Undocumented Afghans given a month to leave Pakistan

KABUL (Pajhwok): The caretaker government of Pakistan has asked all undocumented refugees, including 1.7 million Afghans, to leave the country by November 1.

Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar approved the plan Tuesday at a high-level meeting of his top civilian and military officials in Islamabad, VOA reported.

"All illegal immigrants residing in Pakistan have until November 1 to return to their countries voluntarily," Interior Minister Sarfaraz Bugti told a post-meeting news conference.

"And if they fail to leave by the deadline, all our state law enforcement agencies will unleash an operation with full-throttle to deport them,” he warned.

Bugti did not share any numbers for undocumented immigrants in Pakistan, but he estimated that more than 1.7 million Afghans were among them.

He said the officials had also decided that Afghans could enter Pakistan only with a valid passport and visa with effect from November 1.

The "one document regime" policy will replace the decades-old practice of granting special travel permits to individuals with divided tribes straddling the nearly 2,600-kilometer Durand Line.

The crackdown on undocumented Afghan immigrants stems from a dramatic surge in terrorist attacks in Pakistan in recent months.

Officials say the deadly violence is being directed from militant sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

"We have come under 24 suicide bomb attacks since January, and 14 of them were carried out by Afghan nationals," Bugti alleged.

He claimed that eight of the 11 militants who recently raided two Pakistani military installations in southwestern Baluchistan province were Afghans.

More than 1.4 million Afghans residing in Pakistan as officially designated refugees and 850,000 Afghan citizen card holders are not the target of the deportation campaign.

Pakistan would issue only as many visas as it can manage if would-be Afghan deportees would like to come back to the country, Bugti said.

The United Nations and global human rights groups have expressed concerns over Pakistani plans to evict Afghans who illegally immigrated.

Amnesty International (AI) regretted the Afghan refugees’ living condition in Pakistan and said they did not receive due international attention.

The human rights watchdog wrote on its twitter handle: “Many Afghans living in fear of persecution by the Taliban had fled to Pakistan, where they have been subjected to waves of arbitrary detentions, arrests, and the threat of deportation.”

It added: “It is deeply concerning that the situation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan is not receiving due international attention.”

sa/mud