Pakistan Inhumanly Deporting Afghan Refugees

Javed Rana

The mud-dwellings of Afghan refugees wear a deserted outlook with birds eating leftover food. The households of refugees are lying scattered after authorities bulldozed poorly constructed small sized mud cottages near Margalla Town at the outskirt of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad. These were repeated scenes at many outskirts of country’s major urban centers where Afghan refugees have been residing since early 1980s after the then USSR attacked their country. Millions others sought shelter after the US led NATO invaded Afghanistan in late 2001.

Pakistani security forces have become all of sudden hostile against over four million Afghans who have been peacefully living across length and breadth of this 220 million populated Muslim country for last four decades.

Afghan refugees are being chased down by the police everywhere with the warning to the sympathetic population to get ready to face punitive legal action if they provided shelter to any of refugee. There has been repeated announcements in local mosques together with display of posters on electric poles in the streets by the government in major urban centers calling people to immediately report to the police about the hideouts of refugees after their houses were either bulldozed or they were forced to leave from their makeshifts camps. Many of them were detained only to be forcibly deported at country’s northern and southern western borders with Afghanistan.

Reasons Behind Deportation of Afghans

So far Pakistan has deported nearly 300,000 Afghan refugees in what appears to be an inhuman manner over their perceived involvement in social crimes and acts of terrorism. “Illegal immigrants have a big role in spreading unrest in Pakistan, and that is why Pakistan decided to send them back to their countries” justifies Interim Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar. However, Afghan refugees complains that the police has been detaining both legal and illegal refugees.

The controversial decision has drawn flak of many. The resentment has been brewing up in Pakistan’s north and south western provinces which share homogenous Pushtoon population of ardent adherents of Islam with same ethnicity and religious connectivity with Afghans. Both countries share nearly 2700 kilometer long porous zigzag border. Afghan refugees are same to Pushtoons in Pakistan’s bordering provinces as those of Ukrainian refugees to the Europe.

An overwhelming majority among the millions of refugees are second and third generations of Afghans who never visited the homeland of their ancestors. Now they are shocked and don’t know what to do since in most of the cases, they don’t have their ancestral homes in Afghanistan. “Either their homes were bombed by the US, the former USSR or taken over by hostile elements in Afghan society. Virtually they would be at the mercy of harsh cold weather conditions which kill many every years in Afghanistan” says a Pakistani political observer.

“I had no intention to leave Pakistan for rest of my life, had the government not forced us to do so. Neither I can speak Afghan language nor I have any interest to live there. I was born in Karachi and my children have also grown up in the same city. ” says Muhammad Raheem who along with his family was escorted by the police on his way to the borders with Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been under-fire from various international human rights groups over its controversial decision to forcibly deport Afghans” Any return needs to be voluntary and done in a safe and orderly manner, with full respect for rights and protection of those in need” stresses UNHCR’s Representative, Philippa Candler.

After disgraceful exit of US led NATO from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban returned to power after 20 years. It is an open secret that Islamabad discreetly provided shelters to Afghan Taliban aimed at creating tough conditions for foreign troops and particularly to its arch rival India whom it suspects, has been sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan since long.

“Ironically, after return of the Taliban government, there has been a 60 per cent increase in terror incidents and 500 percent rise in suicide attacks in Pakistan,” said interim Prime Minister Anwar ul Haq Kakar blaming Kabul for doing little to expel anti-Pakistan militants from Afghanistan who have been targeting Pakistani security forces. “During last two years, the lives of 2,267 innocent Pakistani citizens were lost life to this tragic bloodshed” he continued.

Kakar said that fifteen Afghan citizens were among the militants who were involved in suicide attacks while 64 other Afghans were killed while fighting against Pakistan’s security forces.

“They (Pakistan) are expecting unrealistic deliverable from the Taliban government. The Taliban have already gone to the extra mile. They have arrested many militants. They have given religious decree saying no one is allowed to fight holy war outside Afghanistan. They have provided a platform for ceasefire that was enforced for months between TTP (Tehreek Taliban Pakistan) and Pakistan. They have been hosting negotiations between two sides. Somehow all of that is not recognized (by Islamabad). Rather than looking at enteral security failures, Pakistan has turned to punishing Afghans collectively” says Abdullah Bahir, a researcher, in Transitional Justice American University New York.

Since last 20 years, Islamabad has been blaming Afghan refugees for their involvement in terrorism. First it was part of its the then discreet policy to deflect West’s criticism over its secret support to the Afghan Taliban and now it seems to be more to create optics to bracket itself with the concerns of the West about the perceived presence of foreign militants in Afghanistan. Kabul has been reluctant to take strict action against some of the key members of anti-Pakistan militant groups given their past support to reinforce their military campaign against the US led forces. Many blame Islamabad to have originally created militant groups such as TTP to reinforce in the past Afghan Taliban’s insurgency against foreign troops. And now many of them have turned their guns against Pakistan.