Pakistan issues fresh call for Afghan refugees to leave

Pakistan issued a new call on Friday for Afghans living in the southwest to leave the country, triggering thousands to rush to the border, officials said.

Millions of Afghans have poured into Pakistan over the past several decades, fleeing successive wars, as well as hundreds of thousands who arrived after the return of the Taliban government in 2021.

A deportation drive first launched in 2023 was renewed in April when Pakistan’s government rescinded hundreds of thousands of residence permits for Afghans, threatening to arrest anyone who did not leave.

“We have received directives from the home department to launch a fresh drive to repatriate all Afghans ... in a respectful and orderly manner,” Mehar Ullah, a senior government official in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, told AFP.

The province borders Afghanistan and there are significant ties between the regions.

On Friday, there were “around 4,000 to 5,000 people at the Chaman border” waiting to return, said Habib Bingalzai, a senior government official in Chaman.

Abdul Latif Hakimi, the head of Refugee Registration in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province across the border, said they were aware of an increase in returning Afghans on Friday.

In total, more than one million Afghans have left Pakistan since 2023, including more than 200,000 since April.

The campaign launched in April targeted the more than 800,000 Afghans with temporary residence permits, some of whom were born in the country or have lived there for decades.

Some Pakistanis have grown weary of hosting a large Afghan population as security and economic woes deepen, and the deportation drive has widespread support.

Pakistan’s security forces are under enormous pressure along the border with Afghanistan, battling a growing insurgency by ethnic nationalists in Balochistan in the southwest, and the Pakistani Taliban and its affiliates in the northwest.

Last year, Pakistan recorded the highest number of deaths from attacks in a decade and the government frequently accuses Afghan nationals of taking part in attacks.

Iran has also launched a large-scale deportation campaign of Afghans, which has seen more than 1.5 million sent back across the border.

In a separate development, Pakistan’s independent human rights commission on Friday called on authorities to drop terrorism charges against a 7-year-old boy, a day after police in Balochistan sought his arrest for sharing an anti-government speech by a rights activist on social media.

The case has sparked outrage among human rights defenders, who say applying anti-terror laws to a minor highlights an intensifying crackdown on dissent in the volatile region.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the case in a statement on X, calling it “highly reprehensible” and asked the government to protect the rights of the minor. The boy isn’t currently in police custody.

The boy was charged with terrorism by police on Thursday in Gwadar, according to his lawyer, Jadian Dashti. Such charges in the country are initially filed by police, and suspects are later produced in court for a pretrial hearing.

Dashti said that the child is accused of provoking violence by sharing a video of an anti-state speech that was delivered by a local rights activist, Gulzar Dost, during a rally in Gwadar last month to demand better facilities for education, health and jobs in the region.

Dost, who is known for his fiery speeches against the federal government in Islamabad and security forces as well, was arrested over the speech and was freed on bail this week pending a trial. Police accused him of spreading hate against the government.

The case against the boy comes as supporters of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, or BYC, a rights group, are rallying in the capital, Islamabad. Rights activists allege that Baloch people advocating for a fair share of the province’s wealth are routinely detained, an accusation that the Pakistani government denies.

The BYC says it wants an end to “enforced disappearances” in Balochistan, which has been the scene of a long-running insurgency, with the separatists seeking independence from the central government in Islamabad.

Agencies