Afghan FM tells Pakistan’s top diplomat deportations are ‘disappointment’

KABUL: Afghanistan’s foreign minister expressed “deep concern and disappointment” to his Pakistani counterpart on Saturday over the forced deportation of tens of thousands of Afghans since the start of April.

Pakistan has launched a strict campaign to evict by the end of the month more than 800,000 Afghans who have had their residence permits cancelled, including some who were born in Pakistan or lived there for decades.

Pakistan’s top diplomat Ishaq Dar flew to Kabul for a day-long visit on Saturday where he held discussions with Afghan Taliban officials, including Prime Minister Hasan Akhund and Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

“Muttaqi expressed his deep concern and disappointment over the situation and forced deportation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan,” the Afghan foreign ministry’s deputy spokesperson Zia Ahmad said on X.

“He strongly urged Pakistani authorities to prevent the suppression of the rights of Afghans living there and those coming here.”

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Ahmad added that Dar reassured officials that Afghans “will not be mistreated”.

Afghans in Pakistan have reported weeks of arbitrary arrests, extortion and harassment by authorities as they ramp up their campaign to expel migrants.

Islamabad has said nearly 85,000 have already crossed into Afghanistan, with convoys of Afghan families heading to border crossings each day fearing raids, arrests or separation from family members.

On Friday, Pakistan’s deputy interior minister Tallal Chaudhry told a news conference that “there will not be any sort of leniency and extension in the deadline”.

“When you arrive without any documents, it only deepens the uncertainty of whether you’re involved in narcotics trafficking, supporting terrorism, or committing other crimes,” he added.

Analysts, however, say it is a politically motivated strategy to put pressure on Afghanistan’s Taliban government over escalating security concerns.

The relationship between the two neighbours has soured as attacks in Pakistan’s border regions have soared, following the return of the Taliban government in Kabul in 2021.

Last year was the deadliest in Pakistan for a decade, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of allowing militants to take refuge in Afghanistan, from where they plan attacks.

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The Taliban government denies the charge.

Second phase of deportations

Chaudhry said on Friday that nearly 85,000 Afghans have crossed into Afghanistan since the start of April, the majority of them undocumented.

More than half of them were children, according to the United Nations refugee agency, entering a country where girls and women are banned from education after secondary school and barred from many sectors of work.

Afghanistan’s refugees ministry spokesman told AFP on Saturday the Taliban authorities had recorded some 71,000 Afghan returnees through the two main border points with Pakistan between April 1 and 18.

In the first phase of returns in 2023, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans were forced across the border in the space of a few weeks.

In the second phase announced in March, the Pakistan government cancelled the residence permits of more than 800,000 Afghans and warned thousands more awaiting relocation to other countries to leave by the end of April.

Millions of Afghans have poured into Pakistan over the past several decades to flee successive wars, but tensions with the Afghan community have risen as Pakistan’s economic and security concerns have deepened.

The move to expel Afghans is widely supported by Pakistanis.

“They are totally disrespectful towards our country. They have abused us, they have used us. One can’t live in a country if they don’t respect it,” said Ahmad Waleed, standing in his shop on Friday in Rawalpindi, near the capital.