Unwelcome Guests

Refugees and Regional Security in South Asia by S.D. Muni & Lok Raj BaralIn impoverished and politically volatile South Asia, the problem of refugees and migrant movement have come to pose a serious threat to regional stability. This has led to drastic policy changes by governments on this subject. Many have come to believe that social stability must supersede liberal notions on the revitalising role of the incoming populations and the host´s duty to grant asylum. Unfortunately, the trend in population movements is likely to increase in the future, what with growing religious and ethnic ferment and the rising phenomenon of economic migration..The case studies presented by South Asian scholars in Refugees and Regional Security in South Asia, edited by Jawaharlal Nehru University´s S.D. Muni and Nepali scholar and presently Nepal´s ambassador to India, Lok Raj Baral, are clear on one issue—there are no easy solutions at present nor indeed any possibility of a regional approach to solving the crisis. In fact, the SAARC organisation does not allow for discussion of bilateral issues, so there is little hope for solving inter-state problems through that channel..South Asia has within it a host of "pushfactors" which generate refugees, including inter-ethnic strife and religious fundamentalis. In his study of ethno-nationalism in South Asia, Shelton U. Kodikara traces the origins of these deadly trends to colonial policies which encouraged communal representation in India and Sri Lanka and redrew administrative boundaries for political considerations. But one aspect Mr Kodikara appears to have overlooked in his study on India is that the resurgence of ethnic and religious fundamentalism in Kashmir with the collusion of an external power has led to the generation of refugees within India. Internal refugees, in fact, are a category that is regularly overlooked in studies on the refugee problem, as are those displaced by developmental projects, such as large dams..India is the largest receiver of refugees in the region. With its easily accessible borders, democratic polity and myriad ethnic and cultural groupings, it has attracted refugees from most of the countries in the region. The presence of such people on Indian soil has had implications not just on domestic politics but also on foreign policy. According to the Tibetan scholar Dawa Norbu, the presence of a large number of Tibetan refugees has not really worked as a bargaining chip for New Delhi when dealing with China. The reason for this, says Mr Norbu, is that China holds most of the aces on the matter..Unlike India, which is primarily a receiver of refugees, Bangladesh is both a refugee generator and host. While India has time and again expressed its unhappiness with the influx of Bangladeshis in search of food security, New Delhi cannot escape partial responsibility for this development. For, in the first place, it used the refugee crisis to actively control and finally conclude the liberation struggle in Bangladesh, in the process redefining its equation with Pakistan and emerging as the regional power..Meanwhile, impoverished Bangladesh grapples with the problem of refugees from Burma, mainly the Muslim Rohingyas. Bangladesh cannot hope for an early solution, writes University of Dhaka scholar Imtiaz Ahmed. The military regime in Burma is in no mood to accommodate any form of dissent at a time when it appears to have things under control on the domestic front, the democratic challenge from Aung San Suu Kyi notwithstanding..In contrast to the relative levels of accommodation shown by India, Bangladesh and even Nepal to incoming populations is the harsh manner in which the Bhutan government has tackled the problem. Today, it looks with suspicion at any attempt at assertion by the Nepali speakers within its borders, and it is the intensification of the one-people, one-nation campaign which has led to the creation of refugees presently to be found in UNHCR camps in southeast Nepal. The imposition of a cultural code of conduct, language strictures, and so on, is in the long run likely to have a bearing on the fate of the monarchy and add to the problems in the Himalayan region. India, which enjoys close ties with both Bhutan and Nepal, will willy-nilly be mired in the problem of Bhutanese refugees if it is not resolved quickly..Afghan Burden.Nowhere is the chaos created by population influx more evident than in Pakistan, where the Afghan crisis and refugee outflow has created immense security problems. There has been a sharp growth in terrorism and the introduction of ethno-demographic imbalances within the country. Normally such crises created by external circumstances have a unifying effect on domestic politics, but the opposite has happened in Pakistan. Pervez Iqbal Cheema sees a link between the arrival of Afghan refugees, the social tensions, and economic problems in Pakistan. The drug menace has been one of the most dangerous fall-outs of the refugee crisis in Pakistan. What began as trafficking to feed the Western market is now a problem of drug abuse within Pakistan. There appears no end in sight to the Afghan crisis which could encourage the refugees to return—a fact which must cause little comfort in Islamabad..There are some similarities between the Afghans in Pakistan and the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India. Beginning with the magnanimous accommodation on the part of the Indians, with an eye to a greater role in Lankan affairs, the Indian government has now had to blot its relatively clean copy book regarding refugees by forcibly repatriating many to war-torn Sri Lanka. The manner in which militants misused Indian soil for their criminal activities has had the unfortunate result of having had a negative impact on genuine refugees who deserve sympathy and support..For scholars of the region, this book is of immense value, since it is one of the first attempts to examine the issue of population displacement on a regional scale. One disadvantage is that it deals exclusively, as the title suggests, with the security implications of refugee movements. The editors make no attempt to deal with the humanitarian aspects of the issue or, indeed, the extent of alienation and deprivation which drives people to move from a situation of poverty to another situation of poverty. Hopefully, this book is a start, and it will encourage other scholars to examine the humanitarian angle of population displacement.