Mera Khan

Mohmand

Mera Khan, a tribal elder from Mohmand, isn’t sure when his CNIC stopped working. All he knows is that when he went to purchase a new SIM card in 2016, the shopkeeper told him that it was suspended. Then, he went to the bank, where a teller told him the same thing. 

It took him four-and-a-half years and at least 70,000 rupees ($400) in travel expenses to his designated NADRA office to have the card unblocked. He is furious at having to prove that he is Pakistani, given that his ancestors have lived in Mohmand for centuries. His ties to the land predate the nation itself. When I met him, he posed a pertinent question: how would NADRA have dealt with the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, whose family originally hailed from the Indian state of Gujarat. 

“If NADRA asked Jinnah Sahab for papers, what would he have? A passport from 1947? I gave them documents from a hundred years ago.”

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