ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign office has said that progress on the cases of thousands of Afghans seeking resettlement in Western countries remains “painfully slow,” insisting that it was only repatriating Afghan nationals who were residing illegally in Pakistan. 

Thousands of Afghan locals put themselves in danger to serve alongside US troops, diplomats, and contractors during the war in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks. These individuals provided linguistic, cultural and geographic knowledge to the United States at great personal risk to themselves and their families. 

Since 2006, the American Congress has established several Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) programs that allow eligible applicants to resettle to safety in the US. After the fall of Kabul in August 2021, thousands of Afghans who had filed such refugee resettlement applications entered neighboring Pakistan, but remain trapped in legal limbo, while facing persistent threats for their collaboration with the US. 

In 2023, Islamabad began a drive to expel what it said were all undocumented foreigners, a campaign that has disproportionately hit Afghans, with reportedly 800,000 repatriated so far. Afghan rights activists and applicants of SIVs have said the deportation drive has also forcibly repatriated scores of Afghans awaiting resettlement in the United States, which Islamabad denies. 

Pakistan has consistently called on Western countries to expedite the approval and visa issuance of Afghan nationals that are currently in Pakistan but awaiting to be resettled in the West. 

“Progress on the cases of thousands of Afghan nationals who were promised resettlement in Western countries remains painfully slow,” Pakistan’s foreign office wrote on social media platform X on Sunday. 

It was responding to Jan England, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who had highlighted the plight of Afghan refugees being repatriated from Pakistan and Iran. 

The foreign office pointed out that Pakistan had hosted over four million Afghan refugees that had escaped their war-torn country for the past 40 years, adding that those being sent back were those that were “residing illegally without any documentation or proof of residence.”

“It would have been more appropriate had the world not abandoned the Afghan people after the war and if conducive socioeconomic conditions had been created inside the country for the Afghan people to prosper,” the foreign office said. It said that the United Nations’ humanitarian aid to Afghanistan remains “critically underfunded” with only 37.5 percent of the required funds secured last year.

“Pakistan has been and will continue to support all efforts aimed at addressing the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan as well as for lasting peace and stability in the country,” the foreign office concluded. 

PAKISTAN’S DEPORTATION DRIVE

Pakistan launched the deportation drive in October 2023 after a spike in suicide bombings which the Pakistan government, without providing evidence, said were carried out by Afghan nationals. Islamabad has also blamed them for smuggling, militant violence and other crimes. 

A cash-strapped Pakistan navigating record inflation, alongside a tough International Monetary Fund bailout program in 2023, had also said undocumented migrants had drained its resources for decades.

Until the government initiated the expulsion drive, Pakistan was home to over four million Afghan migrants and refugees out of which around 1.7 million were undocumented, as per government figures.

Afghans make up the largest portion of migrants, many of whom came after the Taliban took over Kabul in 2021, but a large number have been present since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Islamabad insists the deportation drive is not aimed specifically at Afghans but at all those living illegally in Pakistan. 

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani security forces have launched an operation to clear the northwestern Pakistani district of Kurram of militants, a senior police official said on Sunday, following months of unrest in the region.
Kurram, a district of around 600,000 people in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, has been rocked by tribal and sectarian clashes since November 21, when armed men attacked a convoy of Shia passengers, killing 52 people.
The attack sparked further violence and blockade of a main road connecting Kurram’s main town of Parachinar with the provincial capital of Peshawar, causing medicine, food and fuel shortages in the area, as casualties surged to 136.
The operation in Lower Kurram comes after the KP government announced the establishment of camps for temporarily displaced persons (TDPs), following an ambush on a supply convoy that killed 10 people on Thursday.
“The operation has commenced in Lower Kurram’s Bagan area and the sanitization process to clear the area is underway,” Abbas Majeed Marwat, the Kohat regional police officer (RPO), told Arab News.
“The military will lead the operation, with the police providing second-tier support through the Elite Force, regular police, and other security forces.”
Asked about the scale of the operation, Marwat said it was targeted at specific areas where militants were using hideouts to sabotage peace efforts.
“The operation will focus on certain pockets, particularly in Bagan and its adjacent areas,” he said.
Thursday’s ambush targeted a convoy of 33 vehicles set to resupply local traders in the region with rice, flour and cooking oil and two aid vehicles carrying essential medicine. It followed a similar attack on a supply convoy this month that injured five people, including a top administration official in the region.
The violence has continued despite a peace agreement signed between the warring tribes on Jan. 1. Under the peace agreement, both sides had agreed on the demolition of bunkers and the handover of heavy weapons to authorities within two weeks.
RPO Marwat said the operation aimed to target elements “embedded within the local community who were acting as spoilers.” He said authorities had completed arrangements for TDPs, while some families had already left the most affected areas to stay with their relatives elsewhere.
“The commissioner of Kohat and I visited the proposed sites for TDP camps in Hangu to inspect the administrative and security arrangements,” he told Arab News on Sunday.
“As of yesterday, more than 20 families had relocated [from Bagan] and more are leaving because the situation here remains critical.”
Separately on Sunday, the KP government announced action against militants in violence-hit areas of Kurram, following a high-level huddle in Peshawar.
“Action against few miscreants in the affected areas has become unavoidable and a decision has been made to take strict and indiscriminate action against miscreants,” said a statement issued from the office of KP government spokesperson Mohammad Ali Saif.
For the past three months, the statement said, the KP government had been working hard to restore peace and stability in Kurram, and a peace agreement was reached through a grand jirga in line with Pashtun traditions.
“A few miscreants in Kurram have attempted to sabotage the peace agreement,” it said, adding that the militants attempted to assassinate Kurram Deputy Commissioner Javedullah Mehsud, leaving him seriously injured, and were also targeting security personnel and supply convoys.
The statement said the government feared that the “miscreants” had infiltrated peaceful communities, and to protect peaceful citizens, they would be separated.
“Alternative housing arrangements have been made for the affected population,” it added.
Feuding tribes have battled with machine guns and heavy weapons in Kurram, cutting off the remote and mountainous region bordering Afghanistan from the outside world.
Provincial authorities have been supplying relief goods and transporting ailing and injured people from Kurram to Peshawar via helicopters since late last month.