EVEN as the news was first breathlessly relayed across the country, the questions quickly mounted.Days later, there are still no answers and Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan’s statements have only deepened the mystery.Matthew Craig Barrett, an American citizen expelled from Pakistan five years ago in nebulous circumstances, returned to the country over the weekend after being granted a visa by the Pakistani consulate in Houston, Texas.Despite being on a so-called blacklist, he was cleared by immigration staff at the Islamabad airport to enter the country.In and of themselves, the details are not sensational: Mr Barrett is a private citizen, has no known connection to the US state or intelligence apparatus, and was previously residing here with his Pakistani wife and two young children.
But it was the circumstances of his expulsion from Pakistan in 2011, allegedly for venturing near a restricted military facility, and the fact that he was branded an American spy in the tumultuous months after the Raymond Davis incident and the Osama bin Laden raid that make Mr Barrett’s case both puzzling and of potentially national significance.If it is a matter simply of visa fraud, the problem is a familiar one and has proved exceedingly difficult to stamp out.Corrupt embassy officials abroad and collusion with immigration staff at Pakistani airports have allowed many a wealthy individual to circumvent the system over the years, though the digitisation and integration of records in recent times has made fraud much harder to perpetrate.
It appears inconceivable that Mr Barrett would attempt to re-enter Pakistan for spying purposes — the idea that an individual who is a Caucasian and a foreign national unaffiliated with the US embassy, essentially a private citizen, can spy inside Pakistan is ludicrous. But such are relations with the US once again and such is the climate of hostility towards foreigners in Pakistan generally that it has automatically been assumed in sections of the media and the political class that Mr Barrett has arrived to cause harm to this country.The interior minister has tried to downplay the spy angle, but perhaps only because of the embarrassment it can cause the government.No effort has been made to clarify the circumstances of Mr Barrett’s expulsion five years ago and the usual tendency to blame junior officials for a mistake — in this case Mr Barrett’s re-entry into Pakistan — has been indulged in. The interior minister can surely do better. http://www.dawn.com/news/1276275/us-citizens-mystery
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