The government aims to send back around 800,000 cardholders to their home country, with preparations underway to remove Afghan citizens from Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Pakistan has stepped up its efforts to repatriate legal Afghan refugees, with a focus on those holding Afghan Citizen Cards, reported ARY News.
The government aims to send back around 800,000 cardholders to their home country, with preparations underway to remove Afghan citizens from Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
This comes after the Interior Ministry of Pakistan started implementing the decisions made in a meeting chaired by the prime minister.
Since launching a crackdown on undocumented foreign migrants in September 2023, Pakistan has forcibly repatriated more than 825,000 undocumented Afghan refugees to their home country, according to the United Nations.
March 31 has been reportedly confirmed as the deadline for the removal of Afghan nationals from the federal capital city and Rawalpindi.
The government has recently intensified its crackdown, targeting both documented and undocumented Afghan refugees.
According to sources of ARY News, March 31 has been confirmed as the deadline for the removal of Afghan nationals from the federal capital city and Rawalpindi.
According to documents, the Afghan citizen card holders will be shifted to other cities by March 31 and then to Afghanistan. Moreover, the stay of Afghan nationals intending to move to a third country has been extended up to June 30.
The Afghan nationals, waiting for visas from some other country, could also not stay in Islamabad, the sources stated.
The Interior Ministry will send the agency’s implementation report to the Prime Minister’s Office every 15 days. “If any other country doesn’t issue visa, the Afghan citizens will be deemed as illegally staying in the country,” according to ARY News.
Meanwhile two weeks ago, the Afghanistan embassy in Pakistan warned that the government wants to remove all Afghan refugees from the capital, Islamabad, and the adjoining city of Rawalpindi.
The embassy issued a strongly worded statement, saying Afghan nationals in both cities have been subjected to arrests, searches and orders from the police to leave and relocate to other parts of Pakistan.
The warning came as the relationship between the two countries is deteriorating, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of failing to curb cross-border attacks.
“This process of detaining Afghans, which began without any formal announcement, has not been officially communicated to the Embassy of Afghanistan in Islamabad through any formal correspondence,” Al Jazeera quoted the embassy as saying.
“Ultimately, officials from Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that there is a definitive and final plan to deport/remove all Afghan refugees not only from Islamabad and Rawalpindi but also from the entire country in the near future,” it added.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that over 18,000 Afghan nationals returned to Afghanistan from the cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi between the beginning and end of January this year, as per Khaama Press.
On Wednesday, the IOM published a report stating that 9,846 individuals returned to Afghanistan during the second half of January alone. The returnees filed relevant forms related to their repatriation to Afghanistan between January 16 and 31, with 291 heads of families completing the forms, as per Khaama Press.
According to the report, from September 2023 to date, a total of 824,568 individuals have returned to Afghanistan, with 18,577 people making the journey back in January, representing 2 per cent of the total number of returnees.
The report also highlighted that these refugees returned through border crossings, including Torkham, Chaman, Ghulam Khan, Badini, and Berramcha. The data shows that 46 per cent of returnees were between the ages of 18 and 59, while 30 per cent were between the ages of 5 and 17.
The IOM specified that 78 per cent of Afghan migrants left Pakistan due to fear of arrest by the Pakistani police. Additionally, 34 per cent of these migrants cited the inability to pay rent as a reason for their return to Afghanistan.
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