Thousands of Afghans depart Pakistan under repatriation pressure

SPIN BOLDAK: Thousands of Afghans have crossed the border from Pakistan in recent days, the United Nations and Taliban officials said, as Islamabad ramped up pressure for them to return to Afghanistan.

Pakistan last month set an early April deadline for some 800,000 Afghans carrying Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC) issued by Pakistan authorities to leave the country, another phase in Islamabad’s campaign in recent years to repatriate Afghans.

Families with their belongings in tow lined up at the key border crossings of Torkham in the north and Spin Boldak in the south, recalling similar scenes in 2023 when tens of thousands of Afghans fled deportation threats in Pakistan.

“In the last 2 days, 8,025 undocumented & ACC holders returned via Torkham & Spin Boldak crossings,” the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a post on social media platform X on Monday.

“IOM stands ready to scale up its response at key border points with forced returns expected to surge in the coming days,” it said.

Taliban officials also said thousands of people had crossed the border, but at lower rates than the IOM reported.

Deportation of illegal Afghan migrants under way

Refugee ministry spokesman Abdul Mutalib Haqqani told AFP that 6,000-7,000 Afghans had returned since the start of April, saying “more than a million Afghans might return”.

“We are urging Pakistan authorities not to deport them (Afghans) forcefully – there should be a proper mechanism with an agreement between both countries, and they must be returned with dignity,” he said.

‘An hour to leave’

The UN says nearly three million Afghans live in Pakistan, many having lived there for decades after fleeing successive conflicts in their country and after the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul in 2021.

“We were forced to return. Two days ago I was stopped and asked for documentation when they were searching houses,” 38-year-old Abdul Rahman told AFP after passing the Spin Boldak crossing with his family from Quetta, in Pakistan’s southwest, where they lived for six years.

“They didn’t even gave me an hour (to leave), I sold a carpet and my phone to make some money to come here, all my other belongings we left behind,” he said.

Human rights activists have been reporting for months the harassment and extortion of Afghans in Pakistan, a country mired in political and economic chaos.

More than 1.3 million Afghans who hold Proof of Registration cards from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, have also been told to move outside the capital Islamabad and the neighbouring city of Rawalpindi.

Human Rights Watch has slammed “abusive tactics” used to pressure Afghans to return to their country, “where they risk persecution by the Taliban and face dire economic conditions”.

Ties between the neighbouring countries have frayed since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

Islamabad has accused Kabul’s rulers of failing to root out militants sheltering on its soil, a charge that the Taliban government denies, as Pakistan has seen a sharp rise in violence in border regions with Afghanistan.