Afghan Refugees

Haroon Janjua

Pakistan has expelled over 8,000 Afghan citizens in a single week as part of a new repatriation initiative, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

Islamabad had previously called on all Afghan nationals without proper documentation to return home voluntarily by March 31 or face deportation. At the same time, the Pakistani authorities announced they will be cancelling some 800,000 Afghan Citizen Cards which they had issued and urged the Afghan cardholders to leave as well.

Authorities have established refugee centres in several cities to accommodate Afghan nationals before they are transported to the Torkham border crossing in north-western Pakistan.

The situation has escalated, with police actively searching neighbourhoods and streets in cities and villages for Afghan citizens, particularly in Sindh and Punjab provinces.

Human rights activist Ezatullah Bakhshi, currently hiding from the Pakistani authorities, had already been arrested twice since arriving in Pakistan and registering as a refugee in July 2023.

For decades, Pakistan had served as refuge for Afghans fleeing from wars or oppressive regimes in their own country. The latest major wave of refugees came in following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. Official estimates put the total number of Afghans who fled into Pakistan since the 1980s at around 4 million.

But Pakistan now faces security challenges on the border and worsening ties with the Taliban regime in Kabul, which also fuelled anti-Afghan sentiment in Pakistan. Pakistani officials have mounted a series expulsion and deportation drives since 2023, largely ignoring protests by the UN and human rights groups, as well as potential risks for anti-Taliban migrants returning to Afghanistan.

Now, the UN refugee agency believes that about three million Afghan nationals still reside in the country, with approximately 1.4 million holding proper documentation.

At the same time, the Taliban regime also criticised Islamabad’s stance, referring to the latest crackdown as “forced deportation.”

“There is no doubt that the forced deportation of Afghan migrants and this unilateral action is against all international, Islamic, and neighbourly principles,” Abdul Motalib Haqqani, a spokesman for the Taliban-run Ministry of Migration and Repatriation, said recently in a statement.

The Afghans remaining in Pakistan face harassment and live in constant fear of arrest.

Afghans who arrived in Pakistan following the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021 have been relying on visa renewals to stay in the country, a procedure that is costly, uncertain, and often subject to significant delays.

Afghan refugees complain of having to renew their visas every month in an expensive and opaque process.
Maria Noori, an activist in hiding, said that the international community needed to act.

“The Pakistani government has reduced visa durations to just one month, creating a new layer of suffering. People are expected to renew their visas monthly, which is financially impossible for many. Imagine a family of eight–how can they afford repeated extension fees when they can barely feed themselves?” said Maria Noori.

Most of the Afghans in Pakistan are not supporters of the Taliban, and quite a few of them have previously worked with NATO forces, foreign NGOs etc. They are therefore at an increased risk of persecution at the hands of Afghanistan’s de present rulers.

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 46, May 11 - 17, 2025