THE sobering and serious business of unveiling spy accusations against a neighbouring country took a turn for the farcical and unpleasant on Thursday. Addressing a news conference, the voluble Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti made an extraordinary series of claims backed up by a gimmicky confessional video of a suspect, a tactic pioneered by the security establishment and that now appears to have become standard operating procedure to sway the court of public opinion. The allegations are certainly alarming: the five arrested Afghan nationals (and one Pakistani), apparently residents of Pakistan as long-term refugees, were accused by Mr Bugti of working for the Afghan intelligence service NDS and carrying out a bombing and killing campaign across Balochistan. The arrests and Mr Bugti’s hard-hitting statements are likely to further escalate tensions with Kabul that has been bitterly critical of the presence of the Afghan Taliban on Pakistani soil. The spectacle of accusations and recriminations is something that Pakistani and Afghan officials know well, but the latest round comes at a particularly difficult time. Mr Bugti made no mention of it, yet the killing of Mullah Mansour in Nushki and the coronation of Haibatullah Akhundzada allegedly inside Pakistan are likely to pile further international pressure on Pakistan and make the outside world less sympathetic to claims of so-called foreign interference in Balochistan.

Where Mr Bugti crossed the line of behaviour expected from a senior public official was in his remarks against Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. Long marginalised, vulnerable and severely disadvantaged, Afghan refugees in Pakistan should not be made to suffer the verbal assaults of government officials who cloak their bigotry and racism in nationalist rhetoric. The state of Pakistan has legal and moral responsibilities towards refugees, especially those who are the victims of a war that Pakistan first helped fight in the 1980s, and, over the past decade, may have indirectly helped sustain. Moreover, when senior officials like Mr Bugti launch a tirade against entire communities, local officials may interpret it as a licence to harass and persecute the targeted community. While surely some Afghans have been involved in crime in Pakistan over the years, never has any evidence been presented to suggest that as a group Afghan refugees are statistically more prone to violence and crime than Pakistani citizens. What is clear is that while a full-blown Islamist insurgency has raged in Pakistan over the past decade, Afghan refugees have not been known to embrace it. Mr Bugti may want to reflect on that.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2016