Europe-bound Pakistani migrants knew what perils awaited them

• Family of Morocco boat tragedy victims sold land, paid Rs4m each so Sufyan and Atif could make it to Spain from Mauritania
• FIA official says ‘success stories’ of those who made it big in the West inspire many to send their family members abroad

About 30 minutes drive from the GT Road, in tehsil Kharian, is located the village of Dhola. When one turns off the carpeted road onto the gravel track that leads to the village, multi-storied mansions dot the horizon, giving a sense of the affluence of the area.

As we enter the village, we stop a passer-by to ask for directions to the home of Sufyan Gorsi and Atif Shehzad — two of the men who perished in a migrant boat tragedy off the coast of Morocco in January.

The youth identifies himself as a resident of the Italian city of Bologna; most families in this village have one or more members settled in either the Gulf region or Europe.

The two were among the 43 unfortunate Pakistanis who perished on the proverbial road to El Dorado; a total of seven people from Gujrat and Mandi Bahauddin were among the victims, while 22 managed to survive and make it back home.

Sufyan and Atif were cousins, and the former had been raised by his uncle ever since his own parents passed away 2004. Both were also married; Sufyan has a baby daughter and two sons, the eldest son just five. He was playing with other children in the outhouse when we arrived.

Atif’s father told us he had lived in Dubai for 30 years, while Atif’s younger brother still works there. The ill-fated young man had himself spent around a decade working in the Emirates.

“If someone is not highly educated, they are sent abroad for work. Parents send their young men abroad to save them from bad company,” says their maternal uncle Chaudhry Ahsan Gorsi, who also lived and worked in Dubai for 22 years before returning to his native village.

He now runs a livestock and dairy business here, but his elder brother still works in Dubai.

Most people go abroad in their teens with doctored documents to make them eligible to work in foreign lands. Atif’s age was similarly enhanced by four years to ensure he could land a job while abroad.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Although everyone knows what challenges and perils await these ambitious young men on their journey to Europe, there is seldom any hesitation when it comes to financing a journey to the West.

According to Chaudhry Ahsan Gorsi, everyone who makes the trek to Europe has to sell some land to bear the expenses. It takes around Rs4 million to finance one person’s travel, which would be impossible to generate otherwise. This is what the two young men also did.

“In the Gujrat and Mandi Bahauddin area, almost 30pc of the population consists of [families of] expats. Those who are living here have close relatives who are settled abroad. If one member of the family reaches there, he pulls others behind him,” says FIA Gujranwala Director Abdul Qadir Qammar.

There are also several success stories of people who went the illegal route and eventually made it big, which is a major lure for many would-be migrants, he says.

“They see big mansions being constructed around them by families whose members have managed to reach Europe, and they want to follow the same path,” Mr Qamar says.

Both Atif and Sufyan left home on Aug 4, 2024, and remained in Mauritania until January, waiting for their boat ride to Spain.

“They left Mauritania for Europe on Jan 2, when they boarded the boat, and asked us to pray for them. Their friends had reached Europe a week earlier, and we expected they would reach their destination in four days,” Chau­dhry Ahsan Gorsi recalled.

“We got the news that immigrants had landed in Spain on Jan 6, but the website only gives the number of people who reached, it does not give details of their nationalities.”

The family expected them to establish contact on Jan 7 or 8, but when this did not happen, they became concerned.

“We used our own contact on another island and asked him to get details… [he] reached there on the 10th… on the 13th we got the news that there was an incident involving a boat near the Canary Islands where people fell into the sea, but they had been rescued. Details were scant and we thought they had been arrested by Moroccan authorities and would be put in jail for a year,” he said.

“Our agent told us that Moroccan authorities had arrested them and he was personally going there to help.”

Their agent was Fahad Gujjar, a resident of the neighbouring village of Jorra. He has since been declared a proclaimed offender, while his mother has also been arrested for involvement in human trafficking.

It was on the evening of Jan 15 that the agent told the family that Atif and Sufyan had perished. The next day, they got the news that Sufyan’s body had been found, but Atif’s was not recovered.

Tussle with traffickers

According to Gorsi, a survivor from the same village told them that everything went smoothly for three days. But when they neared Spain, the African traffickers on board wanted to turn the boat towards Morocco.

There were around 100 souls on board, while around 25 of them were Africans. Once off the coast of Morocco, they halted the boat in the sea and started taking life jackets from those onboard. They also snatched the dried fruit and water supply.

“At night, they got up and started tying the healthy immigrants and torturing them. When they came to beat Atif, Sufyan intervened and they hit him hard, inflicting a deep injury to his eye. This happened on Jan 10. They killed Atif and threw his body into the sea, while Sufyan survived for three or four days.”

Ahsan said he had come to know there were some financial issues between the agents, which caused the tragedy.

Another reason was said to be the death of Zaheeruddin Babar, a resident of Kurrianwala, a village near Dhola.

He died of a heart attack on the boat, and the traffickers wanted to throw his body into the water, but the onboard Pakistanis objected, which offended the traffickers.

Gorsi claimed that Sufyan was still alive when help finally came, but he could not survive the ordeal.

With the perils of illegally crossing the Mediterranean so well-known, why do migrants persevere on this route?

According to Mr Qamar, the FIA director, there has been a change in route preferences; earlier, people preferred the road routes through Iran and Turkey. These have now been abandoned or are seldom used.

“One big reason is more restrictions and fences on the Iran-Pakistan border. There are more risks involved in border crossings.”

There are different costs for crossing via land and sea; the land journey costs around Rs20m, while the sea route through Africa costs double, around Rs40m.

“Over the last couple of years, the trend of border crossings has declined. Illegal immigrants have shifted to air travel; for example, people go to Saudi Arabia on the pretext of performing Umrah, and then fly to Europe from there.”

The FIA claims it has locked up dozens of suspected human smugglers, including 17 wanted by Interpol and 163 proclaimed offenders.

The agency has also set up link offices in Spain, Italy, Greece and Iran, where grade 18 and 19 officers have been posted, to work in coordination with the local authorities.

But despite their best efforts, the push-and-pull factors driving people to try their luck on these dangerous and illegal migrant crossings continue to persist. Unless the international networks that exploit those dreaming of a better life in the West are dismantled across the world, there may be more tragedies yet.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2025

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