Islamabad, Pakistan – Rehan Aslam’s family ran a transport and car rental business, and grocery stores. Rehan helped run those businesses.
But five months ago, the 34-year-old sold his car, a Toyota Hiace wagon, for 4.5 million rupees ($16,000) to pay an agent who would help him leave behind his life in his village, Jora, in Gujrat district of Pakistan’s Punjab province, in search of a future in Europe.
He never made it.
Rehan, a father of two girls and a boy, was among 86 people who boarded a passenger boat on January 2 near Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania in West Africa, aiming for the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa controlled by Spain.
Stranded at sea for more than 13 days, the vessel was eventually rescued by Moroccan authorities – with only 36 survivors on board. Rabia Kasuri, Pakistan’s acting ambassador to Morocco, confirmed that at least 65 Pakistanis were on board the boat: of them, 43 were dead, while 22 survived.
Rehan was among those who died.
“He just wanted to get to Europe somehow. That was his dream, and he told us not to create any obstacles in his way,” Mian Ikram Aslam, Rehan’s elder brother, told Al Jazeera. “All he wanted was to seek better opportunities outside Pakistan for his three children.”
Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Saturday that it would repatriate the 22 survivors of the recent boat accident off the coast of Morocco, but there’s little closure on the horizon for the families of those who died.
Instead, the tragedy has left in its wake a series of questions. How did the people on the boat die? Why were they travelling to Europe from West Africa – an unlikely and new route for irregular Pakistani migrants?
And why were people like Rehan, from families with some financial stability, risking their lives to get to Europe in the first place?
‘Tortured to death’
This incident on the Western Mediterranean route comes just weeks after four other vessels sank in the central Mediterranean in December last year. In those tragedies, 200 people were rescued, but nearly 50 were reported dead or missing, including at least 40 Pakistanis.
One of the deadliest shipwrecks in the Mediterranean occurred in June 2023, when more than 700 people, including nearly 300 Pakistanis, died after the Adriana, an ageing fishing trawler, capsized near the Greek island of Pylos.
In the latest incident, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry initially announced on January 16 that the boat had “capsized” near Dakhla, a port city in the disputed Western Sahara territory controlled by Morocco. But families of the victims claim their loved ones were “beaten” and “tortured” before being thrown overboard.
Press Release
Incident of boat capsizing off the coast of Morocco pic.twitter.com/0ZNvrjWf4m
— Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan (@ForeignOfficePk) January 16, 2025
Aslam, 49, said survivors from his village reported that pirates on another boat attacked them, stole their belongings and assaulted passengers with hammers before throwing some into the sea.
“We were able to talk with some of the surviving boys in Dakhla, who shared how pirates repeatedly attacked their boat for a week, torturing and throwing people overboard,” he said.
A similar account was shared by Chaudhry Ahsan Gorsi, a businessman from Dhola village near Gujrat city in Punjab province.
Gorsi lost his nephews, Atif Shehzad and Sufyan Ali, who paid 3.5 million rupees ($12,500) to agents to facilitate their journey. Survivors informed him about the brutal circumstances of their deaths.
“These boys sold their land to raise the money and left last August,” Gorsi told Al Jazeera. “But I could never have imagined they would meet such a gruesome fate – physically attacked, tortured and thrown into the water,” he said.
Following the rescue of the boat last week, the Pakistani government sent an investigation team to Rabat to probe the allegations. However, their report has not yet been made public.
“We are still conducting our investigation and have interviewed the survivors about their experiences,” Rabia Kasuri, Pakistan’s acting ambassador to Morocco, told Al Jazeera from Rabat, where she has served for the past two years. Investigators, she said, were still “trying to figure out the details of what unfolded during the days when the boat was stranded in the sea”.
A new route
Despite being one of Pakistan’s most fertile regions, and the home of several industries manufacturing electronic goods such as refrigerators, fans, sports and surgical goods, Punjab’s districts of Gujrat, Sialkot, Jhelum, and Mandi Bahauddin have been hubs for people seeking to migrate to Europe for decades.
According to Frontex, the European Union’s border and coastguard agency, nearly 150,000 irregular migrants from Pakistan have made it to Europe using land and sea routes, since 2009, when the agency started keeping records of migrants entering the European Union.
