Last week, I had an interaction with an Afghan family who had recently left Pakistan for Canada after a four-year stay in Karachi. Despite what is going on in the Af-Pak bilateral relations, the family spoke very highly of the Pakistani people. The interaction brought back old memories of my own Pakistani hosts. When Afghans first started arriving in Pakistan in the late 1970s, their Pakistani hosts regarded the Afghans as Muhajireen and themselves as Ansaar—rekindling memories of the Prophet (PBUH) and his companions’ hijra from Makkah to Madina. Indeed, the Pakistani people proved to be worthy hosts.
There was also a time in the 1980s when Afghanistan wanted its Muhajireen back from Pakistan. Babrak Karmal’s government looked into the matter, but without success. General Zia’s government, on the contrary, wanted to keep the Muhajireen in Pakistan for a variety of reasons. Part of the reason had to do with helping fellow Muslims who had escaped occupation and persecution. Part of the reason also had to do with practical considerations, such as highlighting the status of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, which Pakistan viewed as a threat to itself, and recruiting Mujahedin from amongst the Muhajirin. Slogans like “Jihad-e-Afghanistan, Difa-e-Pakistan” could easily remind one of the multi-purpose stay of the Muhajireen in Pakistan.
I spent seven years in Karachi from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. Shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan, I was in a hurry to get back to Afghanistan. One day, our school headmistress, Madam Salma, called me into her office and told me not to go to Afghanistan yet. She said there was nothing in Afghanistan to go to, and that I should complete my education in Pakistan first before going back.
I must add for the record that, including Madam Salma, all my teachers in Pakistan were hardworking, honest, and selfless people. With no social media and very few human rights “businesspeople” around, my teachers treated us, Afghan students, fairly, like their local students. We also felt at home and took an active part in studies and other activities, including celebrating Pakistan’s Independence Day and Pakistan Day.
A bilateral relationship is strong when there are strong people-to-people relations. In the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the people-to-people relations have always been strong, ever since history can recall. Although our nations are contemporary creations based on the European concept of the nation-state, the people in our region predate our nation-states.
Our ancestors have moved unhindered for millennia between Jaxartes and Jamuna, both as traders and raiders, but, more importantly, also as settlers. For instance, the majority of Pakistan’s ruling elite, both civil and military, since its establishment, has been immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, many of whom would have a direct or indirect connection to Afghanistan. Even the Urdu-speaking, Mughal-related Indian immigrants from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh have a direct or indirect connection to Afghanistan. One only has to look at where their patriarch, Zaheer-ud-Din Babur, is buried, or what the summer capital of the Mughal Empire was.
For decades, Pakistan maintained a farsighted policy of admitting and accepting Afghan Muhajirin. More than anything else, and as wise voices have repeatedly said so in Pakistan, the Muhajireen were Pakistan’s most important long-term strategic investment in Afghanistan.
If sanity prevails, the sky would be the limit for genuine cooperation, especially in the cultural and economic arenas, between the two countries
Still, if Pakistan wants to continue to undo its own half-century strategic investment by forcibly expelling the Muhajireen and their second- and third-generation descendants, who know as much about Afghanistan as an average Pakistani, this should be done in a dignified manner. The idea that Pakistan should expel the Muhajireen because they hate Pakistan or are a burden on Pakistan (while the real intent of this policy is to put pressure on the Taliban) is ludicrous. From my own personal experience, the Afghan people do not hate the Pakistani people, the masses. That said, there is resentment and even anger among Afghans towards the Pakistani ruling elite, just like there are Pakistanis who are unhappy with their ruling elite.
The harsh and dishonourable treatment meted out to Afghan Muhajireen highlights a crucial point embedded in the Pakistani ruling elite’s mindset towards Afghans. Although Pakistanis, generally, especially in the initial years of the 1980s and 1990s, have treated Afghans with respect, the same cannot be said about Pakistan’s ruling elite.
It is a mindset that was inherited from the pre-partition Indian Civil Service and the British Indian Army, where the colonial ruling elite looked down on Afghans because we had committed the crime of not allowing the British to colonise us. While anti-British residents of the Subcontinent, including Tipu Sultan of Mysore, respected Afghans and sought assistance from us, the British and their Indian collaborators both fought against us and looked down on us as “savages” and “wild people.” Afghans, at various levels, who have dealt with Pakistani officials from the 1950s to the present (from the Royal Government to the Islamic Emirate) agree that, with minor exceptions, their Pakistani counterparts usually look down on them.
Regrettably, the Pakistani ruling elite’s mentality, which views Afghans with a sense of inferiority and disdain, seems to have spilled over into the fields of sports and media to the point where the people of a land that gave birth to Imam Abu Hanifa, Mawlana Jalaluddin Balkhi (also known as Rumi, especially in the West), and Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani, to name a few, are now only associated with collecting garbage and committing terrorism.
Going a step further, one (especially a Muslim) must do good deeds for the sake of Almighty God only and expect reward from Almighty God only. We are thankful for what Pakistanis did for us, and if and when you need help, and we can, we will, in shā Allah, return the favour. But taunting us every day that we have helped you, for which we must now obey your dictates and do your bidding, otherwise we will be called names or our government overthrown, will not fly. This narrative also seems to have been pushed by the same elements, especially in the age of social media, that look down on us.
If I may also, albeit in passing, address the elephant in the room: the India factor. The hysteria in Pakistan associated with Indo-Afghan relations is misplaced. The recent Indo-Pak war in May 2025 is an indication that you do not need to worry about Afghans colluding with India against you.
Theoretically, India’s “Akhand Bharat” project is in direct conflict with our ultra-nationalists’ “Loy Afghanistan” project. Pakistan, by keeping India and Afghanistan apart, is doing everyone a service by preventing these two contradictory projects from a head-on clash.
Practically speaking, though, we do not look at India only as an enemy of Pakistan. India will soon be the third-largest economy in the world and the second-largest economy in Asia. Any country not legitimately benefiting from commercial and diplomatic ties with India is doing so at its own peril. Still, if the ruling elite in Pakistan does not want “close” Indo-Afghan relations, then it should improve AfPak relations based on mutual respect. The bitter AfPak relations, the closer Indo-Afghan relations.
Finally, I by no means intend to acquit Afghans of wrongdoing. We are not angels. We certainly have our own fair share of mistakes and sins, and I have written about them in detail on previous occasions. I have kept the focus on Pakistan because, unlike Afghanistan, which was for decades under foreign invasion and occupation, Pakistan has had more freedom of action and more options.
Although rulers come and go, people remain and outlast the rulers. With the toxicity and hostility propagated and amplified among Afghans and Pakistanis by certain elements, however, this time around, it could take longer to “normalise” our bilateral relations. Detoxing is usually a longer process than spreading toxins.
Someone once said you could take an Afghan to Hell by consent, but you could not force him into going to Paradise with you. The only workable way forward is improved AfPak relations based on mutual respect, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, and verifiable (not empty) commitments, if any.
The Russian proverb (Доверяй, но проверяй - Doveryay, no proveryay), “trust, but verify,” sums it up well. The British colonial mentality of looking down on us and trying to force us into doing things we do not want to do, or for which we are not responsible, will only make matters worse for all sides.
If sanity prevails, the sky would be the limit for genuine cooperation, especially in the cultural and economic arenas, between the two countries.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the newspaper’s official stance.