By: Sean Mueck
Pakistan has recently begun deporting Afghan refugees after Caretaker Interior Minister, Sarfraz Bugti, announced a recently implemented November 1st deadline for all illegal citizens to leave before law enforcement forcibly deports anyone still residing in the country illegally. Islamabad has stated security concerns after claiming 14 of this year’s 24 suicide bombings were committed by Afghan nationals, despite providing no evidence.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees have already fled in the subsequent days of the October 31st deadline. Significant numbers of Afghans first fled to Pakistan for safety after the 1979 Soviet-Afghan war and the more recent Taliban takeover, which ended the United States’s twenty-year campaign in the country.
The United Nations Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, recently expressed serious concern over human rights violations connected to the mass forced deportation of “unregistered foreign nationals” residing in the country. Türk expressed distress over “reports that the arbitrary expulsion of Afghan nationals from Pakistan has been accompanied by abuse, including ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests and detention, destruction of property and personal belongings, and extortion.” He then went on to state that “many Afghans are arriving with very few financial resources, having been forced to leave their homes and jobs, in addition to being forced to pay bribes or having their possessions seized,” and “In the current context of Afghanistan, this is exacerbating an already precarious humanitarian situation.”
For more than thirty years, four million ethnic Afghans have called Pakistan home, with about two million living in the country illegally. Many residents have called the country home for decades; working laboring jobs as job prospects are higher than in neighboring Afghanistan. Generations of children have been born in Pakistan and are now being forced to return to a country they are unfamiliar with.
Refugees returning to Afghanistan exit Pakistan through two major crossings, Torkham and Chaman. The Taliban has set up camps near both checkpoints to aid citizens. Multiple humanitarian organizations have reported conditions to be extremely poor. Incoming Afghans do not have access to water, heating, and toilets. Most sleep in the open with little to no protection. Families with children worry for the future in the oppressive Taliban-controlled state, where girls beyond the age of twelve are barred from attending school. Without essentials, families struggle to survive in the harsh conditions.
Refugees leaving Pakistan bring little to no possessions, routinely only taking what they can carry on their backs. Money, food, and priceless possessions have been left behind as they await their uncertain future. Kayal Mohammad, who was interviewed by the Associated Press, stated that “he was not allowed to take any household items and that everything he owns still remains in Pakistan.” He went on to state, “His seven-year-old daughter Hawa weeps because she is cold. She drinks tea for breakfast from a cut-up plastic bottle and sleeps without a blanket.”
The arriving Afghans are forced to wait in camps for long periods of time while waiting to be sent to their region of origin. The Taliban has called on Pakistan to halt the deportation of the “illegal” refugees.
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