Amid Pakistan’s historic deportation of Afghans, calls for compassion
| Torkham, Pakistan
Following an uptick in terrorist violence along its western border, Pakistan’s caretaker government issued an ultimatum to approximately 1.7 million Afghans living in the country illegally: leave before Nov. 1 or face deportation.
Last week, authorities made good on their promise, kicking off one of the largest deportation drives of the century with raids on Afghan communities across the country.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onMass deportations of Afghans living in Pakistan mark a dramatic about-face for a country that’s historically served as a refuge for people fleeing from neighboring Afghanistan. Refugee advocates say it signals a startling lack of compassion from Pakistan’s caretaker government.
Many in these communities left Afghanistan during the Afghan-Soviet war in the 1980s. Others fled after the Taliban took back power two years ago. Aid groups say the Taliban are not equipped for the wave of returnees, who are being funneled into slapdash relocation camps near the Torkham and Chaman border crossings. Families are sleeping out in the open, with limited water and no bathroom facilities.
Rights activists and civil society have decried the deportations, challenging whether Pakistan’s caretaker government has the authority to expel hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals and whether this actually makes their country safer. Mohsin Dawar, a politician whose constituency shares a border with Afghanistan, describes the policy as cruel and dangerous.
“For 45 years these people have resided in Pakistan,” he says. “To send them back abruptly without talking to them and without holding any consultations with international refugee organizations … will create chaos.”
In the town of Landi Kotal – less than ten miles from the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan – a sports ground has been converted into an open-air detention center.
Here, Afghan citizens who have been living in Pakistan for years, if not decades, are being processed for deportation, but the conditions they are being kept in remain a mystery. Once a scenic area for cricket and football tournaments, the Gulab Ground has been cordoned off by the Pakistan Army whose soldiers have turned away journalists.
Last month, Pakistan’s caretaker government issued an ultimatum to the approximately 1.7 million Afghans living in Pakistan illegally: leave before Nov. 1 or face deportation. Once the deadline elapsed last week, authorities made good on their promise and began conducting raids on Afghan communities across Pakistan in one of the largest deportation drives of the 21st century.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onMass deportations of Afghans living in Pakistan mark a dramatic about-face for a country that’s historically served as a refuge for people fleeing from neighboring Afghanistan. Refugee advocates say it signals a startling lack of compassion from Pakistan’s caretaker government.
The ultimatum follows an uptick in terrorist violence along the border, and a breakdown of ties between Pakistani leaders and the neighboring Taliban. But as the deportations continue, questions are swirling in Pakistani society: Does the caretaker government have the authority to kick out hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals? Will this actually make Pakistan safer? Where has the country’s compassion gone?
“This is a major policy decision that should have been left to an elected government,” says Maleeha Lodhi, who served as Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2015 to 2019. “Having been a generous host to Afghan refugees for four decades the country should have adopted a similarly humane approach towards poor, innocent people who now face an uncertain and grim future in Afghanistan.”
Crisis unfolding at the border
Among the Afghans apprehended by Pakistani police is Naimatullah, who did not want to give his surname. Sitting on a charpoy near the Torkham border, surrounded by all his worldly possessions, he recounts how he was taken to the border with a police escort. “The police came and dragged us out of our houses,” he says, adding that as “poor people” from Afghanistan – a country that has been riven with conflict for the last 50 years – having their lives uprooted wasn’t such a shock. “We have been living as vagabonds for a really long time,” he says.
During the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1980s, more than 6 million refugees from Afghanistan fled to Iran and Pakistan to escape the violence at home. In the two years since the Taliban retook Afghanistan in August 2021, a further 2 million Afghans are estimated to have left their homeland.
Aid groups say the Taliban are not equipped for the wave of returnees, who have been pouring out of Pakistan and into slapdash relocation camps near the Torkham and Chaman border crossings. Families are sleeping out in the open, with limited water and no lights, heaters, or bathroom facilities.
“Deporting vulnerable people who are at risk of persecution, mistreatment, and even torture or death is a violation of international law,” says Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States.
Some Afghans in Torkham face this uncertainty with resigned acceptance.
Nineteen-year-old Mohammad Yasir came to Pakistan during the Taliban insurgency in 2021. Having been tipped off last week that his neighborhood was about to be raided by the police, he and his family decided to leave the country voluntarily. He keeps thinking about his sister, who was working on a medical diploma in Peshawar, Pakistan.
“She had spent 16 months on the course, and as a family we’d used all our money to educate her,” he says. “Now, with about five months left, she’s being forced to abandon her studies. ... It hurts. It hurts a lot, but we don’t think badly of Pakistan. It’s an order by the government, and we just have to accept it.”
Creating an ‘other’
Addressing the media in Islamabad on Wednesday, caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar blamed Afghan citizens for the recent spate of terror attacks on Pakistani soil.
“Unfortunately, after the establishment of the interim Afghan government, there has been a 60% increase in terror incidents and a 500% increase in suicide attacks in Pakistan,” he said. “Pakistan has the full legal and ethical right to send back foreigners residing in the country illegally.”
Yet Mr. Haqqani opines that the true purpose of this deportation drive is twofold: to distract the Pakistani public from the myriad problems at home, and to convince the international community to provide Pakistan with financial assistance.
“The country’s ruling military establishment has long believed that it can garner western attention and support by appearing to be on the brink,” he explains. “The policy also creates an ‘other’ for the people to hate, distracting them from the repression and economic problems at home.”
Motive aside, the expulsion has sparked swift backlash within Pakistan.
A joint petition filed last week by lawmakers and civil society activists called on the Supreme Court of Pakistan to declare the deportation drive unconstitutional. The petition argues that the policy violates Afghans’ human rights and “raises a grave apprehension for each citizen of Pakistan who is now left at the mercy of a State which sacrifices equality, justice, and fundamental human rights at the altar of ethnicity, caste, and creed.”
One of the petitioners is the politician Mohsin Dawar, whose constituency of North Waziristan shares a border with Afghanistan. He describes the deportation policy as both cruel and dangerous.
“For 45 years these people have resided in Pakistan. To send them back abruptly without talking to them and without holding any consultations with international refugee organizations to a place which has no proper government … will create chaos,” he says.
He worries about the resentment and anger this effort might breed in the Afghan people toward Pakistan.
“Whatever else you’re capable of doing, you can’t change your neighbors,” he says.
