Pak kicks out 18 INGOS after rejecting final appeal

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is kicking out 18 international charities after rejecting their inal appeal to stay in the country, a move that an aid group spokesman said on Thursday would affect millions of desperately poor Pakistanis and lead to tens of millions of aid dollars lost.

The majority of the shuttered aid groups are Us-based, while the rest are from Britain and the European Union, according to a government list seen by The Associated Press.

Another 20 groups are at risk of also being expelled after authorities a few months ago singled out some 38 international aid groups for closure, without any explanation.

The development is the latest in a systematic crackdown on International Non-governmental Organisations (INGOS) in Pakistan, with authorities using every bureaucratic excuse, such as discrepancies in visa and registration documentation, to target the organisations.

There is also a perception in Islamabad that the US and European countries have secretly brought spies into Pakistan under the guise of aid workers.

On Thursday, Pakistan’s Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari said on Twitter the 18 groups that were asked to leave had spread disinformation. “They must leave. They need to work within their stated intent which these 18 didn’t do,” she said.

Umair Hasan, spokesman for the Pakistan Humanitarian Foundation — an umbrella representing 15 of the charities — said those charities alone help 11 million poor Pakistanis and contribute more than $130 million in assistance.

“No organisation has been given a clear reason for the denial of its registration renewal applications,” Hasan said.

Pakistan and its security forces are still stinging from a 2011 covert operation that involved a Pakistani doctor, an aid group and a vaccination scam to identify Osama Bin Laden’s home, aiding US Navy Seals who tracked and later killed him.

Islamabad says the United States never notified it of the daring nighttime raid in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad — just a few miles from Pakistan’s top military academy — in advance and that the mission that nabbed Bin Laden invaded its sovereignty.

Military spokesman Gen. Asif Ghafoor denies any link between the closures of aid groups and the Bin Laden operation, insisting they simply did not meet the criteria, though many had operated for decades in Pakistan.