Islamabad, Sep 5 (IANS) The passport scandal in Pakistan has exposed three deep-rooted failures at the heart of the state: a deteriorating relationship with Afghanistan, politically compromised and corrupt civilian institutions, and a recurring pattern of shifting blame onto an external population, a report has stated.
“Pakistan has discovered that thousands of Afghans have been travelling on Pakistani passports. Islamabad’s preferred conclusion is predictable: Afghan nationals have infiltrated the country’s identity system, exploited its hospitality, endangered its security and damaged its reputation abroad. The scandal therefore fits neatly into the narrative Pakistan has constructed since relations with Kabul began to collapse — a state besieged by Afghan militants, Afghan refugees and now Afghan document fraud. Unfortunately, the documents did not issue themselves,” according to a report in Stringer Asia.
The report noted that this is not simply a case of Afghans obtaining false documents but about Pakistani officials providing genuine papers on false premises.
“If a foreign national can be inserted into a Pakistani family, obtain a Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) and then secure a passport, the process requires more than a talented forger operating from a room in Kabul. It requires access to Pakistan’s administrative machinery, corrupt intermediaries and, in at least some cases, complicit officials,” it stated.
According to the report, Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority NADRA personnel accused of facilitating fraudulent documents are facing criminal proceedings, with some dismissed from service, and more than one hundred agents were reportedly arrested during raids last month.
In July, the Federal Investigation Agency detained NADRA officials suspected of facilitating Afghan nationals and launched a probe into possible links between the network and militant groups. Yet the political narrative continues to cast Afghans as the heart of the scandal while relegating the Pakistani state to the sidelines, Stringer Asia mentioned.
“The foreigner is the infiltrator; the official who sells citizenship is treated as an unfortunate technical malfunction. This reversal is useful because it allows a failure of state capacity to be repackaged as another external threat,” it noted.
The report highlighted that a passport network handling thousands of documents is unlikely to have catered to just one group.
By framing it primarily as a terrorist pipeline, Islamabad avoid the more “embarrassing possibility” that Pakistani identity has become a commodity obtainable through the right broker.
“The surrendered passports are not evidence that Pakistan’s borders have been breached solely from outside. They are evidence that the border was being sold from within,” the report stressed.
–IANS
scor/ksk/as
