KARACHI: Qadir Mustafa’s daughter started weeping when she overheard him telling her mother to pack the family’s belongings and prepare to leave for Kunduz in Afghanistan.
Seeing her daughter’s heartbroken state, Mustafa’s wife also started crying loudly and Mustafa too could not hold back his tears.
Mustafa, 50, and his family of eight are among 1.7 million undocumented, illegal Afghans in Pakistan who face a Nov.1 deadline by the government to leave or be forcibly expelled.
Pakistan has hosted the largest number of Afghan refugees since the Soviet invasion of Kabul in 1979. Islamabad says the number of Afghan refugees in Pakistan totaled 4.4 million.
After the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021, another 600,000 Afghan refugees have fled to Pakistan, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
Now, Pakistan wants those who don’t have Afghan citizenship (ACC) or proof of registration (PoR) cards to leave, amid rising militant attacks and a chronic economic crisis. Pakistan’s interior minister said this month Afghan nationals had carried out 14 out of 24 suicide bombings in 2023. The Taliban government in Kabul says Afghans are not responsible for Pakistan’s security issues.
“Pakistan welcomed us with open arms, like a mother greeting her children, when we first arrived here in 2000,” Mustafa, whose children were all born in Pakistan, told Arab News from his modest apartment on the outskirts of Karachi.
“When your child asks you, ‘What will happen to my education?’ there is no response but tears.”
Mustafa said he left a well-established business in Afghanistan and came to Pakistan after the Taliban takeover of Kabul so that his two daughters, who both wished to grow up to be doctors, could get an education.
That will not be possible back home in Afghanistan where last year, after signaling that they would open schools for all students, Taliban authorities made a U-Turn, leaving many girls who had turned up to their high school classes in tears and sparking global condemnation that has hampered the Taliban’s efforts to gain formal international recognition.
Since then, primary schools for girls have stayed open but most high schools have been closed and the Taliban barred female students from university, provoking international outcry.
In Pakistan, authorities last month launched a nationwide crackdown against illegal immigrants amid a sharp rise in terror attacks, a majority of which the government says were carried out by Afghan nationals.
Pakistan’s foreign office said this week “institutional mechanisms” had been established to “address any instances of harassment” during the implementation of the plan to expel illegal immigrants. But many Afghans in Karachi that Arab News spoke to said they had been mistreated by police and rounded up despite possessing legal documents that allowed them to stay in Pakistan.
Even Afghans with proper documentation, whom the government had said it will not expel on Nov. 1, say they are going to leave as they fear harassment and persecution.
“No one in our family has a [proof of registration] card, only my wife and I have one,” refugee Abdul Khalil said. “It’s so bad that when I go out, they [police] say you don’t have a card, or they confiscate it and cut it, throw it away, and tell me to leave [Pakistan]. What should we do?”
Khalil said his family would be devastated if he ended up in jail during the ongoing crackdown against illegal Afghans.
“So, what’s the use of staying here? There’s no need to stay, we are going back to Afghanistan of our own will.”
At the Shumali Kabul Transport Service, one of the eight bus services in Karachi transporting Afghan citizens back to their country via Pakistan’s southwestern Chaman border, there was a long queue of people waiting to make a booking.
“A number of those possessing [Afghan citizenship] cards are leaving but most of the ones going do not have cards,” Sher Khan, the owner of the bus service, told Arab News.
Among them is Saeed Rehman, a 55-year-old Afghan refugee who arrived in Karachi three years ago for the treatment of his ailing wife and because of the security situation in Afghanistan and the threat of the forcible recruitment of his sons by warring groups in Afghanistan.
“I have just come back from the doctor’s, I had to go there secretly and come back secretly so the police don’t arrest me,” Rehman told Arab News.
“This is the difficulty we are facing … Over there [Afghanistan] there was fighting ... We came here due to the security situation. We sought shelter here, but now they want to arrest and harass us.”
There was no other option but to return, Rehman added: “We are compelled, we have no other option.”
Meanwhile, Mustafa worries about his daughters’ education.
“The same country that welcomed us like a mother is now forcing us to leave, and my children are in tears.”
