On October 4, Pakistan’s caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti ordered “illegal immigrants” to vacate the country by the end of the month. The move has invoked widespread fear among the around 1.7 million Afghans living in the country.
Several international rights organizations and activists condemned the possible forced deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan. The UN also opposed the deadline, with a spokesperson for the High Commissioner for Refugees saying that return must be “voluntary and without any pressure.”
Bugti said that law enforcement agencies would be utilized to deport illegal immigrants who do not leave by November 1. After the deadline, their properties and businesses would also be confiscated.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid asked the Pakistani authorities to reconsider this “unacceptable” policy.
“Afghan refugees are not involved in Pakistan’s security problem. As long as they [Afghans] leave Pakistan voluntarily, that country should tolerate them,” he wrote on X.
Fear of persecution at the hands of the Taliban and years of bloody conflict forced millions of Afghans to take refuge in neighboring Pakistan. According to the UN, about 1.3 million Afghans are registered as refugees in Pakistan while some 880,000 have the legal status to remain in the country.
Afghan refugees in Pakistan have complained of waves of arbitrary detentions, harassment, and forcible deportation. In the past two years, at least 150,000 have returned to Afghanistan via the Torkham crossing, according to official estimates.
Once again playing football with refugess. Once again manipulating for some other objectives. Once again angry knee jerk reaction. Doomed to end in a backlash. Tripartite agreement allows only voluntary repatriation https://t.co/mQaAWo2IFU
— Farhatullah Babar (@FarhatullahB) October 4, 2023
Afghan officials in Pakistan claimed that the authorities have already begun rounding up ‘illegal’ refugees. In a statement on X, the Afghan embassy said that over 1,000 individuals have been detained in the past two weeks.
Rights organizations note that due to considerable delays in the registration process, many Afghans living in Pakistan do not hold proper identity cards such as Proof of Registration (PoR) or Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) cards. “Many arrived in Pakistan with regular visas, which have since expired,” Amnesty International reported.
In a statement, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) condemned the caretaker government’s decision to evict over one million illegal foreign residents within 30 days. “This decision also contravenes international human rights law and must be reversed immediately,” the rights body said.
The Pakistani authorities claim that Afghans in the country have links to criminal groups and terrorists. However, the HRCP said that holding every Afghan asylum seeker accountable for the wrongs of a selected few “reflects not only an absence of compassion but also a myopic and narrow view of national security.”
“The large majority of such people are vulnerable Afghan refugees and stateless persons for whom Pakistan has been home for several generations,” the HRCP said on X.
Forcible deportations could increase the animosity between the two neighbors amid what many describe as the darkest chapter in Afghan-Pakistan relations.
