Illustration by Alveena Turi
The National Database and Registration Authority has received global praise for the design and maintenance of a vast system that holds the information of 98% of the country’s population. For some, however, it is making normal life impossible
SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2016. Balochistan, Pakistan. Akhtar Mansour, head of the Afghan Taliban, finished his lunch at a roadside cafe, and was en route to the provincial capital of Quetta when his white Toyota Corolla was reduced to a smoldering mass of twisted metal by two Hellfire missiles, fired by a U.S. military Reaper drone.
Mansour was killed in an instant, his death now a footnote to America’s 20-year misadventure in Afghanistan. But he was survived by a shiny piece of mint green plastic, retrieved from the car’s charred remains: an identity card issued by Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) that identified him as Muhammad Wali, a Pakistani citizen.
For Pakistan’s government, the discovery that the leader of the Afghan Taliban had acquired this supposedly secure and unforgeable form of identification was a source of great embarrassment. In response, a nationwide identity “reverification” campaign was launched to root out foreigners posing as citizens, forcing 180 million people to prove that they were, in fact, Pakistani.
That was the summer when, with the War on Terror as a dramatic backdrop, a woman named Gulzar Bibi received a letter from NADRA informing her that her ID card had been blocked. She didn’t know it then, but the news would turn her life upside down and leave her living in fear for years to come.