Over 100,000 Afghans left Pakistan in April

ISLAMABAD: More than 100,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in the past three weeks, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday, after the government announced the widespread cancellation of residence permits.

The government in Islamabad launched its mass eviction campaign on April 1. Analysts say the expulsions are designed to pressurise neighbouring Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities, which Islamabad blames for fuelling a rise in border attacks. The Interior Ministry said that “100,529 Afghans have left in April”.

Convoys of Afghan families have been heading to the border since the start of April, when the deadline to leave expired, crossing into a country mired in a humanitarian crisis. “I was born in Pakistan and have never been to Afghanistan,” 27-year-old Allah Rahman said at the Torkham border on Saturday. “I was afraid the police might humiliate me and my family. Now we’re heading back to Afghanistan out of sheer helplessness.”

Many Afghan people are leaving voluntarily, choosing to depart instead of facing deportation, but the UN refugee agency, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said that in April alone, more arrests and detentions took place in Pakistan — 12,948 — than in all of last year. Last year was the deadliest in the country in a decade.