For past seven years, the INGO and developmental assistance sector has become a casualty of state’s frustration over the OBL fiasco. Out of a total estimated 150 internationally affiliated developmental organizations operating in the country, 18 were served expulsion notices last year. This is in addition to 30 organizations that were ordered to wind down operations within 60 days in 2017, according to a Financial Times report.

Let’s first get facts out of the way. Under a registration regime introduced by Chaudry’s Nisar’s home office in 2015, the government is within its legal rights to demand expulsion of INGOs that it deems a risk to national security.

Moreover, that the US government used Save the Children as a cover to run a fake polio vaccination program has also been generally accepted. Polio workers across the country suffered a target killing campaign as a result, dealing a severe setback to polio eradication goal in the region.

Deploying covert operatives as aid workers in war torn regions is the stuff Hollywood classics are made of; Western countries have and will continue to use developmental assistance as a tool to further their foreign policy objectives. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, free lunches don’t exist in international relations anymore than they exist in economics.

Moreover, for the US, the prospect of being able to target its number one enemy may have been worth sacrificing future space for INGOs in Pakistan. Can the Pakistani state claim to have achieved an equally worthy goal by expelling INGOs? There are two problems.

One, while no single list of suspended/terminated donor funded projects as a result of state’s policy exists, word in Islamabad is that projects across the country are beginning to stall. Polio eradication campaign is one obvious example.

In an interview with BR Research, Global Program Director Oxfam International noted while states have a right to demand INGOs to demonstrate legitimacy, space has shrunk considerably in terms of what these organizations can do or achieve in recent years.

The words from Oxfam boss should give the state’s overdrive some pause. For decades, developmental assistance organizations have filled in where state has failed, providing infrastructure for basic health and education in far flung regions.

Second, there seems to be an unwritten policy to target organizations of all hue and cries with same brush. Requesting anonymity, resident director of a political foundation from a European country complained that registration renewal for his organization has been declined even though it is a state-sanctioned entity and thus does not even fall under the definition of a non-governmental entity.

Blaming foreign office for abandoning its jurisdiction, he was of the view that scholarships for higher education and research grants to local students have suffered as a result. This from an organization which has operated in the country for past three decades.

He further claimed that status of his organization and those of several other state-funded organizations is in limbo as interior ministry is making decisions for what has been MoF’s purview for past many years.

At a time when Pakistan’s money laundering and terrorist financing regulations is undergoing a review with FATF, targeting developmental assistance organizations will not buy Pakistan diplomatic currency on the negotiating table. Already, militant organizations’ recent photo-ops in ex-FATA have signaled that state remains ambivalent to their utility.

To restate, Pakistan has every right to curb freedom for international organizations that it deems a national security risk, irrespective of their country of origin. But the country’s diplomatic standing may suffer further damage if the actions are not accompanied with justification.

If the state finds reasonable basis to expel an organization, it would hurt no one’s pride if expulsion is followed by a public explanation. It may also find vindication in the press as in the case of Save the Children. Consistent application of policy and transparency in rules of business never hurts the righteous.