Problematizing Afghan Refugees as a Determinant of Terrorism in Pakistan

Author: Ahmad Ali Jan

Abstract

Terrorism is considered one of the major challenges for the economy of Pakistan. Different factors such as poverty, inflation, illiteracy, corruption, and political instability are responsible for the persistent terrorism incidents. However, the role of Afghan refugees in terrorism is largely ignored in the literature. Therefore, this paper studies the relationship between Afghan refugees and terrorism while controlling for inflation and the growth of per person income. The recently developed Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration testing is employed to carry out the empirical analysis. Annual time series data dating back from 1979 to 2017 is used to estimate the specified models. The results indicated that indeed terrorism incidents in Pakistan are positively and significantly influenced by Afghan refugees both in the long run as well as in the short run. Similarly, a positive but statistically insignificant relationship is observed between inflation and terrorism. Moreover, per person income growth and its relationship with terrorism came as a surprise. The causality exercise revealed that per person income is unilaterally causing both terrorism and refugees. Moreover, terrorism and refugees are also unilaterally related. The study recommends based on the findings that Pakistani policy makers shall focus to implement appropriate policies to send back Afghan refugees to their country. Besides, proper checks on macroeconomic policies are also needed to tackle higher inflation and subsequently terrorism would be eradicated.