AMONGST the biggest stories of 2023 was the stranding and eventual capsizing of a boat in the Mediterranean carrying hundreds of people trying to smuggle themselves into Greece. The fated passengers hailed from many countries, but Pakistan’s was the biggest contingent of all — according to official figures, 262 Pakistanis perished in the disaster.

Fast forward 18 months and yet another boat carrying migrant workers has sunk off the Greek coast. This time approximately 40 Pakistanis died. As was the case in 2023, officialdom blamed human smugglers for the latest Greek tragedy and vowed to hunt them down.

But if things carried on as usual after 262 deaths, why would they change after 40 more? This is not about human smugglers. This is about a venal, militarised ruling class that defends its own interests and a wider socioeconomic order that immiserates tens of millions. So long as the dominant nexus of state and capital remains intact, the desperate working masses will continue to put everything on the line to find a way out of this country to chase the promise of a better life.

The swathes seeking to make it to Greece, Italy and other southern European countries are mostly from central Punjab, which by all accounts is Pakistan’s most developed region. Young people from the ‘core’ are now forced to play with death in increasingly similar ways to their peers from the ethnic peripheries. Akbar Notezai has reported time and again on the perilous business of human smuggling from Balochistan into Iran. What is actually reported constitutes but a small proportion of the whole.

More and more workers look to human smuggling rings to get them out.

In case anyone has been living under a rock, Pakistan is an extremely young country. Upwards of 160 million people are below the age of 25 years. Formal estimates suggest that some 2m young people join the labour force annually — the actual figure, after accounting for the so-called informal sector, is probably closer to 4m. White-collar professionals who enjoy generational class privilege are emigrating in unprecedented numbers. The blue-collar majority faces even more dismal prospects of gainful employment and a decent life in an economy that is choking on debt and a regime of ‘development’ based on natural resource grabs and conspicuous consumption.

Once upon a time, the Gulf kingdoms offered a temporary escape route for working-class migrants. Many rural Punjabi and Pakhtun households sent millions to the Gulf from the mid-1970s onwards, and experienced significant social mobility as a result. But that window is also closing now. Saudi Arabia and the UAE now require far less unskilled workers, with already putrid working conditions deteriorating further for the few that do make it.

So more and more workers look to human smuggling rings to get them out. This is not a cheap process; a single migrant can pay up to Rs30 to 40 lakhs before they cross a border. If they make it, they can forfeit months of their meagre incomes to fulfil their monetary obligations to those who got them there. Then they are faced with the lifelong prospect of trying to secure legal residence in societies that are increasingly under the sway of racist and right-wing leaders.

And what about the tens of millions who cannot get out, no matter how hard they try? They are left to try all sorts of precarious work to earn a living. Most beg to be taken in by patrons who treat them like slaves and pass on all the risk of their particular profiteering racket. Human smugg­ling rackets — like all other ra­­­-ckets in this co-untry — are en­­abled by state functionaries. They function because of the wilful complicity of profiteers within the sta­te apparatus, and so all rhetoric about cutting these rackets down to size is just noise.

The crux of the matter is that a state which still lives on fables about ‘national security’ couldn’t care less about the basic needs of the working-class majority. The establishment and its political lackeys watch tragedy after tragedy unfold, almost all of them due to the structural violence over which the ruling class presides. The government then issues meaningless statements and moves on to the next cynical game for power and profit.

This is why young people are increasingly drawn to the fantastical schemes to overturn a decrepit system, convinced that their preferred choice of charismatic leader will wave a magic wand and get rid of all the bad guys. The problem, however, is not selected bad guys, but a bad system that is imploding under its own myriad contradictions. Our youth are being thrown to the fire.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2024