.
Once these persons were to arrive in the Kingdom and gainfully employed, they would produce documents of house lease and request for Pakistani passports for their families and subsequently bear travel expenses for their families through their own income.
In the meantime, the Islamic Development Bank as well as other banks would have been approached to finance the housing of the stranded Pakistanis in Punjab, where free land were allocated for the purpose in 1988. The cost of each housing unit was $ 2,000, with a total cost outlay of $ 74 million, the loans for which would be made available.
While the PRC scheme appeared to be perfectly do-able, it never took off and still hangs in limbo. All that is required of the Pakistani government is to reactivate the Rabita Trust, include Bangladesh's representation on it and implement the proposals for repatriation and rehabilitation with the cooperation and assistance of the Saudi government. For some odd reason, mainly apathy, this is not happening.
The situation in the camps on the outskirts of Dhaka and other places continues to go from bad to worse but the world does not seem to care. Of a total of 13,000 NGOs working in Bangladesh, only five are active in these camps though there are several needs that must be attended to on a priority basis i.e. education, self-empowerment, healthcare, drinking water, housing, etc.
Several schools and clinics inside the camps that were running under the Muslim World League (MWL) and its subsidiary, International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), were closed down in 2007 when their bank accounts were frozen. Provision of wheat, the only regular supply of food to the camps, was also terminated in 2004, further adding to the deprivations of the stranded people.
While children born in the camps after 1971 qualify for Bangladeshi citizenship according to a court ruling, their national identity is still not clear and they do not have access to the basic civilian rights granted to Bangladeshi citizens.
The record of the Islamic world in helping these miserable citizens of the ummah is also not a proud one. Technically, they are Pakistani nationals and should be accepted by this country but that has not happened. Only Saudi Arabia and a few welfare organisations have extended assistance to them. King Abdullah has made generous donations and has motivated various other organisations in the Kingdom, such as the Islamic Development bank (IDB), the Muslim World League and the International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO) to do their bit.
OBAT Helpers, a US-based welfare organization focuses its efforts on 24 camps in six cities of Bangladesh. Its services include education, self-empowerment, healthcare, drinking water and relief programmes. It works in collaboration with two local NGOs and, besides valuable assistance in other areas, has offered loans for trade through self-empowerment (micro-finance), which has created many jobs and has made hundreds of families self-reliant.
According to Anwar Akmal Khan, founder president, OBAT contributed a "quarter million dollars last year for its activities in the Bangladeshi camps."
The Islamic Development Bank's initiative of annually sending sacrificial meat to the camps is also a useful contribution. The quantity of the meat has been increased to 10,000 sacrificial goat carcasses this year.
Pakistani Urdu daily Nawai Waqt established the Nawai Waqt Fund in 2003, offering assistance for the purchase of rickshaws for young men, sewing machines for women, etc.
Despite all this, Mahmud Khan, President of Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee (SPGRC), the largest organization representing the stranded people, is not very optimistic about the "grave situation". He has urged the Muslim world as well as all other international agencies to come forward and work towards relieving the "poor people living in pathetic conditions." He has expressed the concern that if Pakistan does not act soon, more Pakistanis would be forced to accept Bangladeshi citizenship.
"It may be that about 20 percent of the stranded Pakistanis now would like to settle in Bangladesh, provided they are given a full-fledged citizenship status and that the Rabita Trust finances their housing in Dhaka and not in Punjab," he said.
Parliaments in Pakistan and Bangladesh continue to endlessly debate the fate of these hapless people, while they continue to languish in unspeakable conditions, without national identity and without basic rights. They are citizens of nowhere because in the 1971 Bangladeshi secessionist movement, they sided with West Pakistan and have since been the object of the wrath of the Bengalis of East Pakistan.
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