History could never be asymmetrical and events are always understood in a particular context having their foreground or background.
Whenever foreign invaders occupy a geographical location under the pretense of being saviours, the first organic outcome always is the exploitation of hunger and lack of other basic human necessities. The ambiance of chaos and civil unrest always provides a nursery for inexpensive, low-cost compromises by the local population and history has witnessed this experimentation over and over again.
There is a viewpoint that all who sell their souls to the devil for fulfilling their basic human needs can be considered traitors, but I would prefer calling this a survival phenomenon. The US-led NATO alliance repeated the saviour theme by entering Afghanistan in October 2001 and turbulent economic conditions created a market for the local Afghans to earn their bread. Locals saw the opportunity of buying the bread by labour, such as translation, spying, providing information about the fellow citizens, becoming guides and proxies for other unworthy deeds on which invaders preferred not to risk themselves. All those locals, in exchange for bread and butter plus a promise of being exported to the First World, started performing their assigned duties. The USA also coined a proper noun for them: the “Contractors”.
As the previous performance has finished and the stage setting has been changed, all the old performers have no role to play in a new drama. They are left with nothing but a piece of paper stating a promise which has no legal binding and hopes to be transported as soon as possible to the lands of peace, prosperity and harmony.
Although the Taliban announced amnesty for all those contractors who want to wait and see if mercy prevails or not, and above all the opportunity of settling abroad in “fairyland”, because apart from the breadwinning there was a promise of taking them along with their families to Europe and America to live happily ever after. Now holding that promise in their hands all these contractors need a safe passage and yet again that safe passage is no other place, it is Pakistan.
All these contractors used to hunt Taliban and used to hand them over to US intelligence, which used to send these Taliban to Guantanamo Bay Camp. Then the same contractors, under the wing of Ashraf Ghani and in the shadow of NATO, primarily were busy sabotaging Pakistan’s sovereignty and reputation. Don’t forget Indian funding in the guise of support for Ashraf Ghani’s forces.
For Afghans the irony is that if you are an enemy you will be dragged to Guantanamo Bay and if a friend then you will be taken to Guam. If history has still not taught us that a few nations cannot and can never get out of an “Us Versus Them” mindset, and their animosity or their friendship leads to a similar outcome.
When we review the reality against the dreams we find that the Islamabad administration has taken control of all hotels to dump these contractors before they would be transported somewhere before their landing in the lands of opportunities.
Along with local Afghan contractors, thousands of foreigners, including diplomats and other staff of foreign missions and journalists were among those who were being evacuated to their countries via Pakistan. But the turn of Afghan contractors is yet to come. It may be mentioned that there are two types of people, one group is bona fide foreigners going back to their countries and the second group is Afghan contractors who have left their land and are waiting to find out what foreign land would accommodate them and when.
These contractors are those who had been working with allied forces as translators, informers, drivers, cooks, and guards, and they were promised by the USA that they would be looked after in case the Taliban came back to power. Since April 2021, these contractors had been demanding evacuation, but only some were transported out of Afghanistan before Kabul fell.
Afghan contractors, who by Afghans are called Traitors, would first be managed at “Naval Base Guam” and from where paperwork of their visas and other documentation would be done and then they would be transported to the USA. This process can take months and even years. Officially they will be on US territory in Guam Island, even though it is in the Micronesia sub-region of the western Pacific Ocean.
According to US media, Afghan contractors would be confined and guarded in Guam Island with strict restrictions on free movement. The possibility of many being deported back to Afghanistan cannot be ruled out.
There is a concern in Pakistan that US Afghan contractors had been working under an anti-Pakistan former Afghan government and its intelligence agency, the NDS, and during their stay in Pakistan they can conduct terrorism. However, the administration holds they would not be allowed to leave their hotels and would not be allowed to mingle with people in Pakistan. This concern was also expressed by a number of senior Defence Correspondents during the recent press briefing of Director General ISPR Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar who while responding to such concerns said that if Afghans would be carried to Pakistan they would be restricted to their accommodations.
Pakistan has always been a responsible country, offering support to everybody whenever it is needed. PIA, which was banned by several European countries without reason, transported diplomats and citizens of these foreign countries to their homelands as “safe passage”. Is it not ironic for Europeans that they had requested Pakistan to get them out of Kabul safely, though they had treated Pakistan as an unpleasant country and which was their last choice when appreciating anyone?
For Afghans the irony is that if you are an enemy you will be dragged to Guantanamo Bay and if a friend then you will be taken to Guam. If history has still not taught us that a few nations cannot and can never get out of an “Us Versus Them” mindset, and their animosity or their friendship leads to a similar outcome.
