Even refugees who have residence permits have been told to leave Pakistan by the end of the year.
Pakistan has threatened to expel all Afghans whether or not they have permits to stay.
Pakistan has threatened to expel all Afghans whether or not they have permits to stay. An estimated 2 million of the 3 million Afghans in the country are registered with the UNHCR.
Every year, at the start of spring or the end of summer, Afghans living illegally in the country are told to leave. The cat and mouse game that is played out year after year has hardly changed except this year.
Islamuddin Jurat, spokesman in the Ministry of Refugees and Returnees, does not take a serious view of the Pakistani threat. He says it is a political move.”According to the MoU (memorandum of understanding) between our two countries, Pakistan cannot expel Afghan refugees forcefully from Pakistan,” he asserts. The Afghan government has not been informed of the “new decision” by Islamabad. “Not onlydoes the Afghan government not know about the new decision of Pakistan, even the Afghan embassy in Islamabad has not been informed,” he adds.
Under the MoU Pakistan can force Afghans who are illegally in the country to return to their country. The spokesman said the minister of refugees and returnees would be making a trip to Islamabad “to discuss the problems of Afghan refugees with Pakistani authorities.”
Voluntary repatriation
Janan Mosazai, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has ruled out any chance of Afghan refugees being expelled by Pakistan. “Pakistan does not have the right to expel the refugees under any pretext because, based on the agreement between the two countries, the return of refugees is voluntary,” he said.
Mosazai said the basis of agreements between all countries and the UNHCR is that refugees would leave when the conditions are right for their return. Not only would they voluntarily return from Pakistan, they would return from all countries, the spokesman was optimistic.
Killid was unable to interview any recent returnee from Pakistan. Ghulam Haidar Faqirzada,director of refugee affairs in Nangarhar province, told Killid that to the best of his knowledge no one has been forced to return to Afghanistan. He said the provincial Directorate of Refugees and Returnees would not be able to cope with a flood of returnees, and it would affect their coordination with the UNHCR.
Meanwhile, there are reports from both Iran and Pakistan that refugees are under increasing pressure to return home even as Afghan officials continue to be dismissive.
Economic migrants
Political expert Mahmood Saiqal believes the government’s stand is not “sensitive”. He says, “It is the responsibility of the government to be sensitive about such typesof issues. If the Afghan refugees are collectively returned, is the government ready to accept its people?”
However, he acknowledges the refugees are a pawn. He maintains that Pakistan has derived immense economic benefits from instability in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of refugees in the country have contributed to the local economy. “The world knows that Afghanistan is in a situation that if the refugees return a human tragedy would follow them,” he adds.
Saiqal thinks the Afghan government should draw up a new agreement with its neighbours where the refugees are recognised as labour. “The Afghan government can come to an agreement with neighbouring countries on the exchange of human resources: their technical expertise in exchange for our labour.”
New agreement
UNHCR says it is in the midst of negotiations with the Pakistan government on legal status for Afghan refugees after 2012. Afghans who have residence permits are allowed to work and live without harassment in three provinces.
The new agreement has to be finalised before Dec 13 this year when the validity of cards issued to Afghan refugees will expire, according to Nader Farhad, the spokesman of UNHCR.
He revealed that three-way negotiations, involving the Afghan and Pakistan governments and the UNHCR, would start in the next few days.
Farhad said, “Reasonable ways should be found for the return of refugees” living in Iran and Pakistan because they are not political but economic refugees. There is no guarantee they would not cross the border again if forced to leave, he warned.
The UNHCR spokesman said he hoped Pakistan would not expel the refugees after having hosted them for more than four decades.
Continuing violence and instability, and the lack of jobs and poverty, continue to force tens of thousands of Afghans to slip out of the country at the first chance they get.
Says political analyst Habibullah Rafee: “Though the international community and Afghan government agreed on voluntary repatriation of refugees to Afghanistan at the first Bonn conference (in 2001), the Afghan government, due to its weak policies, has not been able to keep its commitments and prepare the ground for the return of all Afghans.”
Rafee believes the government should have done its utmost to provide work opportunities and shelter for refugees but none of that happened. Instead land was handed over to the mafia. The failure to house the returnees has exposed the inherent weakness of the government, he adds.
