Pakistan: Now documented Afghans refugees to be repatriated

Pakistan has started preparations to launch the second phase of its repatriation drive to send nearly one million documented Afghans back to Afghanistan, with orders given to district authorities and police to find and gather data of their whereabouts across the nation. An official aware of the development said directives have been issued to district administrations and police to expedite the mapping of Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders, the report said. No date has been announced yet. However, an official said the campaign to repatriate ACC holders could start in early to mid-summer, after receiving go ahead from Pakistan’s federal government.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s additional chief secretary Abid Majeed said, the mapping process has already begun, adding that it will pick up pace after Ramazan and is likely to complete the survey before April 30.According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are 2.18 million documented Afghan refugees in Pakistan, which include 1.3 million refugees having Proof of Registration (PoR) cards as per the census conducted in 2006-07 and an additional 880,000 refugees issued ACCs after a registration drive in 2017. Afghans arrived in Pakistan after the Taliban seized power in August 2021. According to officials, the number of Afghans who arrived in Pakistan was between 6 to 8 lakh.
After the October 31, 2023 deadline ahead of the first drive, no official data was released as to how many of the estimated 1.7 million undocumented Afghans have left for their country since November 2023, though the figure likely fell hugely short of what is now being considered a grossly exaggerated number.But according to informed sources, the total number of undocumented Afghans who have returned to Afghanistan via Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces in the first round stands at around the half-a-million mark.
Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who had called the repatriation of undocumented Afghans “unacceptable”, struck a more conciliatory tone in an interview with Tolo News recently, calling for more refugee leniency from Pakistan.However, undeterred by criticism from Kabul and the concerns voiced by human rights bodies and the UN, Islamabad appears to have made up its mind to continue with its repatriation programme and expand it further to include even documented Afghans.