First let me start by saying I’m not scared of these guys. The authorities were notified immediately and I’m guessing if they were serious Bad Guys there would be a Holy Shit, Terrorists! alert all over the place. And I know that probably 99% of Pakistan’s citizens want nothing more than to live in peace. It’s not the fault of the average Pakistani that terrorists like to operate in their country and it’s not fair that a whole country gets painted with such a broad brush. Nonetheless, people hear “five Pakistanis jumped ship” and think “terror cell”. In any case, here’s the story:
So there are arrest warrants out for them but nothing specific just yet. I’m thinking we most likely have a case of 5 guys who want to be Canadians but don’t want to wait in line for several years. There is a decent-sized Pakistani community a short ferry ride away in Vancouver but none to speak of here. Nanaimo doesn’t have a mosque but do have an Islamic cultural center which is located in a converted double-wide in a bad part of town. Not the best place to hide if you are on the run from the law.
However, were I inclined to be paranoid, I’d note that it is a holiday weekend coming up here and those aforementioned ferries will be packed with travelers from all over. And I might recall how out of all the countries Osama bin Laden has threatened, Canada is the only one that hasn’t actually been attacked yet.
That is a very good question. I know a lot of people around here think it could never happen to us (who would want to bomb Nanaimo?) and then all of a sudden there’s these guys in our town who may or may not be up to something. And if the answer is that they really are up to no good do we trust our local constabulary to be up to dealing with it? This is the same local constabulary who blew away a mentally disturbed man who made a successful effort to commit suicide by cop. Five Pakistanis of questionable motivation might make them want to break out the ninja gear and the scary black SUVs.
AK84, no offense is intended here. As I said in the OP I’m sure 99% of Pakistan’s people have no desire to harm anyone, much less a little city on Vancouver Island that they have probably never even heard of. It’s less about the guys (whom as I said probably just want to become Canadian themselves) and more about how we respond to them. Reading the comments on the article I linked to, I’m not encouraged so far.
9 out of 10 missing sailors IME end up having found better prospects on another ship. Complete WAG; there pay was bad and infrequent and the conditions were bad. They found places open on other ships for better pay and perhaps a chance to go home more than once every 18 momths.
Maybe they do want to become Canadians. Who knows. Many have; after all the language issue is not really there. But over the past few years migration has been more to Abu Dhabi and Malaysia; not to the West; Pakistanis in general and Immigrents in particular are not popular there as so charmingly illustrated by your opening post.
Would not bother me one iota, to be honest any kind of terrorist connection would not cross my mind, I’d just assume they’d most likely jumped ship to become illegal immigrants.
I grew up with many 2nd generation Pakistani immigrants, some of whom I was friends with. It might suprise some people, but in a country of 170 million people, the vast majority of the population are not terrorists.