Most Pakistanis making the trip typically travel to the United Arab Emirates, then take flights to Egypt and Libya before attempting a sea journey across the Mediterranean.
Kasuri, the acting envoy, said the Western Mediterranean route is uncommon for Pakistanis seeking irregular migration. But that choice of route might be the consequence of attempts by Frontex and Pakistani authorities to tighten their curbs on irregular migration, said Pakistani officials.
Overall, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nearly 200,000 people crossed into Europe via various Mediterranean routes in 2024, while at least 2,824 were declared dead or missing.
But while those numbers are still significant, Frontex reported a 38 percent decline in irregular border crossings into the EU in 2024, marking the lowest levels since 2021.
Frontex data reveals that while just over 10,000 Pakistanis made it to Europe in 2023, the numbers fell by half the following year, as about 5,000 people entered Europe through irregular means using land or sea routes.
Since the Adriana sinking in June 2023, which caused national outrage, Pakistani authorities say they have increased and improved their screening to clamp down on human smuggling networks, Munir Masood Marath, a senior official of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency said. But smugglers, in response, have searched and found new routes.
“This is a game of cat and mouse, as we keep tracking the smuggling network, they also find different routes to seek and lure people to use those,” Marath told Al Jazeera in an interview.
Rehan flew from Faisalabad in Punjab to Dubai. Then to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and then on to Dakar, Senegal. From Dakar, the agent took Rehan and others in their group by road to Nouakchott, up north along the Atlantic coast.
The agent, Aslam said, was known to the family. Rehan didn’t face abuse from the agent or his aides and was often able to speak with his family back home over the phone.
Until his death, Rehan’s journey seemed better than what many undocumented migrants making such trips have to endure – something Aslam knew from his own experience.
Europe’s ‘lifestyle’ lure
More than two decades ago, in 2003, Aslam, too, had tried a risky journey to Europe – via land, to Greece. Along with a group of 50 to 80 people from the Gujrat district, he made his way to Pakistan’s southwestern province Balochistan, from where smugglers helped him, and others cross the border and enter Iran.
“We kept walking on foot for months on end, and when we would slow down, they [smugglers] would threaten to kill us or sometimes beat us”, he recalled of his journey.
But after nearly two months of walking and hiding, when the group eventually reached the Turkiye border, Aslam gave up and decided to return home.
“I just told them that I cannot walk any more. I showed them blisters on my feet and begged them to let me go,” he said. They let him go. “It’s a miracle I survived that ordeal,” Aslam added.
Since then, the family has built its businesses, and Aslam, one of five brothers, said they were financially secure. The brothers now run a successful car rental business with a “fleet of 10-15 vehicles”, he said, as well as grocery shops. They also own a small tract of agricultural land.
“Our family was well settled, and Rehan helped me with our business,” Aslam said. “But after failing multiple times to secure visas for Canada or the United Kingdom, he decided to take the risk [going to Europe without documents].”
Marath, the FIA official, pointed out that while economic reasons play their part in compelling people to undertake such perilous journeys, there is also a social aspect. Families, even those that are financially stable, see their neighbours, friends, and relatives whose sons have made it to Europe flaunting their upward social mobility.
Aslam explained that the lure of wealth, better opportunities, and the “chance to live in a more equitable society” pushed people into taking life-threatening risks.
“There is such a rot in our society, people do not get justice for small things,” he said. “So often, when our vehicle is plying between cities, traffic police stop people seeking bribes randomly. For many, it is part and parcel of doing business here, but for some, like my brother, they had enough of it.”
Gorsi, too, recalled how his nephews worked in Dubai at a construction company which he had helped set up before deciding to pursue their European dreams.
“Both these boys had been wanting to find a way to reach Europe. They see the lifestyle of some of our fellow villagers who have managed to send their children to Europe, and how it gave them upward social mobility. So, these two also wanted to try their luck,” he added.
Still, despite his own journey in 2003, and the death of his nephew in January, Aslam was fatalistic – almost as though he was making peace with the dangerous decisions that led to Rehan’s death.
“Our brother made this choice,” he said. “And we knowingly allowed it, despite the risks.”
