Afghans Return Home As Pakistan Moves To Expel 1.7 million

As the clock ticked down to the November 1 deadline Pakistan set for undocumented migrants to leave the country, Muhammad Rahim boarded a bus from Karachi to the Afghan border.

“We’d live here our whole life if they didn’t send us back,” said the 35-year-old Afghan national, who were born in Pakistan, married a Pakistani woman and raised his Pakistan-born children in the port city but has no Pakistani identity documents.

Government in Afghanistan said some 60,000 Afghans returned between September 23 to October 22 from Pakistan, which announced on October 4 it will expel undocumented migrants that do not leave.

And recent daily returnee figures are three times higher than normal, Government Refugee Ministry Spokesman Abdul Mutaleb Haqqani told Reuters on October 26.

Near Karachi’s Sohrab Goth area, home to one of Pakistan’s largest Afghan settlements, a bus service operator named Azizullah said he had laid on extra services to cope with the exodus. Nearby, lines formed before competitor bus services headed to Afghanistan.

“Before I used to run one bus a week, now we have four to five a week,” said Azizullah, who like all the Afghan migrants Reuters interviewed spoke on condition that he be identified by only one name due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The Pakistani Interior Ministry did not immediately return a request for comment.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a statement that the expulsion plan was compliant with international norms and principles: “Our record of the last forty years in hosting millions of our Afghan brothers and sisters speaks for itself.”

Pakistan is home to over 4 million Afghan migrants and refugees, about 1.7 million of whom are undocumented, according to Islamabad. Afghans make up the largest portion of migrants.

REUTERS