Pakistan’s foreign ministry has said it will carry out plans to deport all “illegal immigrants” – including 1.7 million Afghans – in a “phased and orderly manner”, in an apparent attempt to assuage widespread concerns after the policy’s unexpected announcement earlier this week.
Islamabad said on Tuesday that anyone without valid documentation would have to go back to their countries voluntarily before 31 October to avoid mass arrests and forced deportation.
The announcement sent a wave of panic among those living in the country without papers and drew widespread condemnation from rights groups. Activists say any forced deportation of Afghans will put them at a grave risk.
Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the spokesperson for Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs, said on Friday that the new policy was not aimed solely at Afghans.
“We have been hosting Afghans refugees generously for the past four decades”, since millions fled Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation, she said.
Those 1.4 million Afghan nationals who were registered as refugees in Pakistan need not worry, she added.
“Our policy is only about illegal individuals who are here illegally, no matter what their nationality is,” she said. “But, unfortunately there has been a misunderstanding or misrepresentation and for some reason people have starting associating this with Afghan refugees … The laws in Pakistan are similar to laws in many other countries.”
Amnesty International has asked Pakistan to allow the Afghans to continue to live in the country, and a spokesperson for the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has expressed concerns about the policy.
“As a matter of principle it is critical that no refugees be sent back without it being a voluntary and dignified return,” they told reporters in New York on Wednesday.
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In Kabul, the Taliban government’s chief spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, criticised Pakistan’s announcement, saying it was “unacceptable” and that Islamabad should reconsider the decision.
Although Pakistani security forces and police have routinely been arresting and deporting Afghans without valid documents in recent years, this is the first time that the government has announced plans for a major crackdown.
The developments come amid a rise in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, who have hideouts and bases in Afghanistan but regularly cross into Pakistan to stage attacks.
The outlawed TTP often claim attacks on Pakistani security forces but they have distanced themselves from a pair of suicide bombings last week that killed 59 people in areas bordering Afghanistan. No group has claimed responsibility.
Baloch said some people had already started going back to their countries. “We are allowing a grace period until the end of the month,” she said.
Pakistan has long demanded that the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan cease their support for the TTP.
The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group but are allied with the Afghan Taliban, who seized control of Afghanistan in mid-August 2021 as US and Nato forces were in the last weeks of their withdrawal after 20 years of war. The takeover has emboldened the TTP.
Baloch also said that Pakistan’s foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, held talks in China, where he is on an official visit, with Afghanistan’s Taliban-appointed foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi.
“Their meeting was very productive,” she said without elaborating, and she urged the Afghan Taliban to disarm the TTP so that the Afghan territory would no longer be a launching pad for attacks in Pakistan.
But she insisted that the planned crackdown was not aimed at bargaining with the Afghan Taliban authorities. “Absolutely, this is not the case all … we only want all illegal migrants to go back,” she said.
