Pakistan expedites process to deport illegal Afghan nationals

QUETTA: Pakistan issued a new call on Friday for the Afghans nationals living illegally in the southwest to leave the country, triggering thousands to rush to the border, officials said.

Millions of Afghans have poured into Pakistan over the past several decades, fleeing successive wars, as well as hundreds of thousands who arrived after the return of the Taliban government in 2021.

A deportation drive first launched in 2023 was renewed in April when Pakistan’s government rescinded hundreds of thousands of residence permits for Afghans, threatening to arrest anyone who did not leave.

“We have received directives from the home department to launch a fresh drive to repatriate all Afghans… in a respectful and orderly manner,” Mehar Ullah, a senior government official in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, told AFP.

The province borders Afghanistan and there are significant ties between the regions.

SHEHBAZ SHARIF

Meanwhile, the latest AFP report coincides with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s statement on Thursday, who talked about the Afghan nationals living illegally in Pakistan.

The government was executing the programme effectively to send them back to Afghanistan according to international laws, he added.

Read more: Shehbaz says practical strategy followed to root out terrorism

Shehbaz was chairing a meeting where he said Pakistan had adopted a multi-dimensional approach in the war against terrorism.

On Friday, there were “around 4,000 to 5,000 people at the Chaman border” waiting to return, said Habib Bingalzai, a senior government official in Chaman.

Abdul Latif Hakimi, the head of Refugee Registration in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province across the border, said they were aware of an increase in returning Afghans on Friday.

Islamabad says Afghans are involved in terrorism and criminal activities, but analysts say the expulsions are designed to pressure neighboring Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities to control militancy in the border regions.

In total, more than one million Afghans have left Pakistan since 2023, including more than 200,000 since April.

The campaign launched in April targeted the more than 800,000 Afghans with temporary residence permits, some of whom were born in the country or have lived there for decades.

TERRORISM

Some Pakistanis have grown weary of hosting a large Afghan population as security and economic woes deepen, and the deportation drive has widespread support.

Pakistan’s security forces are under enormous pressure along the border with Afghanistan, battling a growing insurgency by nationalist terrorist organisations in Balochistan in the southwest, and the Pakistani Taliban and its affiliates in the northwest.

Last year, Pakistan recorded the highest number of deaths from attacks in a decade and the government frequently accuses Afghan nationals of taking part in attacks.

Iran has also launched a large-scale deportation campaign of Afghans, which has seen more than 1.5 million sent back across the border.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is arriving in Islamabad this weekend where he will discuss a host of issues amid the growing turmoil in the region.

Read more: Pezeshkian to sign trade agreements during Pakistan visit