Islamabad:
Pakistan revealed in the United States that this would expel all Afghans awaiting resettlement in America if the deadline fixed for their resettlement was not respected or if their cases were refused.
The message was sent by diplomatic channels after President Donald Trump published an executive decree suspending the Afghan refugee settlement program for 90 days.
Thousands of Afghans, who worked for the United States and other Western countries during their campaign against the Afghan Taliban, fled in Pakistan and asked for a temporary stay.
Pakistan has accepted the United States and its allies ask to allow them to stay in the country for a short period before leaving Islamabad for their respective destinations.
The United States and its allies have promised special immigration visas to all these Afghans who worked for them.
However, the relocation process was meticulously slow during the time of administration of Biden.
The previous American government had agreed to move all Afghans eligible for a special immigration visa by September 2025.
However, with President Trump suspending the program, respecting the deadline seems impossible.
Pakistan fears that such Afghans will never be moved to the United States, given the difficult anti-immigration policy that the current administration.
This is the reason why he decided to transmit in unambiguous terms to the Trump administration that this would not allow these Afghans to stay in Pakistan beyond September 2025.
None of the parties shared the exact number of Afghans stranded in Pakistan, but some estimates suggest that it is between 15,000 and 25,000.
During a recent interview with TRT World, Darrier Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ishaq Dar confirmed that Pakistan would expel all Afghans if they were not moved to the United States in time.
“If a refugee who was undertaken to be taken by another country after a regular procedure – he does not count the chronology – if this does not happen and the country refuses, then for us, it will be an illegal immigrant to Pakistan, and we could be forced to refer such refugees to their country of origin, which is Afghanistan,” said Dar.
However, the Minister of Foreign Affairs left the door open to interviews with Washington to resolve the situation.
Pakistan has generally decided to strengthen politics towards Afghan refugees. He plans to ensure the repatriation of all Afghans living in the country.
The campaign was launched for the first time in October 2023 against undocumented Afghans, but the government now wants to extend this to all Afghans regardless of their legal status.
The reason for Pakistan’s push for the expulsion of Afghans stems from its tight links with the Taliban regime.
