Afghan refugees face mass exodus in Pakistan

INTERNATIONAL DESK: Around 1.7 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan face a mass exodus as Islamabad has given them an ultimatum to leave the country by November 1. On October 3, Pakistan’s Caretaker Interior Minister Sarfaraz Bugti said in a press conference that the government had “given them [Afghan refugees] a November 1 deadline” to leave voluntarily or face “forcible expulsion” after that date. Bugti claimed that some 1.73 million Afghan nationals in the country had allegedly “no legal documents” to stay, adding a total of 4.4 million Afghan refugees lived in Pakistan.

The caretaker government in Pakistan decided to take the controversial decision after revealing that 14 of 24 suicide bombings in the country this year were allegedly carried out by “Afghan nationals”. Islamabad uses unproven allegations to target poor Afghan refugees to hit back at the Taliban. The development is seen as a straightforward pressure tactic to force the Taliban regime to take actions against the so-called anti-Pakistan terror groups, under the ambit of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), allegedly operating on Afghan soil and to change Kabul’s stance on the Durand Line issue.

As a long-term policy, Islamabad wants all Afghans in the country to leave, either forcefully or voluntarily. Bugti has already warned, “If they do not go… then all the law enforcement agencies in the provinces or federal government will be utilised to deport them.” Interestingly, he did not provide further details on how such an operation would occur in different parts of Pakistan. Whereas Pakistan’s caretaker, Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, recently said Pakistan has “suffered profoundly” from tolerating undocumented refugees. However, civil society and refugee organisations say accusing Afghan refugees in Pakistan of supporting terrorism is mere propaganda.

According to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, more than 3.7 million Afghans in Pakistan fled Afghanistan for economic and political reasons. Only 1.4 million of them are formally registered. The UNHCR has already urged the Pakistani government to prevent the deportation of Afghan refugees “fleeing persecution.”

Nadia Rahman, Amnesty International’s Interim Deputy Regional Director for research in South Asia, recently said: “Afghans in Pakistan are fleeing persecution by the Taliban. They are living incredibly precarious lives where they either have to undergo arduous processes for registering as refugees in Pakistan or are stuck in lengthy processes waiting to obtain relocation to another country. A forced return to Afghanistan could put them at grave risk.” In December 2022, Amnesty International raised its concerns regarding the situation of Afghan asylum seekers and refugees to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Over the past year, Pakistan’s leadership has regularly accused the Taliban of showing a lackadaisical attitude in stopping terror outfits like the TTP, which have reportedly increased their activities inside Pakistan since August 2021. The TTP-led attacks in Pakistan have allegedly killed more than 750 civilians and security forces in the first nine months of 2023, showing more than a 19 per cent increase compared with the previous year. In public discourse, most Afghan refugees are seen as potential terrorists, criminals who traffic drugs or steal jobs in Pakistan.

As a result, the recent mandate from Islamabad will only increase these biased and humiliating views against Afghans in Pakistan. But worryingly for Punjabi-dominated Pakistani society, most Pashtun-majority political parties and civil organisations have rejected the expulsion decision. In a strong statement, Maulana Fazl ur Rehman of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) said, “(Pakistani) Police and bureaucracy have pounced on Afghan refugees like vultures. We ask international (humanitarian) organisations to come and see what is happening to Afghans in Pakistan.” Similar views are shared by other Pashtun leaders in Pakistan, who have rendered the decision a “diversionary tactic” from domestic failures of the Army-backed caretaker government.

Significantly, any forced eviction of Afghan refugees will severely strain the fraught relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Taliban officials have condemned the deportation timeline of “undocumented” Afghan refugees from Pakistan and urged the UN to stop the looming exodus. Mullah Yaqoob, the interim defence acting minister of the Taliban, has labelled the decision as “unjust” and urged the Pakistani people and clerics to halt such “violent” actions against Afghan refugees.

Despite historical ties between the Taliban and the Pakistani state, there are signs of increasing rifts between the two since August 2021. Contentious issues such as cross-border terror attacks, the unresolved Durand Line dispute, and the forced expulsion of Afghan refugees from Pakistan have increased the tension.

For Islamabad, the optimism that followed the Taliban’s return to Kabul in August 2021 has largely faded, and severe challenges to its “strategic depth” in Afghanistan have emerged.

In conclusion, Given the expected chaos and the looming deadline, there is a higher probability of innocent Afghans and their properties being targeted in Pakistan by local security agencies. International human rights organisations like UNHRC may likely intervene to stop the looming “statelessness” of 1.7M Afghan refugees in Pakistan.  (KP)