Pakistan threatens to deport Afghans awaiting resettlement abroad

Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif threatened on Monday to deport Afghan refugees awaiting resettlement abroad if the host nations failed to swiftly accept them. Asif made the comments in an interview with Geo News, where he was asked about the fate of Afghans stranded in Pakistan in the wake of Donald Trump's rhetoric against foreigners.About 175,000 Afghans came to Pakistan with a plan to settle in the US and other Western countries after the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, he said, adding that thousands were still living in Pakistan, waiting for repatriation.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif decided last week that the refugees would be deported back to Afghanistan unless their cases were processed quickly, according to two security officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media on the record. The two also said March 31 has been set as a deadline to expel Afghan refugees from the capital, Islamabad, and the nearby city of Rawalpindi in preparation for their portation if they are not relocated to their host countries. There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs.
According to the UN, Pakistan is home to 3.2 million Afghan refugees, with 1.3 million holding PoR cards and over 800,000 possessing other legal statuses, including ACC cards issued in 2017 and 2018, allowing Afghan refugees to remain in the country. More than 600,000 of these refugees arrived after the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, fearing persecution, with most awaiting resettlement in third countries.