In the 1998 census in Pakistan, it was found that 42,500 Ahmadis were living in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). In the census figures released barely a fortnight ago, it was found that fewer than a thousand, 951 to be exact, were left in the KP. The total population of Ahmadis in the province has thus diminished by a whopping 98 per cent between 1998 and 2023. The figure becomes all the more stark when we find the overall population of the province has registered a rise of 33 per cent during the same period. It has gone up from 30 million to 40 million, according to the latest census figures.
In Balochistan, in 1998 census, it was found that over 10,000 Ahmadis lived in the province. In the recent census conducted officially, only 557 Ahmadis were found living in the province. During six years from 2017 to 2023, Balochistan’s population has shown an increase of 18 per cent. However, at least 74 per cent of the entire Ahmadi population of the province had disappeared in 2023, compared to 2017. Similarly, using figures from the 2023 census, Balochistan has seen its Ahmadi population diminish by 94 per cent when compared to the 1998 census figures.
According to the latest census figures, the population of Pakistan is increasing at a fast pace. During the past six years, from 2017 to 2023, the overall population in the country rose from 208 million in to 240 million in 2023, an increase of 16%. It is thus being said that the population bomb is not ticking but has already exploded in Pakistan. Now contrast this with the sharp decline the overall Ahmadi population in the country which has decreased by 15% over the past six years. This basically translates to a 2.53 per cent decrease every year from 2017 to 2023.
In the more populous provinces of Punjab and Sindh too, the Ahmadi population has decreased within the last six years. However, in these two provinces, there is a miniscule in their overall populations mainly due to migrations from elsewhere, the census figures suggested, according to a report of The Friday Times.
The report says that the onslaught on Ahmadis has been ruthless, and there are three main dimensions to these systematic attacks. One is the official policy of attacking the community through the use of constitutional persecution which dates back to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto era of 1974. The second is the legal discrimination through Ordinance XX and the third is informal religious extremist groups. Radical organisations like Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Tehreek Labaik Pakistan (TLP) have been particularly harsh against the Ahmadis during the past few years.
It is now widely believed that the second Amendment, coupled with Ordinance XX of 1984, will ensure obliteration of the Ahmadi community from Pakistan in the near future. Such legal frameworks are bound to disband and annihilate any target community over time, most human rights experts believe. Incidentally, Zafrullah, first foreign minister of Pakistan under Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was an Ahmadi. Also, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, Abdus Salam, who was a Nobel winner, was also an Ahmadi.
According to the UN, the definition of genocide includes both a mental element of “intent to destroy, whole or in part, a religious group”. It also includes a physical element of “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The element of Ahmadi genocide in Pakistan is fulfilled through laws enumerated in paragraph above.
The physical element of genocide is, on the other hand, fulfilled through repetitive attacks on Ahmadi persons, property and worship places. Recently, during Ramzan, the Ahmadis were forbidden from observing fasts and on Eid ul Zuha later, they were stopped from making sacrifices. If the present policies continue in the corridors of power, the Ahmadi community will vanish from Pakistan altogether.
