More than 20,000 Afghan migrants living in Pakistan rushed to the border with Afghanistan on Tuesday, according to Pakistani authorities, on the eve of Islamabad’s deadline for them to leave the country.
The Pakistani government has given undocumented immigrants living on its soil – mainly Afghans, whose number it estimates at 1.7 million – until Wednesday to leave on their own, otherwise they will be expelled. Kabul denounced a “cruel and barbaric” measure.
Then, Afghans in an irregular situation risk being arrested, placed in detention centers, then deported to Afghanistan.
“Pakistan is the only country in the world that has hosted refugees for such a long time,” Pakistani Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti explained on Tuesday.
“Only people who are completely illegal will leave Pakistan,” he assured. Some of them decided not to wait and preferred to leave without delay.
“Thousands of Afghan refugees are waiting for their turn in vehicles, trucks and their numbers continue to grow,” Irshad Mohmand, a senior Pakistani government official, told AFP on Tuesday at the Torkham border post, the main crossing point. transit between the two countries.
At least 18,000 people queue for several kilometers in Torkham, he said. Around 5,000 others are waiting at the Chaman border post in Balochistan province, according to local authorities.
In total, more than 100,000 Afghan migrants have already returned to Afghanistan since this plan was announced in early October.
Fear of going home
Despite this influx, a government official in Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where Torkham is located, estimated that the procedure would be relatively quick on the Pakistani side.
This “does not take much time, because they do not have passports or visas and do not need to go through immigration,” he stressed on condition of anonymity.
But Afghan authorities must register new entrants, which takes much longer.
Millions of Afghans have flocked to Pakistan during decades of war – including at least 600,000 since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021 – making it one of the countries that hosts the most refugees in the world. .
Many are afraid of returning to Afghanistan, where the Taliban government has imposed its rigorous interpretation of Islam, for example prohibiting girls from accessing education after primary school.
“We are not going back, because my education would be brutally interrupted in Afghanistan,” explained a 14-year-old Afghan girl in Peshawar, whose family has no papers.
“Our father told us that even if he is arrested by the Pakistani authorities we should not leave. Because we will have no life in Afghanistan,” she told AFP, which decided not to reveal her name for security reasons.
Several schools for Afghan children in Islamabad were closed on Tuesday because students fear being arrested and expelled, teachers told AFP.
” Enough is enough “
Police also supervised the demolition of hundreds of illegally built mud houses in the capital in which Afghans lived in poverty.
” Enough is enough. Show us the way, we will find a vehicle and leave today. This humiliation is too much,” said Baaz Muhammad, 35, a child of Afghan refugees born in Pakistan, as he watched bulldozers destroy his home.
Police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said they had not started arrests. But in Karachi and Islamabad, Afghan refugees have reported raids for several days and said they were victims of harassment or extortion.
Lawyers and activists denounced an unprecedented repression and asked the government to give more time to these migrants, some of whom have lived in Pakistan for decades or were even born there, to leave with dignity.
“The Pakistani government is using threats, mistreatment, and detention to force Afghan asylum seekers without legal status to return to Afghanistan or face the risk of deportation,” Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. .
“The situation in Afghanistan remains dangerous for many of those who have fled, and if they are expelled they will face significant security risks,” the human rights organization added.
The Pakistani government said it was seeking to preserve with this measure “the well-being and security” of the country, where anti-Afghan sentiment is on the rise against a backdrop of economic crisis and an increase in attacks at the border.