No strict action being taken against Afghan families in KP

PESHAWAR: Mapping of the undocumented and Afghan Citizen Card holder foreigners is underway in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while no strict action is being taken after Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur made it clear that no one will be sent back to Afghanistan by force.

A police official said that no action has been taken against the Afghan families in any part of the province. Those who are returning voluntarily are being facilitated by the relevant officials.

“Mapping is underway in different parts of the provincial capital,” Senior Superintendent of Police Operations Masood Ahmad Bangash told The News. The federal government had ordered the repatriation of undocumented and Afghan Citizen Card holder foreigners after the March 31 deadline. The repatriation has begun from Punjab, Sindh and the federal capital via Torkham.

The Afghan families coming from other provinces are being temporarily hosted at two holding centers in Peshawar and Khyber before their repatriation to Afghanistan. However, police and administration in KP have not been ordered by the provincial government so far to take any action against the ACC card holders.

“We have been instructed by seniors that no one will be forced to leave. Only those who want to leave voluntarily are being repatriated,” said an official. There are innumerable videos on social media in which the families returning voluntarily after decades of stay in Pakistan were given an emotional farewell by the locals. Many of the Afghans staying in Pakistan for around 45 years have developed close relations with the locals and some even tied the knot with the locals. Several cases of such families are also in the courts.

As per the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, there are 2.1 million documented Afghans in Pakistan and the majority of them have settled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Out of the 2.1 million, over 800,000 are ACC card holders, while around 1.3 million possess the Proof of Registration (PoR) cards.

Despite no action is underway in KP, there are many families who have started packing up for the homeland due to an uncertain future after spending over four decades in Pakistan.

They include tens of thousands of those who were born in Pakistan and have hardly visited their country in their entire life. Pakistan has been hosting millions of Afghans for almost five decades since the invasion of USSR on Afghanistan in 1979.

While hundreds of thousands of families have returned to their country in the last few years, over 2.1 million are still living in KP and other provinces. Some government departments have put the number of Afghans in Pakistan at over three million.

These do not include the undocumented foreigners, as well as those who are said to have obtained Pakistani documents. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recently expressed its concerns regarding the process.

“The UNHCR is concerned regarding the latest directive, as among the Afghan Citizen Cardholders, there may be individuals requiring international protection. In that light, we are urging the government to see their situation through a humanitarian lens,” stated Qaiser Khan Afridi, the spokesman for the UNHCR.