If al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, want to shop for a US passport, Pakistan is the place to go.
Still unable to decode the latest e-passports, Pakistan’s underworld mafia can nevertheless arrange an older US travel document having a valid expiration date with the help of their international collaborators.
‘American, British, German, Canadian, Australian, all sorts of passports are available,’ said Ali Bhai, an agent linked to the Pakistani passport mafia for the past 20 years.
‘Which one of these you want to buy would depend on your pocket,’ he said.
Bhai, who uses a fictitious name, claimed that even bin Laden and al-Zawahiri could find an old US passport, which would allow them to travel to many countries around the world.
Whether the top al-Qaeda terrorists take advantage of the opportunities available, Pakistan’s forged passport market is flourishing, doing millions of dollars in business every year.
One can buy an original passport of a British national of Pakistan origin for 25,000 to 30,000 dollars and get the picture replaced with one’s own.
‘With such a passport, you can easily travel to Australia, Canada or even the USA because these countries give a visa-free entry to a British national,’ Bhai said. ‘The rates for passports of other Western countries are different, based on how easy it is to use them.’
According to an official in the passport division of the country’s top law enforcement organization dealing with illegal immigration, the Federal Investigation Agency, Pakistan’s counterfeiting rings have links with international syndicates.
‘The way they manage to obtain illegally purchased or even stolen passports from abroad and the sort of technology they are using to replace pictures, date of birth and other entries on the original documents must have come from abroad,’ an official said on the condition of anonymity.
Pakistan has adopted a strict policy to clamp down on the business of illegal passports since 2001 when it joined the US-led alliance against terrorism.
Its National Database and Registration Authority issues citizens computerized identity cards and machine-readable and biometric e-passports.
Zafar Oqba, chief of the Federal Investigation Agency’s Immigration Cell, claimed the new arrangements could hardly be bypassed.
‘You know we have fingerprints and pictures that are checked electronically against our main database,’ he said. ‘This has minimized, if not eliminated, the practice’ of producing fake identification.
But in a society rampant with corruption and where tens of thousands of people are ready to pay money and even risk prison for a better future abroad, the system can’t be foolproof.
‘In the sort of money-minded society we have in Pakistan, every person in the government is for sale although different people have different prices,’ Bhai said.
According to him, officials at the National Database and Registration Authority change the fingerprints and pictures in the main database for a couple of thousand rupees. With some extra money, one can get the electronic record at the Passport Office database easily changed, he said.
‘Sometimes we get information and the latest technology about certain foreign country’s passport security systems from our own officials who learn about it during courses and international seminars in the foreign countries,’ he added.
Some officials of the Federal Investigation Agency and senior managers at the Pakistani airports are also involved in the illegal operations, members of the illegal passport trade said.
‘A shift in charge at the FIA desk at Islamabad International Airport receives 150,000 rupees [1,785 dollars] and the airport manager around 350,000 rupees when a passenger travels on a fake passport for the USA,’ said an agent involved in illegal business who identified himself only by the name Javed.
Last month, Pakistan’s consul general in the US city of Houston appeared in court in Rawalpindi, a garrison city located adjacent to the capital, Islamabad, and admitted that his office issued around 300 fake passports, including three to Indian citizens.
Some staff members of foreign diplomatic missions in Pakistan are also suspected to have collaborated with local criminals.
Recently, the British High Commission in Islamabad lost around 100 Pakistani passports submitted for visas when it was moving its operations to Abu Dubai because of security risks in Pakistan.
Many of the passports bear multiple visas for Western countries and thus can easily be converted into fake passports for illegal immigrants, or even terrorists, if the documents reach the mafia.
‘We are investigating the matter, and for the moment, there are no conclusive findings to be reported,’ said Rob Murphey, deputy spokesman at the British mission in Islamabad.
‘I have worked for years with these passports, and I know it is all about money,’ Bhai said. ‘I have travelled around the world and worked with all sorts of people. White, black or yellow: Everyone wants his share.’