Pakistan moves to expel 1.7 million illegal Afghans after violent attacks
Pakistan’s government has begun expelling approximately 1.7 million illegal Afghans for reasons of "national security,” according to a new report.
Acting Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said the decision was based on the fact that Afghan nationals have carried out 14 out of 24 suicide bombings this year. Pakistani Taliban, an ideological twin of the Taliban in Afghanistan, seeks to impose strict Islamic rule in Pakistan’s border areas and has been behind most of the attacks over the past two years.
In an attempt to quell the violence, the Pakistani government has given refugees without necessary citizenship papers — including an estimated 1.7 million Afghans — until November 1st to leave the country or face arrest or deportation.
Nearly 200,000 Afghans have already left the country. Holding centers have been set up to detain those who have not.
Over two million Afghans, including 1.3 million registered refugees and 880,000 more who have obtained the appropriate legal status, will remain in the country. But the Washington Post frets that those living in the country illegally “are now being collectively punished for the actions of a handful of militants.”
“The large majority of such people are vulnerable Afghan refugees and stateless persons for whom Pakistan has been home for several generations,” wrote the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan last month.
“It is unacceptable to hold them to account for the wrongs of a select few,” it added. “They have a moral right to seek refuge in this country and to be treated with dignity and empathy.”
Some of the Afghan nationals under the deportation order were born in Pakistan or immigrated there as children.
“I lived in Pakistan for more than a decade,” a man identified as Mohmand is quoted as saying at a border crossing. “I have three children and a large, extended family, who are being pushed back after the government did not fulfill its promise of providing us proper documentation. I have no money, no roof. Where do I go back to?”
But the Pakistani government does not view Mohmand’s quandary as a problem it needs to solve. More pressing are the violent attacks disproportionately perpetrated by Afghan nationals.
Although Pakistan in the past backed the Taliban, the interim government reportedly now seeks to rid the country of Taliban elements which once again govern Afghanistan. But western governments oppose Pakistan’s decision.
“Western governments and international agencies also expressed alarm, warning of a new humanitarian crisis in a country like Afghanistan that is already crippled by a collapsed economy and the pariah status of its political leadership,” reports the Washington Post.
