The enigma surrounding ‘missing persons’ and ‘enforced disappearances’ is a subject that has elicited a diverse spectrum of opinions and viewpoints, sometimes from informed persons, majority of the times from dilettantes. Amidst the pandemonium of narratives and the fog created intentionally around the issue of missing persons, half-truths and fallacies loom, overshadowing what little is available in the discourse to explore.
The contentious nature of the issue of ‘missing persons’ has long been used by adversarial actors, including Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of India and Baloch separatists to exploit the passionate responses of local populace, pitting the masses against state, especially targeting the security forces. The latter have been a major target of adversarial narratives to sow discord amongst the populace and the forces, and subsequently leverage it as a wedge to destabilize the state and foster turmoil within its borders.
While the volume of attention and the excessive racket surrounding missing persons in Pakistan may suggest a major societal crisis, the actual figures do not corroborate such a dire portrayal, rendering the whole narrative as an excessive amplification of the actual magnitude. The state has recorded 9133 disappearance cases in 11 years (75.8% of which have been resolved), with the current count of missing persons amounting to 2207 individuals- a number that dwarfs in comparison even to world’s leading liberal democracies. According to the US National Missing and Unidentified Persons Report, US currently accounts for the highest number of missing persons’ cases, where more than 600000 individuals go missing annually, with 4400 recoveries of unidentified dead bodies. During 2022 alone, 546,568 missing person records were entered into US National Crime and Investigation Centre. Similarly, UK records 180000 missing persons every year, with one individual reported missing every 90 seconds. Pakistan’s eastern neighbor, India records 88 individuals going missing every hour, 2130 individuals every day, and 64851 individuals every month.
It is pertinent to mention that the relatively lower count of missing persons’ cases in Pakistan does not absolve the state from its responsibility to address these disappearances. In response to this obligation, Pakistan had instituted a Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in the year 2011. The commission has received 8463 complaints for cases of missing persons since its inception and has resolved 77% of the cases registered with it.
It is important to recognize that missing person’s cases are diverse in nature and can have various causes (including personal reasons and criminal activities amongst others) which may not necessarily fall in the jurisdiction of Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, but have been registered with the commission. The Commission defines Enforced Disappearance/Missing Person as a person who has been picked up/taken into custody by any Law Enforcing/Intelligence Agency, working under the civilian or military control, in a manner which is contrary to the provisions of the law. The persons, who have gone missing in cases of kidnapping for ransom, personal enmity or on their own, do not fall within the ambit of the Enforced Disappearances (ED).
Over the years, the Commission found many of the individuals reported in the missing persons’ list including:
- Terrorists belonging to Pakistan, who attack Pakistani posts along Pakistan, Afghanistan border and are often killed and buried on Afghan side of the border.
- Madrassah students, who fled to Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq to fight without knowledge of their parents.
- Displaced people from North and South Waziristan Districts who are still living in various refugee camps e.g Gulano Camp in Afghanistan.
- Individuals who lost lives during voluntary migrations and their whereabouts are not known by their families.
- Individuals who went to Afghanistan, were captured by Afghan Security Forces and were kept in the jails. (Missing Persons Commission resolved a number of such cases upon the release of individuals from Afghan Jails, who established contacts with their families)
Moreover, during investigations at Missing Persons Commission, many cases emerged, where individuals willingly disappeared to avoid arrest by Law Enforcement Agencies. In a significant number of cases, individuals who had been reported as missing, were found to have been abducted or assassinated due to personal enmities, with their fate becoming known only after the apprehension of those responsible.
Another major issue in identification of missing persons involves the case of the abandoned dead bodies. The burial of unclaimed bodies by NGOs raise a concerning possibility of the missing persons being interred amongst others. According the estimates, since 2005 over 35,000 unclaimed bodies have been buried by Edhi and Chippa alone across the country, complicating the traceability factor in missing persons’ cases.
The complexity surrounding the cases of missing persons or enforced disappearances needs a multi-pronged strategy encompassing not only the state mechanisms, but also the civil society, international bodies and the affected families. The issue, undoubtedly contentious, demands a comprehensive and inclusive approach- the one that transcends the noise and confronts the intricate realities instead of blind reliance on manipulative adversarial sources that neither solve the problem, nor feel the pain of those being exploited for their agendas. It is, therefore, of critical importance that the populace concerned exercise due vigilance in their judgments and resist the alluring of such agendas.
