Islamabad:
More than 100,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in the past three weeks, the Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday, after Islamabad announced the general cancellation of residence permits.
The campaign is part of a wider campaign that the government began in 2023 to repatriate all illegal foreigners. In the first phase, all undocumented Afghans were expelled, those who had no proof of identity.
Analysts say that expulsions are designed to put pressure on neighboring Taliban authorities in Afghanistan, which Islamabad blame on having fueled an increase in border attacks.
The Interior Ministry told AFP that “100,529 Afghans left in April”.
The convoys of Afghan families have been heading for the border since the beginning of April, when the deadline for leaving expired, crossing a country mired in a humanitarian crisis.
“I was born in Pakistan and I never went to Afghanistan,” Allah Rahman, 27, told AFP on Torkham on Saturday.
“I was afraid that the police be able to humiliate me and my family. Now we return to Afghanistan by pure helplessness.”
Afghan Prime Minister Hasan Akhund sentenced the “unilateral measures” taken by his neighbor on Saturday after the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, Ishaq Dar flew to Kabul for a day visit to discuss returns.
Akhund urged the Pakistani government to “facilitate the return worthy of Afghan refugees”.
Many people go voluntarily, choosing to leave instead of expulsion, but the United Nations Agency for HCR refugees said that in April only, more arrests and detention took place in Pakistan – 12,948 – than last year.
Pakistan’s security forces are under enormous pressure along the border with Afghanistan while fighting against an increasing insurrection by Balutchistan terrorists in the Southwest, and the Pakistani Taliban and its affiliates in the North West.
Last year was the deadliest in Pakistan in a decade.
The government has frequently declared that Afghan nationals participate in attacks and criticizes Kabul for having allowed the terrorists for taking refuge on its soil, Taliban charge leaders.
Millions of Afghans have flocked to Pakistan in recent decades to flee successive wars, as well as hundreds of thousands since the return of the Taliban government in 2021.
Some Pakistanis have tired of welcoming a large Afghan population as security and economic problems were deepening, and the expulsion campaign has general support.
“They came here for refuge but ended up taking jobs, opening businesses. They have taken Pakistani jobs that already have difficulty,” the 41 -year -old hairdresser, Tanveer Ahmad, told AFP while shaving a client.
On Friday, more than half of the Afghans were children, the UNHCR announced. Women and girls among crossings entered a country where they are prohibited from education beyond secondary school and prohibited from many work sectors.
In the first phase of returns in 2023, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans were forced on the other side of the border in a few weeks
