Many Pakistanis in Bahrain are living in fear of being targetted, according to reports and the videos posted on the net are depressing to the say the least. Yet, Pakistan army’s manpower agency has not stopped sending more Pakistanis to that troubled Gulf country. Ostensibly, the new recruits are for policing duties, as foot soldiers of the security forces. This makes them all the more easy target for the protestors who have come to see them, not as friends from a fellow Muslim country but as the stooges of a repressive regime. 

Along with the new arrivals, old Pakistani hands are also getting targetted though they are been living there for long years. There are more than 50,000 Pakistanis in Bahrain, many in the police and security services. Quite a significant number of Pakistanis are in low paid jobs, as taxi drivers and painters, for instance

Many of these Pakistanis, like Sunni Arabs, have been naturalized in Bahrain and this is what makes the Shiite majority infuriated as they believes that the ruling Sunni Al-Khalifa dynasty has been liberal in granting citizenship to them in order to ‘tip’  the demographic balance in the kingdom..

Only organisations or institutions which are not accountable for their acts at the end of the day can afford to be with blinkered vision. And from all accounts the Pakistan army and its front organisations were and are not accountable for their actions. Otherwise they would not have brazenly gone ahead with recruitment for Bahrain openly and through new paper advertisements. 

As a report in Dawn says, 1000 Pakistanis have been recruited in the past few days though it is claimed that the process was set in motion much earlier. If the claim is indeed true, the least the foreign office in Islamabad could have done by now is stopping these young Pakistanis from boarding the plane for Manama where a hostile reception awaits them. When most countries are busy making arrangements for the repatriation of their nationals, it makes no sense whatsoever to go where angles fear to tread as the cliché goes. Sadly that is not the case and the elected government of President Zardari and his Prime Minister Gilani is pre-occupied with its own survival problems.

Bahrain bound recruitment has been made through the military-run Bahria Foundation and Fauji Foundation, which train the selected personnel for the Bahrain National Guards.  Bahraini officials and an American instructor are engaged in the task. The American on the job could be a mercenary or he could be another Raymond Davis. But the fact that an American is associated with the recruitment process gives it a new dimension to the callous disregard for people’s plight by a coercive apparatus.